Micro-capitalism vs. micro-communism

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7Wannabe5
Posts: 9372
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 9:03 am

Re: Micro-capitalism vs. micro-communism

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

BRUTE said: no
lol- Apologize if I came off terse. I have been running low-level intermittent fever due to frequent association with children recently immigrated.
Riggerjack said: No, the real problem with nuke power is spectacularly mismanaged waste
Right, and I do not see anything resembling a change in this reality. Humans are very short-sighted. I am currently very frustrated with the behaviors/agendas of both sides of the political spectrum (trickle-down monopoly market idiocy vs. everything-and-the-kitchen-sink-inclusivity towards complete ineffectiveness) in my neck of the woods. The infrastructure that grew up and around the declining automotive industry is in decay, so property values are extremely low, but the city of Detroit is located on a major river, in a region that includes a huge percentage of the fresh water supply on the planet, and is capable of growing the widest variety of food outside of California. So, IMHO, it does not seem even medium term rational to choose to increase the amount of toxic waste being sequestered here, while lawns are being watered and air conditioners are humming in the realm of new crap-azz construction in the middle of some god-forsaken desert.
Riggerjack said: This must be the guy who thinks flat roofs are a great idea.
lol- You should show some mercy and recall that he is stuck in debate with a person who is trying to convince him to live in a slightly leaky 1970s camper on a vacant lot in a not-entirely-safe urban situation. He has already admitted that I am "the brains of the operation", but I think we should give him some credit for some level of expertise in the realm in which he has been paid the big bucks by a variety of governments/corporations. I think that what he would say about the "flat roof" matter would be that it is likely that you are somebody who is involved in the residential roofing industry which rips off consumers by convincing them to retain a "quaint" solution which is rarely observed on any commercial structure. I think what he would say about the geo-thermal matter would be that his solution would be inclusive of razing all the archaic pre-mid-20th century and crappy-post-mid-20th century near-urban family homes in our region, and replacing them with steel high rise housing surrounded by green-space, so there would be no neighbors with whom to compete for geo-thermal. He would also likely admit that geo-thermal would not offer a complete solution in our region where the winters are very cold and the summers can be hot and humid.....something, something, something... equation, equation, equation...ventilation!!!....waste outputs integrated...something, something, something.

He also believes that some of my tendencies towards self-sufficient generalist functioning are wrong-minded because I am wasting my brain and causing other people to not have jobs which they might need to keep themselves fed. I am halfway convinced that he is right, because I currently reside in a neighborhood where I can readily find 8th graders with crack-head mothers willing to shovel the snow on my property for the price of a pizza, and recently immigrated women who will prepare a tray of roasted eggplant, peppers and chicken for an hourly wage less than I procure for teaching their kids algorithm for long division.

Part of the reason (most of the reason having to do with retention of full head of hair and cute azz and willingness to play a bit rough) I keep him around in spite of idiotic voting behavior, is that I find his methods towards frugality/conservation an interesting complement to my own. For instance, when not traveling for work, he resides with his best friend who is an eccentric very frugal multi-millionaire in his 70s. The ancient mailbox mounted near the porch on his friend's house finally fell apart. Instead of buying a new mailbox, he took it to an iron worker he hired on some major contract and had him weld it back together. And, he took a hideously ugly broken belt that somebody bought him to a local independent shoe repair guy to have the buckle replaced and the leather dyed a more attractive matte black. IOW, he is more inclined to appreciate or accumulate an eclectic "village" of others who have artisan specialist skills which they trade for money.

Riggerjack
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Re: Micro-capitalism vs. micro-communism

Post by Riggerjack »

@ vexed 87
I wonder what the EROEI ratio on the Fukushima plant looks like? Probably a decimal figure considering the financial and economical losses incurred since the tsunami, not sure when Fukushima was planned to be decommissioned, but I assume early termination resulted in steep financial losses and significant reduction on the EROEI ratio figure.

:D
Right... So, your argument is that a disaster is not energy efficient? I haven't run the numbers on the San Francisco fire, but I assume it was a loss too. Are we going to use the disasters as the measurement for what we are going to do now? That would mean no airplanes, cars, TVs, knives, laundry soap, dates, play dates, hell, it looks like we will have to restrict ourselves to a padded room thinking happy thoughts, but even that may have hazards.

Coal plants produce more radioactive waste than a nuke plant of equal capacity. If radioactive waste is your concern, you should be pro nuke. Unless you think spreading it downwind is an effective storage technique. I imagine we could work something like that out, and it would still be cleaner than coal, no CO2, so cleaner than Nat gas. Honestly, if you call yourself environmentally conscious, nuke seems like everything you want out of society. No CO2, less radioactive than coal, a solid base to power the grid making up for the variability of wind and solar, and doesn't damage watersheds, like hydo. Oh, right, it sounds scary, and we have had multiple generations of fear mongering.

