Day 955 – I’m getting ripped off!

Day 955 – I’m getting ripped off!

Sunday August 18, 2019

444 Days until the 2020 election and 526 days until the Inauguration

In my last post I wrote about Denmark buying the U.S. and posted it. A few hours later Andy Borowitz of the New York Times posted roughly the same headline. Obviously, he is reading me for inspiration.

Obviously.

Moving on. Let’s talk solar, wind and nuclear power. Having just returned from a Rhine River cruise where at my age I would be considered one of the younger passengers I found myself either in or overhearing some very – shall we say – conservative viewpoints. One such conversation (well actually I thinkI heard the same conversation multiple times from the same person. At this age you forget who you’ve told what to.) He said: people are doing solar to get paid by the government, windmills last fifteen years and have a payback that takes forty, and nuclear is the way to go. His example in the solar case was a building that was going to put on solar panels that would be in the shadow of a soon to be built sky scrapper. The folks didn’t care as long as it was installed so they could get the money back from the government.

To quote Sonny of Cher, “Well, I don’t know if all that’s true…” but I did look into the windmill claim. I couldn’t find anything that backed up the 15 versus 40 year claim. Most studies said windmills paid for themselves in 6 to 8 months and were predicated on lasting 20 years.

As far as the nuclear statement went I asked, “What are you going to do with the waste?” He had no answer. Nuclear energy has been around since what? 1945? less that one hundred years. The waste can last 10,000 years or much longer. We’ve had enough accidents already, and the potential for catastrophic ones is huge. What if the huge nuclear waste just off the Columbia River in Washington state where they made the first nuclear fuel for out atom bombs finally makes it to the river? Or what if the frozen dam around Fukishima melts and pollutes the Pacific” Or what about the 55 gallon drums of nuclear waste sunk off the coast of California after WWII? Or Chernobyl? Or the recent nuclear rocket explosion in Russia? Or all the spent fuel rods lying around sites in the U.S. All that waste was suppose to go somewhere. No one wants it in their back yard. Even in the middle of the godforsaken Nevada desert at Yucca Mountain they stopped it. There was also the little problem of making sure the ground water never rose to where the stuff was being buried for ten thousand years. And then there’s Rick Perry who for a campaign contribution from Waste Management allowed them to put a bunch of nuclear waste in a pit protected by a thick plastic sheet on the border with New Mexico. No one tells Texas what to do! Oh yeah? If that sheet breaks he infects the water supply of five states.

The problem with nuclear is the waste and accidents. No one seems to have answered those questions and I frankly don’t trust this bunch of idiots* (past, present, and future) to be able to take care of it.

*This includes all mankind.

Buckminster Fuller once stated that no matter where you are on Earth the wind is blowing somewhere within fifty miles of you (or was it five?). Seems like we have an answer. And – news flash – the sun comes up everyday. I think we could figure sometinig out.

444 Days until the 2020 election and 526 days until the Inauguration

PS Rave on Garth!