“We have to be very concerned,” Donald Trump, the New York real estate mogul, said on Fox News on Tuesday. “I’m in favor of nuclear energy, very strongly in favor of nuclear energy. If a plane goes down, people keep flying. If you get into an auto crash, people keep driving. There are problems in life. not everything is so perfect. But we do need nuclear energy, and we need a lot of it fast.” From The New York Times blog, "The Caucus" written by Michael D. Shear
HBW: How can he compare a potential nuclear meltdown to a car crash?!! Wow, I knew he was insulated and isolated from the middle-class schmucks and their daily commute, but you'd think he'd be smart enough to realize that a car crash affects far fewer lives than a nuclear disaster!! And people actually think this guy has what it takes to be president of the strongest country in the world?!! Well, they're just as deluded then as, "The Donald."
He's not the only Republican contender for 2012 who's clueless on nuclear energy. Mike "The end is near" Huckabee doesn't understand why their is a bias against nuclear energy, which is the deadliest power on earth!!
“There’s been a real bias against nuclear energy in the United States, going all the way back to Three Mile Island in 1979, but I think most of it is unfounded. I mean, we’ve been running nuclear submarines for 60 years without accidents,” he said in an interview in October 2007."
HBW: There's a bias, Mike, because the cost of an accident is too high for the benefit it would bring. We should be killing the traditional nuke sources and go with Thorium, which is just as good but much less dangerous and radioactive.
But, to get back to the "bias" against old nuclear sources; It's like wondering why there would be a bias against a body guard (nuclear energy) who is referred to you as being the best for your providing for your families needs, (nuclear energy) well into the future. However, he has one draw-back; he has been known to blow up (nuclear disaster) and kill countless people (nuclear radiation leakage) but you're assured the chances of that happening are low. Oh, and even if you destroy him after his rampage, (shutdown the reactor) his buddies (radiation half-life and radioactive waste) would hang around for hundreds of thousands of years to haunt and injure your childrens' children. Would you still take that risk?
Then there's this bit about there not being any nuclear submarine accidents!! The evidence is starkly against his preposterous claim, according to the following list of accidents as found this page titled, U.S. Nuclear Accidents:
18 April 1959
An experimental sodium-cooled reactor utilized aboard the USS Seawolf, the U.S.'s second nuclear submarine, was scuttled in 9,000 feet of water off the Delaware/Maryland coast in a stainless steel containment vessel. The reactor was plagued by persistent leaks in its steam system (caused by the corrosive nature of the sodium) and was later replaced with a more conventional model. The reactor is estimated to have contained 33,000 curies of radioactivity and is likely the largest single radioactive object ever dumped deliberately into the ocean. Subsequent attempts to locate the reactor proved to be futile. Secondary link
1961
The USS Theodore Roosvelt was contaminated when radioactive waste from its demineralization system, blew back onton the ship after an attempt to dispose of the material at sea. This happened on other occasions as well with other ships (for example, the USS Guardfish in 1975). Secondary link
12 December 1971
Five hundred gallons of radioactive coolant water spilled into the Thames River near New London, Connecticut as it was being transferred from the submarine Dace to the sub tender Fulton. Secondary link
The USS Proteus, a disabled submarine tender, discharged significant amounts of radioactive coolant water into Guam's Apra Harbor. A geiger counter check of the harbor water near two public beaches measured 100 millirems/hour, fifty times the allowable dose. Secondary link
HBW: And that's just with the United States!! Russia has had all kinds of nuclear accidents aboard nuclear powered submarines.
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3 comments:
Al this is well and true HBW. But without nuclear power how could we make fun of W saying "nucalar."
That's about the best argument I can make for it. Sorry I couldn't give you a better debate.
Donald Trump was "Toasted" on Comedy Central this last weekend...
Between that and his own show he really has quite an awesome resume.
If he believes in nuclear energy then let him pass a law where he has to buy all the land 100 miles in all directions from a nuclear reactor. Oh, and lets start storing nuclear waste in one of his fancy apartment towers.
@MDL...Yeah, Bush probably thinks that radiation is a channel on satellite radio.
@Tao...I like your way of thinking. We could also place some of the waste under the grass at his posh golf resorts. Finally, something useful for golf courses!!
Speaking of gold courses, I love George Carlin's bit on how we should use them to build housing for the homeless. They're a waste of good real estate!!
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