The death toll from Chernobyl was 30 people, and the old town is turning into a nature park. The death toll from 3 mile island was zero. The death toll from Fukushima is a complete unknown, with official estimates running from zero to hundreds, but we don't study long term radiation exposure risk, the last study by the DOE, was killed under the Obama administration, so the money could increase the budget of a study of birds.

Yeah, that's right, the Nobel laureates the the Douche replaced with Perry, killed a 16 year study of long term radiation exposure, by the DOE, (who oversee all nuke research) so the biologist in charge of the department could increase the budget of a study in her field by 3%.

I expect the body count of Fukushima to be low, under a dozen. But even if it is higher than any estimate, say, 900, 30 times higher than Chernobyl, that still puts every death tied to every nuke plant throughout all history, at less than the deaths caused by laundry soap poisoning in the US alone, every single year. And still lower than the death count from the earthquake.

The arguments against nukes boil down to "it's scary, mkay? Hell, it's scary to think about." And that's fine, I use hydro, and will retire with solar, maybe some wind. I have no skin in this game, I just object to being lied to.

My point is that when other power gets expensive and fails, the common man ain't gonna buy this anymore, and when given the choice between his electric SUV and walking, suddenly he will be a big fan of nuke power, and dropping glass bricks in the desert will seem a good idea.

Which is only relevant to this topic, because the energy doom math always assumes there won't be more nuke power. I think that is a silly oversight.

vexed87
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Location: Yorkshire, UK

Re: Micro-capitalism vs. micro-communism

Post by vexed87 »

@riggerjack, :lol: No that's not my argument per se, it was just a thought experiment for my benefit. I didn't really make my point well. In the second paragraph, I was making an assumption of what might happen if we scale up nuclear to replace declining petroleum, which won't happen, as the infrastructure won't be in place in time to power our transportation systems, air, freight etc. Sorry, didn't explain my rambling thoughts very well!
Which is only relevant to this topic, because the energy doom math always assumes there won't be more nuke power. I think that is a silly oversight.
I'm not so sure that our benevolent overloads are so forward thinking as to begin the roll out in time.

jacob
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Re: Micro-capitalism vs. micro-communism

Post by jacob »

If [world] policy is going to change towards increasing the stockpile rather than decreasing it, I think it would push in the direction of the Russians stop selling their old weapons grade material to US reactors instead of boosting their own arsenals. There's currently, IIRC, a 20% shortfall in terms of usage vs mining when it comes to uranium fuel with the shortfall being made up with what is figuratively a swords to plowshares program. Also, instead of building new reactor designs, presumably nations would want to stay with the old designs which were primarily chose for their ability to produce plutonium.

Some minor solutions/issues. IIRC uranium can be extracted in infinite supplies from seawater that's about 10x(?) most costly than current mining costs. That should actually be cheap enough. The other issue is the difficulty in running a mining operation based on electric power. There's no Tesla Truck.

Some major issues. Breeder reactors generate plutonium. That's a concern from a proliferation point of view because plutonium can be refined via chemical means whereas uranium requires sophisticated centrifuges and accelerators. IOW, any country who gets to run a breeder reactor would be able to build the bomb if they so chose to.

I suspect both of these issues will be ignored if the choice is to expand the arsenal ... because that would just continue business as usual ... relying on policy or market signals but with no real advance decade or century long planning.

Myakka
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Re: Micro-capitalism vs. micro-communism

Post by Myakka »

There are reasons why the elites are now desperately seeking the last drops of available fossil fuels via techniques such as fracking and tar sands oil extractions. Oil is ideal for their purposes of domination and control of the rest of us and they are unwilling to adapt or give any of their power up. Oil is not only energy, but it is energy over which they have long been able to exert exclusive control of via both military and technological means. That is to say all of our technology and all of our cultural system is designed to burn their oil we are able to buy by playing their game.

The ability of North Korea to maintain its own nuclear power is direct evidence that nuclear is not even close to giving them exclusivity they enjoy with fossil fuels.

One day the finite oil must evitably become insufficient to maintain what they have been using it for and they will be in crisis/we will all suffer for our dependency on their fragile system. OR possibly one of the many other internal contradictions of their system will trip them up before that. A very common one in other empires has been the gradual inability of the elite to comprend the common people -- and there are many signs that this phenomena is increasing in the United States. Another key internal contradiction is that our civilization is using fresh water much faster than it is being replenished -- it may be that that will ultimately be the limiting factor rather than oil.

I think that the crash will be very soon if the new leader in Washington is permitted to go on mismanaging things in the manner he has already started to do. It took W. seven years to break our economy. I bet T. can do it in less than that.

I hope I am wrong about that.

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