ryan is the supernicety wrote:

] Second-- airplanes are pretty damn safe. Go check out
] the records of safety at that Ohio Nuclear facility.

I don't know if its really worth having this discussion if you folks are going to be so pre-disposed to making straw man arguements. The number of breaches of safety proceedures in commercial aircraft that have resulted in failure number in the thousands. You're holding up one example of a problem with the operation of a nuclear facility, which did not result in failure, and implying that nuclear facilities in general are not safely operated, but airplanes are. Thats completely ridiculous and you know it.

] First of all-- distinction of scale.

Is there? How many people have died from airplane accidents in the last 50 years? How many from nuclear accidents? Whats the risk going forward? What about for automobiles? Automobiles are far riskier, at scale, in terms of actual real deaths, then airplanes or nuclear power. Do you own one? Do you think they ought to be eliminated?

Oaknet is essentially making the argument that because human beings aren't perfect, its possible for failures to occur in nuclear facilities. He further implys that no failure of any kind at a nuclear facility is ever acceptable because it is possible that a failure can result in a contaminent leak. The probability of such a failure, in Oaknet's estimation, is completely irrelevant. No risk is ever acceptable.

My response about airplanes is a simple observation that everything has risks. Its just an example. Niether you nor Oaknet hold every activity that you support or engage in to the level of precaution that is assumed in Oaknets post: No amount of risk is ever acceptable.

That fact is that you engage in many activities that are far more risky then nuclear power, PARTICULARLY WHEN SCALED. The fact that 10,000 people die because of one accident or because of 5,000 accidents is totally irrelevant. Whats important is what are the risks.

The radical left would very much like to tell me that we're minutes away of running out of every kind of fossil fuel and no other energy source is acceptable for either efficiency or saftey reasons. This perspective can only be held through self-deception. Either because we're intentionally ignoring sources of natural gas on the one hand, or because we're holding nuclear power to a safety standard that far exceeds, at scale, any other activity that we participate in.

What is the point in being this disingenuous? I don't get it!

Is it because you hate people that are rich, and rich people (by definition) run power companies?

Is that the deal?

I can't figure it out! In any event, this is not at all useful to me in attempting to either understand the world that I live in or effectively plan for its future.

RE: Boing Boing: 'Girl Photoblogs Chernobyl on Motorcycle' thing a fraud