GreenPeace and Nuclear power!!!
I don’t believe much in donating money at Temple. Temple trusts have too much money and they do no developmental work that may really help the people. Anyways I prefer to donate to charities related to children and education. Both are the future.. The other thing I want to do is fight pollution.. I would like to volunteer for GreenPeace I believe in their cause. We really need to reduce green house gases to save out planet. I do believe that public transport should increase, cars should give better mileage. Its not that you have to go out and do something. Just a little care in our routine life helps.. Here is the list of things one can do to save environment. Click Here
GreenPeace is a very good organization and doing lot of good work. That is all good but I do believe we will need more energy in future. Solar power is the best I can think of. I also believe in nuclear power.. but greenPeace opposes nuclear power plant., they believe nuclear power is an unacceptable risk to the environment and to humanity. I differ to agree with them on this. I think Solar, Wind and Nuclear power are best way to go.. at least for country like India. Third generation reactors, with an output of 600 MW, are simpler, smaller, more rugged, and reduce substantially the possibility of a core meltdown accident, from a likelihood of 1 in 20,000 to 1 in 800,000 per reactor year. (Third generation reactors have, for example, 80 percent fewer control cables and 60 percent less piping.) They are standardized to expedite licensing and reduce construction time. Fourth generation fusion reactors, one hopes, will be coming into operation in the foreseeable future. I believe nuclear power plants are safe and do now pose any major environment issues.
Opponet of nuclear power will argue about Chernobyl. Chernobyl is unique. That kind of accident will not happen in any other nuclear power plants because all the reactors currently in operation around the world are placed inside a containment building (Chernobyl was not). The reactor core meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979, which happened when its core cooling system failed, also produced a lot of radiation; but the containment building the reactor was housed in kept it from being released into the atmosphere, and there were no injuries or deaths.
Lovelock is a British environmental scientist who has come to the hard conclusion that the unprecedented challenge of global warming leaves us no choice but to make a massive global investment in nuclear power, which emits no greenhouse gasses. Are there safety risks associated with that? Well, sure, but here's how Lovelock puts those risks in perspective.
How many people died at TMI, Lovelock asks? Zero. How many at Chernobyl? According to an authoritative study conducted by the United Nation's World Health Organization 19 years after the accident, no more than 75 people died at Chernobyl. And remember, that was a worst-case scenario
But Lovelock then asks us to consider China's Yangtze Dam, a huge source of squeaky clean hydroelectric power. "If the dam burst," Lovelock points out, whether because of an earthquake or an act of terrorism, "perhaps as many as a million people would be killed in the wave of water roaring down the course of the Yangtze River."
A million people. Why is that an acceptable risk, and nuclear power is not?
Compared to nuclear power, coal is a much less safe source of energy. In addition to the pollutants and carcinogens coal delivers into the atmosphere when burned, many coal miners are killed each year in coal mine accidents and many die transporting it. Per amount of electricity produced, hydropower causes 110 fold, coal, 45 fold, and natural gas, 10 fold more deaths than nuclear power. As Petr Beckmann, founding editor of Access to Energy, shows in his book The Health Hazards of Not Going Nuclear, nuclear power is the safest source of energy in all aspects, not excluding terrorism and sabotage, major accidents, and waste disposal.
GreenPeace is a very good organization and doing lot of good work. That is all good but I do believe we will need more energy in future. Solar power is the best I can think of. I also believe in nuclear power.. but greenPeace opposes nuclear power plant., they believe nuclear power is an unacceptable risk to the environment and to humanity. I differ to agree with them on this. I think Solar, Wind and Nuclear power are best way to go.. at least for country like India. Third generation reactors, with an output of 600 MW, are simpler, smaller, more rugged, and reduce substantially the possibility of a core meltdown accident, from a likelihood of 1 in 20,000 to 1 in 800,000 per reactor year. (Third generation reactors have, for example, 80 percent fewer control cables and 60 percent less piping.) They are standardized to expedite licensing and reduce construction time. Fourth generation fusion reactors, one hopes, will be coming into operation in the foreseeable future. I believe nuclear power plants are safe and do now pose any major environment issues.
Opponet of nuclear power will argue about Chernobyl. Chernobyl is unique. That kind of accident will not happen in any other nuclear power plants because all the reactors currently in operation around the world are placed inside a containment building (Chernobyl was not). The reactor core meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979, which happened when its core cooling system failed, also produced a lot of radiation; but the containment building the reactor was housed in kept it from being released into the atmosphere, and there were no injuries or deaths.
Lovelock is a British environmental scientist who has come to the hard conclusion that the unprecedented challenge of global warming leaves us no choice but to make a massive global investment in nuclear power, which emits no greenhouse gasses. Are there safety risks associated with that? Well, sure, but here's how Lovelock puts those risks in perspective.
How many people died at TMI, Lovelock asks? Zero. How many at Chernobyl? According to an authoritative study conducted by the United Nation's World Health Organization 19 years after the accident, no more than 75 people died at Chernobyl. And remember, that was a worst-case scenario
But Lovelock then asks us to consider China's Yangtze Dam, a huge source of squeaky clean hydroelectric power. "If the dam burst," Lovelock points out, whether because of an earthquake or an act of terrorism, "perhaps as many as a million people would be killed in the wave of water roaring down the course of the Yangtze River."
A million people. Why is that an acceptable risk, and nuclear power is not?
Compared to nuclear power, coal is a much less safe source of energy. In addition to the pollutants and carcinogens coal delivers into the atmosphere when burned, many coal miners are killed each year in coal mine accidents and many die transporting it. Per amount of electricity produced, hydropower causes 110 fold, coal, 45 fold, and natural gas, 10 fold more deaths than nuclear power. As Petr Beckmann, founding editor of Access to Energy, shows in his book The Health Hazards of Not Going Nuclear, nuclear power is the safest source of energy in all aspects, not excluding terrorism and sabotage, major accidents, and waste disposal.
posted by Vikas at
4:45 PM
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