Great Lives on Radio 4. Alvin Weinberg - Should He Feature On This Show?

Mathew Parris presents the biographical series in which his guests choose someone who has inspired their lives. Tuesdays at 4:30 pm, repeated Fridays at 11:00 pm.

From Winston Churchill to Kenny Everett.

Although many may be indifferent or even antagonistic to those chosen, in one way or another, humanity will owe most of them a debt of gratitude.

Should Gen IV MSBRs (Molten Salt Breeder Reactors) prove (over the coming 2 or 3 decades) to be the technology with the potential to solve all of humanities worst problems

What kind of debt will we owe to

Alvin Weinberg?

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A couple of months ago, I emailed a suggestion to

The Alvin Weinberg Foundation 

The Alvin Weinberg Foundation

That the 'Dream Team' of Baroness Worthington choosing Alvin Weinberg, supported by Kirk Sorensen's biographical expertise, would be excellent material for Great Lives.

Shortly afterwards, at a meeting of the 

All-Party Parliamentary Group on Thorium Energy 

APPG on Thorium Energy, 

I managed to corner Baroness Worthington and established that the notion of such a programme had made it through to her.

Will it happen - WATCH THIS SPACE!

Steeliphobes Set To Push Radiophobes Into Second Place!

Pity the poor Radiophobes because they simply cannot see the wood for the trees.

They are utterly blind to the media driver: "If it bleeds, it leads". They believe the distortions and hyperbole put about by professional reporters and presenters needing scare-stories to peddle their wares.

These professionals possess unimaginable power and zero responsibility - What an unholy cocktail!

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Has anyone ever seen this in the Headlines?

"...Hundreds of thousands of people worldwide live or work in close proximity to steel mills. Integrated steel production generates chemical pollution containing compounds that can induce genetic damage..."
Air pollution induces heritable mutations.

Or this?

"...Integrated steel millsproduce chemical mutagens that contaminate aquatic and atmospheric environments (1,2). and may pose a genetic hazard to humans and wildlife. Herring gulls (Larus argentatus) nesting near mill sites on the Great Lakes were shown to have higher germline mutation rates at minisatellite DNA loci than those at rural sites (3), and mutation frequency increased with colony proximity to integrates steel mills (4). It was postulated that inhaled airborne contaminents emitted from steel mills, such as polycyclic aromatic compounds, were largely responsible for mutation induction..."
"...Our results indicate that human and wildlife populations in proximity to integrated steel mills may be at risk of developing germline mutations more frequently because of the inhilation of airborne chemical mutagens..."

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To Radiophobes Everywhere:

You poor Wretches!

Stop worrying about minute levels of radiation from remote nuclear power plants, calm the befuddled activities in your brain and concentrate on the 
far-from-imaginary problems of everyday life:

The chemical mutagens in every breath you take and every mouthful of food and liquid you consume. 

This should be of a thousand times more concern to you and your's than the screaming headlines about radiation that are hurled at you in the scare stories from the powerful media morons.

Tons and Tons of Steel & Concrete & Stuff

Just What Goes Into A Wind Turbine?

Here's an Interesting Little Fact Sheet.

"What Mineral Products & Metals Are Needed To Make Wind Turbines"

FACT SHEET WIND TURBINES

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Just What Comes Out Of A Wind Turbine

In the UK, over the past 12 months, on average, each Wind Turbine generated 386.56 kW: 

Idiocy-Of-Renewables

That's just enough to Power 1 of these:

Thousands and thousands of such motors power industrial based nations, to give us the lifestyle to which we aspire.

The purveyors of this technology, based on such an obscene imbalance in the use of precious resources, have succeeded in getting it past the specialist advisers to our Prime Ministers and Presidents.

Their wicked success has stalled the progress of Gen IV Breeder Reactor programmes, taking us to the edge of the several precipices - a sick race between water wars, energy security wars and/or climate change!

It's time to get angry - really angry - with these morons.

Certainly, these 2 contrasting images should be plonked in front of every politician we come across, up to ministerial level and beyond!

Pandora's Promise - Official Trailer [HD] - In Theaters This June

Richard Rhodes: Pulitzer Prize Winner and author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb has, for too long, "...avoided looking at the whole picture..."

