Comment: France is trying to come to America with their French's companies wanting to build the so-called "New Nuke Technology" (which is having problems in Finland and France). France is also chasing uranium for future uranium mining in America so they can take in back to France. France is not energy independent because they do not have any more uranium mines in their country. So watch out Virginia, our leaders are falling for the French liars, I cringe every time I hear someone say, "We need to be Like France because of their successful nuke program"! France is a failure at the nuke game, more to come....
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman — he of Friedman unit notoriety — spewed forth with more wisdom stupidity yesterday in “Real Men Tax Gas” — on nuclear power plants:(article follows)
… France today generates nearly 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power plants, and it has managed to deal with all the radioactive waste issues without any problems or panics. And us? We get about 20 percent and have not been able or willing to build one new nuclear plant since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, even though that accident led to no deaths or injuries to plant workers or neighbors. We’re too afraid to store nuclear waste deep in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain — totally safe — at a time when French mayors clamor to have reactors in their towns to create jobs. In short, the French stayed the course on clean nuclear power, despite Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and we ran for cover.
It’s not bad enough Friedman thinks we’re all wimps when it comes to the thought of paying taxes on gas. He thinks France has everything figured out: “[France] has managed to deal with all the radioactive waste issues without any problems or panics.”
Sorry, Tommy boy, wrong. Denis Du Bois wrote March 19, 2005 at EnergyPriorities.com:
France gets the majority of its power from nuclear reactors. In the mid 1950s, over feeble public dissent, the country’s leadership made that commitment.
Today, France is dealing with the legacy of its nuclear programs. Waste is stored in large facilities, while scientists search for ways to make it less deadly.
Parliament issued a report in March, 2005, on the issue of France’s nuclear waste. Its recommendations confirm the status quo: waste storage and decontamination research.
The cost of waste disposal — hundreds of billions of euros — is being passed along to ratepayers. High rates aren’t the only legacy of 50 years of nuclear power. Citizens and scientists alike are concerned about security, groundwater contamination, and storage.
And Du Bois describes the scope of the problem — in 2005:
Highly radioactive materials, such as spent fuel rods, are stored in The Hague and at the Marcoule nuclear facility, on the Rhone River near the southern city of Orange.
The director of the Commissariat a l’Energie Atomique (CEA) at the Marcoule facility, Loic Martin-Deidier, recalls the enthusiasm for quickly launching civil and military nuclear programs. At the time, he says, “they weren’t thinking 40 years ahead.”
Half a century later, nuclear waste continues to grow. Rods from atomic reactors aren’t the only waste France has to deal with.
Every day, about ten shipping containers arrive on trucks at the Soulaines-Dhuys storage facility outside Troyes, in the province of Ardennes, 180 kilometers east of Paris. On board are barrels of waste that isn’t radioactive enough to be stored at Marcoule. Every year, 15,000 cubic meters of waste contaminated with uranium, plutonium and tritium arrive here.
The 350-acre site is like an above-ground Yucca Mountain. Construction cranes hover above a hundred bunker-like cement blocks already filled with barrels encased in concrete. In 60 years, the cranes’ job will be done, the 400-bunker facility will be full, and the entire facility will be covered with a concrete lid. What then?
Amen. What then?
The Soulaines-Dhuys site will enter a 300-year surveillance phase. After that, the plan is to observe the site until the stored waste loses its radioactivity.
The initial 300 years is just the beginning. Even moderately radioactive plutonium retains hazardous for 24,000 years. Skeptics wonder if future generations will follow the plan — or even remember where the site is located.
Americans are wimps, Tom? Show us who’s the stupid one in this scenario, please.
In the end, locals may have little say in the matter. In 2002, France stored 978,000 cubic meters of waste. In 2020, the annual amount is expected to be 1.9 million cubic meters.
The country is far behind most of its European neighbors in renewable energy development. It has meager fossil fuel resources, such as coal or gas. The country is, for the foreseeable future, dependent on nuclear power.
Meanwhile, keeping the lights on means the waste keeps coming.
Choice? Lady or the Tiger. Pick one: gas/oil or coal — or hundreds, yea thousands, of years of nuclear waste.
Oh. What’s the “Friedman unit” you ask? Since 2003 Friedman repeatedly stated “the next six months” was the time period in which “we’re going to find out…whether a decent outcome is possible” in the Iraq War. Well, how many “Friedmans” has it been?
