Castor, Radioactivity, Green Energy, Kraftwerk

[Martin Naef]

On 07.11.2010 3:22, Joost Schuttelaar wrote:
> On Nov 7, 2010, at 14:54 , Martin Naef wrote:
>
>>> Given that your country is still digging holes the size of a town
>>> to get at a fossil fuel that is both inefficient and highly
>>> polluting, I think there are more immediate concerns than storing
>>> nuclear waste somewhere underground.
>>
>> Exactly my thoughts. It's easy to be against nuclear power, but I
>> don't see the alternative. It's good to work on alternative
>> sources, but it'd be highly unrealistic to hope they would be
>> without their share of side effects.
>
> I might go 100% nuclear next year for my electricity. In The
> Netherlands most 'green energy' is the burning of biomass, such as
> agricultural waste. To me, this is of course heaps better than buying
> and burning coal and oil, but not something which is actually carbon
> neutral - it is entirely dependent on synthetic fertilizers. Organic
> farming for instance produces almost no excess biomass, simply
> because you would use the grown organic material to fertilize the
> soil again.
>
> For base energy load, we need nuclear. Just to replace oil and coal.
> For peak load, you need things like natural gas turbines and
> potential energy storage (f.e. pumping water up when there's little
> demand). Wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, ground heat exchange, use
> them where you can get significant output qnd stop playing around
> with things like microturbines.
>
> Furthermore, we need to use smart technology to greatly reduce energy
> usage. To get the R&D-machine going, we need to change some economic
> game rules. All fossil fuels need to get heavily taxed. This means
> that for insulating your house there automatically is a huge
> financial incentive. On the producers-side, there is the need to feel
> the hidden economic costs of using high-energy manufacturing,
> stimulating the 'bio based economy', etc...
>
> I am not a big believer in changing behavior of
> consumers/producers... to preach to consumers to consume less and
> 'use energy efficient lightbulbs' will not get us there. Basically we
> need to fix things on the supply side using technology.
>