nuclear energy
bcohen | December 19, 2006A list:
Genetically Modified Foods
Liquor
Breast Implants
Rosie O'Donnell on The View
Pesticides
1986's Flow-bee Haircut before the Junior Prom with Wendy Barnes
World War I
--Ng&Cohen2006
bcohen | November 14, 2006We end up examining political, cultural, economic, moral, environmental, and technical factors of nuclear energy in some of my courses here in the Engineering School. In the process of reviewing some older material, I once again came upon this wonderful article by Kristin Shrader-Frechette, a philosopher and environmental ethicist at Notre Dame: "Nuclear Technology and Radioactive Waste: A Survey of the Issues," Environmental Ethics 13:4 (1991): 327-343.
In it, she explains some of the background for distrust in the technical expert:
"At the nuclear waste facility containing more plutonium…
bcohen | October 26, 2006From an Eco Politics listserv I see mention of an upcoming debate about Nuclear Energy: "Cradle to Grave: New Nukes and Old Radioactive Waste"
It is a Live Webcast Debate being held on the 27th. The link is here, but you can't see anything until the webcast.
More details below the fold...
MEDIA ADVISORY FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
CAN NUCLEAR POWER BE THE SOLUTION TO CLIMATE CHANGE AND FUTURE ENERGY DEMAND?
***Live Webcast Debate***
FORMER GREENPEACE ACTIVIST TURNED NUCLEAR INDUSTRY SPOKESMAN TO DEBATE LEADING "VOICES OF REASON" AGAINST A PROPOSED NUCLEAR RENAISSANCE
Burlington, VT - After…
worldsfair | October 6, 2006Let's hope it's the latter, or we'll for sure need some Superhero action, and certainly not the kind that the Wonder Twins espouse (hands down, lamest superheroes if you ask me).
Anyway, what do you think? These would be pretty grand in the Spiderman villain mayhem and destruction category.
Except that these are actually a newish technology designed to harness "wave energy." This being the kinetic energy stored by the movement of water, which itself was initiated via the wind blowing on the water itself. Here's quote taken from Ocean Power Delivery Ltd, a company about to launch a 5 arm…
bcohen | September 29, 2006Here's Jeremy Rifkin in the LA Times on why we should pursue a range of decentralized energy technologies -- solar, wind, geothermal, hydro and biomass, for example -- and not the nuclear that's become in vogue of late.
(For the record, here, here, and here are some posts from the past few weeks that hit on the same subject.)
His argument:
1. "Nuclear power is unaffordable."
2. "60 years into the nuclear era, our scientists still don't know how to safely transport, dispose of or store nuclear waste."
3. "Acording to a study conducted by the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2001, known…
bcohen | September 15, 2006I'm way late to the Ask a Scienceblogger of a few weeks ago. So late that the question has come back around in a new Ask for this week (and this after being trumped by last week's Organic query - and both subjects are of great interest to me and soon I will converge them, plausibly, not as a lark). I fear now that I may have waded into a mini-manifesto below.
The actual article referenced in the Global Warming Ask category is not worth addressing, though it is actually kind of funny (by intent, I suppose). But I am concerned that Global Warming talk is becoming the end-all and be-all of…
nisbetmc | June 8, 2006In my latest Science and the Media web column at Skeptical Inquirer Online, I take a look at the current debate over re-investment in nuclear energy as a means to curb greenhouse gas emissions and shift the country towards energy independence. I show that the same frames used in the nuclear energy debate during the 1970s are still in play today.
I also review poll findings that indicate public support for nuclear energy has increased since 2001. However, comparisons to independent surveys show that public support isn't nearly as strong as industry-sponsored poll trends indicate.