Just what we thought.
http://therealbarackobama.wordpress.com/2009/09/21/factchecking-friedman-on-frances-radioactive-waste-issues/
Real Men Tax Gas
September 20, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman — he of Friedman unit notoriety — spewed forth with more wisdom stupidity yesterday in “Real Men Tax Gas” — on nuclear power plants:(article follows)
… France today generates nearly 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power plants, and it has managed to deal with all the radioactive waste issues without any problems or panics. And us? We get about 20 percent and have not been able or willing to build one new nuclear plant since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, even though that accident led to no deaths or injuries to plant workers or neighbors. We’re too afraid to store nuclear waste deep in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain — totally safe — at a time when French mayors clamor to have reactors in their towns to create jobs. In short, the French stayed the course on clean nuclear power, despite Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and we ran for cover.
It’s not bad enough Friedman thinks we’re all wimps when it comes to the thought of paying taxes on gas. He thinks France has everything figured out: “[France] has managed to deal with all the radioactive waste issues without any problems or panics.”
Sorry, Tommy boy, wrong. Denis Du Bois wrote March 19, 2005 at EnergyPriorities.com:
France gets the majority of its power from nuclear reactors. In the mid 1950s, over feeble public dissent, the country’s leadership made that commitment.
Today, France is dealing with the legacy of its nuclear programs. Waste is stored in large facilities, while scientists search for ways to make it less deadly.
Parliament issued a report in March, 2005, on the issue of France’s nuclear waste. Its recommendations confirm the status quo: waste storage and decontamination research.
The cost of waste disposal — hundreds of billions of euros — is being passed along to ratepayers. High rates aren’t the only legacy of 50 years of nuclear power. Citizens and scientists alike are concerned about security, groundwater contamination, and storage.
And Du Bois describes the scope of the problem — in 2005:
Highly radioactive materials, such as spent fuel rods, are stored in The Hague and at the Marcoule nuclear facility, on the Rhone River near the southern city of Orange.
The director of the Commissariat a l’Energie Atomique (CEA) at the Marcoule facility, Loic Martin-Deidier, recalls the enthusiasm for quickly launching civil and military nuclear programs. At the time, he says, “they weren’t thinking 40 years ahead.”
Half a century later, nuclear waste continues to grow. Rods from atomic reactors aren’t the only waste France has to deal with.
Every day, about ten shipping containers arrive on trucks at the Soulaines-Dhuys storage facility outside Troyes, in the province of Ardennes, 180 kilometers east of Paris. On board are barrels of waste that isn’t radioactive enough to be stored at Marcoule. Every year, 15,000 cubic meters of waste contaminated with uranium, plutonium and tritium arrive here.
The 350-acre site is like an above-ground Yucca Mountain. Construction cranes hover above a hundred bunker-like cement blocks already filled with barrels encased in concrete. In 60 years, the cranes’ job will be done, the 400-bunker facility will be full, and the entire facility will be covered with a concrete lid. What then?
Amen. What then?
The Soulaines-Dhuys site will enter a 300-year surveillance phase. After that, the plan is to observe the site until the stored waste loses its radioactivity.
The initial 300 years is just the beginning. Even moderately radioactive plutonium retains hazardous for 24,000 years. Skeptics wonder if future generations will follow the plan — or even remember where the site is located.
Americans are wimps, Tom? Show us who’s the stupid one in this scenario, please.
In the end, locals may have little say in the matter. In 2002, France stored 978,000 cubic meters of waste. In 2020, the annual amount is expected to be 1.9 million cubic meters.
The country is far behind most of its European neighbors in renewable energy development. It has meager fossil fuel resources, such as coal or gas. The country is, for the foreseeable future, dependent on nuclear power.
Meanwhile, keeping the lights on means the waste keeps coming.
Choice? Lady or the Tiger. Pick one: gas/oil or coal — or hundreds, yea thousands, of years of nuclear waste.
Oh. What’s the “Friedman unit” you ask? Since 2003 Friedman repeatedly stated “the next six months” was the time period in which “we’re going to find out…whether a decent outcome is possible” in the Iraq War. Well, how many “Friedmans” has it been?
Just what we thought.
http://therealbarackobama.wordpress.com/2009/09/21/factchecking-friedman-on-frances-radioactive-waste-issues/
Real Men Tax Gas
September 20, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Do we owe the French and other Europeans a second look when it comes to their willingness to exercise power in today’s world? Was it really fair for some to call the French and other Europeans “cheese-eating surrender monkeys?” Is it time to restore the French in “French fries” at the Congressional dining room, and stop calling them “Freedom Fries?” Why do I ask these profound questions?
