"I have never figured out how you could be both pro-nuclear and pro-free enterprise. As far as I can figure, nuclear power would never have been developed under free enterprise pressure, at least not in the USA, which is about as close to free enterprise as anyone is.
"My understanding is that it took strong help from the nuclear navy to get commercial nuclear power started in the US. [Other-wise] the public utilities would probably never have tried to develop it, considering how expensive the up-front research would have been, how large a plant would have to be to be cheaper than a coal or oil fired plant, and how risk-avoiding utilities are by nature." R.M.L., Bethesda, Md.
Dear R.M.L.: Nuclear power is not an institution, but a technology. Considering how well it is doing in the hands of weaklings under the unbelievable repression by government, the media, and by now even by virtually the entire culture, I have little doubt that if the nuclear enterprise were genuinely free, it would flourish. So I have no problems supporting both nuclear power and free enterprise. There is much truth in what you say in your second paragraph, but you could repeat it almost verbatim for radar. Would airports have developed it if the military had not done it for them in WWII? (You can sterilize people with radar, and far more dreadful, it dis-orients birds close to the antenna.) You are, however, mistaken in your comparison with coal and oil: for some decades now, all three types have usually been built in the same size (about 1 GW per unit) to pay off. To the contrary, smaller nuclear plants (about 300 MW or less) are being developed and are expected to be profitable. Cordially, P.B.
Yes, I do know the difference between hydrocarbons and carbohydrates, but I managed to confuse them in the Dec. [1990] issue anyway. My sincere apopleptics.
Three scientists from the Max-Planck Atomic Institute in Heidelberg, Germany, have linked ozone destruction to the erup-tion of the El Chicon volcano in 1982 (Nature, 11/1/90, pp.49-50).
A number of readers have now written to ask if ozone is a pollutant at the surface, why not ship it to the ozone layer, where it is needed? It is not just that there are engineering and chemical problems, the cost prohibitive, and the quantities not commen-[rest is missing] Oxygen is stable as a diatomic molecule O
2, whereas atomic oxygen (O) and ozone (O3) want to grab onto something quickly. What protects us from the short-wave ultraviolet (UV) radiation is, strictly speaking, not the ozone, but the oxygen layer in the high atmosphere. The UV photons collide with O2 molecules and lose their energy by the work done in disassociating the molecules into O1 atoms, which quickly grab onto unscathed O2 molecules to form ozone (O3). Thus the ozone layer is primarily not the means, but the result of protection from UV radiation (ozone itself is also photodisassociative, but that is a second step). The unstable ozone molecules then grab onto each other in pairs to form three regular oxygen molecules in a process known as "recombination," which proceeds in parallel with disassociation, except at night, when there is recombination only.The ozone depletion theory claims that the chlorine from CFCs, also torn loose by UV radiation, will give the ozone something to grab onto and thus prevent it from recombining and completing the cycle.
As in the greenhouse effect, this is a genuine phenomenon, but there is no evidence to show that this is important, especially com-pared with natural sources of chlorine. In any ease, shipping a handful of ozone molecules (how, without recombination into oxygen?) to search out and neutralize a handful of chlorine atoms would make sense in only one respect: perhaps it would show up the Green megalomania in suggesting that anything as puny as man could improve, harm, or in any other way affect a process that takes place across the entire illuminated half of the globe (and recombination on both halves) every day.
Congratulations to long-time reader John McClaughry, who has been reelected to the Vermont Senate over a Marxist who described him as a "wacko fascist anarchist bum dealing in fear and hate."
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Vol. 18, No. 5
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Issues Issue/No.: Vol. 18, No. 5 Date: December 01, 2004 04:08 PM Title: Shameless
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
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