Research Paper blogging:Okay, the final stretch! You know the drill:- Label with your name and #Research- Cite your source as best you can.Away!
It is amazing. When we had sky high oil and gas prices, the Republicans wanted off shore drilling. They blamed our oil dependency on the Arab nations. Their mantra was "Drill, baby, Drill". In the wake of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the two Gugernatorial candidates, Steve Poizner and Meg Whitman have both backed off on American off shore drilling. I read that when Diane Feinstein and Barbara Boxer werre running for their respective offices, they were against nucleur power plants because of Chenobyl. After our gas price hikes reached their peaks a couple of years ago, both candidates were in favor of more nucleur power. Politians swing with the wind.
SF Chronicle 5/29/10
Google/Red, Green and Blue Alex Felsinger 3/20/09
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Isnt it funny that Chernobyl is used as an excuse of not having nuclear power, when other things we do everyday, like create styrophome have a negative effect on the enviornment and ourselves as well. I do not think that in America, scientists would risk have uninhabitable land for 20,000 years like the scientists did in russia. With proper care of nuclear power plants and proper way to discard the waste, i would agree with the politicians that nuclear power is the way of the future.
ReplyDeleteMaybe now, many more people will be open to the idea of nuclear power. After seeing what is going on in the Gulf, oil drilling wont seem like a smart idea to most people. I think that people are definitely a bit hypocritical for denying nuclear power so quickly, yet agreeing with oil. I guess it sometimes takes one big problem like this oil spill to open the eyes to many people.
ReplyDeleteI do agree, but although nuclear power is relatively safe, I've recently found other power sources that may be even better. Fuel cells have always been a favorite of scientists since they barely produce any waste, and since they are so small they seem like the future. More recently a fuel cell has been created that emits pure electricity if a fossil/organic fuel is mixed with oxygen (air). If properly marketed the company Bloom Energy could find themselves in the position of Nuclear engineers many years ago. And you may ask the relevance of this tangent, and it's that politicians will use whatever is cheapest to by as long as there's a small margin for error. So whenever something like an oil spill happens, politicians will be the first to denounce it. Just like Chernobyl shot down nuclear energy for this country. So hopefully even safer methods will be used.
ReplyDeleteObviously if we could begin to use alternate methods of energy that would be the best. We can't afford to have another spill like this. Too much biological life has been put at risk.
ReplyDeleteMarjory, although the scientists working on the nuclear power plants in Chernobyl made some veryyyyyy stupid decisions, they were not aware of the potential damages their decisions would lead too. I don't think any scientist anywhere would risk making a piece of land uninhabitable for 20,000 years.
ReplyDeleteDylan, your being prejudice, and ignorant. Its irrational to make sweeping generalizations about a group which contains thousands of individuals that you don't know in any context. Furthermore, over the past few weeks you seem to have become the grammer police on the boards, and yet your own post is full of mistakes.
ReplyDeleteCy, I think Dylan is trying to defend the scientists, not blame them for the disaster. Before Chernobyl, there really hadn't been this huge of a nuclear disaster before, and nobody really knew the risks of the actions they were taking by removing some parts to the nuclear reactor. There were a lot of stupid decisions made, but now we know more about how to handle nuclear energy, and in some ways the disaster was a learning experience. Now, I am not saying that it was a good thing that it happened, but the lesson we learned will be helpful in how we deal with energy in the future.
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