Because we are once again having one of those big troop debates: Do we send more forces to Afghanistan, and are we ready to do what it takes to “win” there? This argument will be framed in many ways, but you can set your watch on these chest-thumpers: “toughness,” “grit,” “fortitude,” “willingness to do whatever it takes to realize big stakes” — all the qualities we tend to see in ourselves, with some justification, but not in Europeans.
How so? France today generates nearly 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power plants, and it has managed to deal with all the radioactive waste issues without any problems or panics. And us? We get about 20 percent and have not been able or willing to build one new nuclear plant since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, even though that accident led to no deaths or injuries to plant workers or neighbors. We’re too afraid to store nuclear waste deep in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain — totally safe — at a time when French mayors clamor to have reactors in their towns to create jobs. In short, the French stayed the course on clean nuclear power, despite Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and we ran for cover.
How about Denmark? Little Denmark, sweet, never-hurt-a-fly Denmark, was hit hard by the 1973 Arab oil embargo. In 1973, Denmark got all its oil from the Middle East. Today? Zero. Why? Because Denmark got tough. It imposed on itself a carbon tax, a roughly $5-a-gallon gasoline tax, made massive investments in energy efficiency and in systems to generate energy from waste, along with a discovery of North Sea oil (about 40 percent of its needs).
Such a tax would make our economy healthier by reducing the deficit, by stimulating the renewable energy industry, by strengthening the dollar through shrinking oil imports and by helping to shift the burden of health care away from business to government so our companies can compete better globally. Such a tax would make our population healthier by expanding health care and reducing emissions. Such a tax would make our national-security healthier by shrinking our dependence on oil from countries that have drawn a bull’s-eye on our backs and by increasing our leverage over petro-dictators, like those in Iran, Russia and Venezuela, through shrinking their oil incomes.
In sum, we would be physically healthier, economically healthier and strategically healthier. And yet, amazingly, even talking about such a tax is “off the table” in Washington. You can’t mention it. But sending your neighbor’s son or daughter to risk their lives in Afghanistan? No problem. Talk away. Pound your chest.
So, I ask yet again: Who are the real cheese-eating surrender monkeys in this picture?
http://therealbarackobama.wordpress.com/2009/09/21/factchecking-friedman-on-frances-radioactive-waste-issues/
Because we are once again having one of those big troop debates: Do we send more forces to Afghanistan, and are we ready to do what it takes to “win” there? This argument will be framed in many ways, but you can set your watch on these chest-thumpers: “toughness,” “grit,” “fortitude,” “willingness to do whatever it takes to realize big stakes” — all the qualities we tend to see in ourselves, with some justification, but not in Europeans.
How so? France today generates nearly 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power plants, and it has managed to deal with all the radioactive waste issues without any problems or panics. And us? We get about 20 percent and have not been able or willing to build one new nuclear plant since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, even though that accident led to no deaths or injuries to plant workers or neighbors. We’re too afraid to store nuclear waste deep in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain — totally safe — at a time when French mayors clamor to have reactors in their towns to create jobs. In short, the French stayed the course on clean nuclear power, despite Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and we ran for cover.
How about Denmark? Little Denmark, sweet, never-hurt-a-fly Denmark, was hit hard by the 1973 Arab oil embargo. In 1973, Denmark got all its oil from the Middle East. Today? Zero. Why? Because Denmark got tough. It imposed on itself a carbon tax, a roughly $5-a-gallon gasoline tax, made massive investments in energy efficiency and in systems to generate energy from waste, along with a discovery of North Sea oil (about 40 percent of its needs).
Such a tax would make our economy healthier by reducing the deficit, by stimulating the renewable energy industry, by strengthening the dollar through shrinking oil imports and by helping to shift the burden of health care away from business to government so our companies can compete better globally. Such a tax would make our population healthier by expanding health care and reducing emissions. Such a tax would make our national-security healthier by shrinking our dependence on oil from countries that have drawn a bull’s-eye on our backs and by increasing our leverage over petro-dictators, like those in Iran, Russia and Venezuela, through shrinking their oil incomes.
In sum, we would be physically healthier, economically healthier and strategically healthier. And yet, amazingly, even talking about such a tax is “off the table” in Washington. You can’t mention it. But sending your neighbor’s son or daughter to risk their lives in Afghanistan? No problem. Talk away. Pound your chest.
So, I ask yet again: Who are the real cheese-eating surrender monkeys in this picture?
http://therealbarackobama.wordpress.com/2009/09/21/factchecking-friedman-on-frances-radioactive-waste-issues/
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