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Right; I think this is called creating a "straw man".agree
bc who doesn't think there's much choice between the two evils, but does
they should be compared under the same criteria.reactors.
"John S. Denker" wrote:
"Dr. Paul O. Johnson" wrote:
I remember 50 years ago or so, at the dawn of the nuclear age, someone
published a paper in some journal about the hazards of coal-fired
safe,It was written from the perspective of living in a society in which
needs.clean, efficient fission reactors supplied all of mankind's energy
gave off
An amusing approach. Let's see where it leads.
It pointed out half-dozen or so major problems with the "recently
discovered" coal-fired reactor:
It was based on combustion which depleted the available oxygen,
If the combustion was incomplete (a fairly frequent occurrence) it
gaseoushighly toxic and insidious (odorless) CO,
Ummm, our ancestors lived in caves near imperfect fires
for 4,000 generations. We are pretty well equipped to
handle chronic exposure to moderate levels of CO.
The fuel usually contained contaminants such as sulfur that made the
waste products even more hazardous,
That's why scrubbers were invented.
Combustion occurred at a fairly low
temperature which made the reactor inefficient,
Nice try, but diametrically wrong. Although the
laws of physics _theoretically_ permit nuclear reactors
to operate at very high temperatures, in practice they
operate at _lower_ temperatures than coal-fired plants.
So the latter are thermodynamically _more_ efficient.
Ever notice those humonnnnngous cooling towers at the
local nuclear plant?