Stewart Brand: His book Whole Earth Discipline begins with "We are as gods and HAVE to get good at it".

Mark Shellenberger: "modernist" or "eco-pragmatist". Named a Time Magazine 'Heroes of the Environment (2008)'. 

Mark Lynas: Contributor to Channel 4's What the Green Movement Got Wrong" . He suggested that opposition by environmentalists, such as himself, to the development of nuclear energy had speeded up climate change.

"...can you be an environmentalist and not be pro-nuclear?.."

Pandora's Promise - Official Trailer [HD]

Electricity Generated from Fossil Fuels Kills Millions - Who Cares?

Macabre Indifference:
Gruesome and horrifying lack of concern. 

Accurate, justified description of the vast majority of energy users. We really don't give a you-know-what where the energy comes from, as long as it's there 24/7, on demand.

So - will a peer-reviewed paper, claiming nuclear power has saved  1,840,000 deaths elicit more than a mass shrug of the shoulders and a concealed "So What"? I doubt it!

                                                  

Prevented mortality and greenhouse gas emissions from historical and projected nuclear power

"...Their numbers come from calculating how many people would have likely died due to air pollution over the years, but didn't, because electricity was created by non-air polluting nuclear power plants instead..."

"...Kharecha and Hansen argue that burning coal over the years that nuclear power has been used as a viable energy source, (since 1971) instead of building nuclear plants would have led to deaths from lung related ailments from both the mining of coal, and burning it to create electricity. They have then used the number of deaths in the past from such ailments to project numbers in the future. They say that if the world would convert to all nuclear power by the middle of this century, 420,000 to 7 million deaths could be prevented. The numbers vary so much because they would depend on which energy source nuclear power would replace. Their overall point is that nuclear energy is much safer than coal—when looking at raw death numbers—and therefore should be seen as a replacement source for electricity generation, rather than as menace that should be abolished..."

Parliamentarian: A buffoon or jester who entertains by jokes, antics, and tricks in a circus, play, the Houses of Parliament, or other presentation.

Could any highly paid, professional body of people come up with such a pathetically comical statement as this, and not be compared with clowns:

"...it is worrying that DECC does not have any contingency plans in place for the event that little or no new nuclear is forthcoming. Crossing one’s fingers is not an adequate or responsible approach when the UK’s legally binding climate change commitments and energy security are at stake. For a department whose principal priorities are to ensure energy security and carbon reductions, DECC appears to be overly reliant on aspiration and hope. While we share the Minister’s hope that new build will be delivered as planned, we nevertheless recommend that DECC begins exploring contingency options as a matter of urgency..." 

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The above statement comes from Para 5 of 'Recommendations' of this Report, 

from the Energy and Climate Change Committee: 

Building New Nuclear: the challenges ahead

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Climate Change Commitments - A Joke! What difference would it make to the outcome, if the UK did not generate another single kilogram of carbon dioxide? - Not one Jot! But what a good way to collect votes, if you give every interested party a bit of what they want. It may mean another 4 or 5 years in a job.

I Repeat

IT'S THE ENERGY SECURITY STUPID!

"...don't say No Nuclear Power, say Better Nuclear Power..."

Sundance 2013. Robert Stone - Ondi Timoner

The interview with Robert Stone starts at 27:10.

28:40 Robert Stone: "...the core reason why people are against nuclear energy is because they conflate it with nuclear weapons..."

29:54 Ondi Timoner: "...nuclear....this big scary thing....it may actually be the only thing that saves us from climate change..."

31:01 Robert Stone: "...I have no problem with wind power. I have no problem with solar power....you just can't power the world as it is now, with those; they just can't scale..."

31:14 Robert Stone: "...by 2050 we're going to need 3 times the energy that we have now - 3 times..."

31:58 Robert Stone: "....an enlightenment environmentalism....we're here, there's gonna be 10 billion of us....we're not gonna be retreating....the reality is we're gonna keep encroaching....how do we make that encroachment as environmentally benign as possible..."

32:20 Robert Stone: "...DON'T SAY NO NUCLEAR POWER, SAY BETTER NUCLEAR POWER..."

38:59 Ondi Timoner: "...there are not that many great films that could spark a movement. this is one of those films..."

Robert Stone's Website for the Documentary