Talk-Polywell.org

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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/22 ... npeace_no/

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My take:

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/200 ... roved.html

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MSimon wrote:*

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/22 ... npeace_no/

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My take:

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/200 ... roved.html

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I could send an I told you so Roger's way, but that would be immature.

who are these self-proclaimed green-spokespeople?

their profound ignorance does more harm to their professed causes, and thereby to the future of our planet, than good.

makes me very angry.

well done on your posts Simon - fight the good fight, etc.

rcain wrote:who are these self-proclaimed green-spokespeople?

their profound ignorance does more harm to their professed causes, and thereby to the future of our planet, than good.

makes me very angry.

well done on your posts Simon - fight the good fight, etc.

The Pharisees have great influence with the King.

Duane

Where I live some animal rights activists broke in to a farmers shed one night and freed the snails he was raising for French restaurants. The snails were all picked up by the farmer the next morning. Some of them got a whole 10 feet on their flight to freedom.

the article Headline is "Greenpeace on fusion: Whatever it is, we're against it"

And that just says it all. They`re either ignorant idiots, or they`re polarized toward the ITER approach of fusion, which we can all agreee that would do a lot of damage to the littl` rock we all sit on.

I'll never forget having to explain Polywell aneutronic fusion to a greenie. He had his head so far up his butt that he couldn't comprehend that you could theoretically have nearly radiation free fusion, and spouted all this non-sense about how he was part of the anti-nuke crowd and "knew everything" about it.

Still shocking to me because the guy is a pretty bright guy.

"Governments should not waste our money on a dangerous toy," Jan Van de Putte of Greenpeace International said when ITER was announced in 2005. Van de Putte predicted it will never be efficient - so why bother?

Spokesperson Bridget Woodman said: "Nuclear fusion has all the problems of nuclear power, including producing nuclear waste and the risks of a nuclear accident."

Well.. if we're talking ITER, they actually have a point. Will ITER ever be efficient?

Also, with ITER and its donut cousins, you're dealing with lots of neutrons and tritium. A failure with the superconducting magnets could blow the thing like a bomb, spewing Li and T all over the county.

Even a PB11 BFR's going to emit a lethal neutron dose. Walk into the reactor room when it's running - does that meet the definition of 'nuclear accident' ?

Even a PB11 BFR's going to emit a lethal neutron dose. Walk into the reactor room when it's running - does that meet the definition of 'nuclear accident' ?

About the same way walking into a boiler generating steam could be construed as an accident. Deal is: it is an industrial accident, not a public endangering accident. A boiler explosion vs irradiating the countryside.

I know a zero risk society. There are lots of people there and more moving in every year. It is called a graveyard.

Let me add that I don't even consider the high neutron ITER to be much of a public threat.

MSimon wrote:

I know a zero risk society. There are lots of people there and more moving in every year. It is called a graveyard.

I like that one. I'm keeping it and making it my own...

Greenpeace Is Sceptical (and ignorant)

I was born in 1971, and this has been a true statement the entirety of my politically aware life, which started in the campaign for Reagan's first term.

Regards,
Tom Perkins
molon labe
montani semper liberi &
para fides paternae patri

Dont even get me started on this "organisation". Greenpeace is nowadays a rich company. Their ideals of the past are long gone (personally I do not think they ever had any)...
Besides I dont think anyone there has ever really understood much of anything. They are against anything that is man-made. They are even against windmills for electricity (they ruin the landscape and the birdlife they say). I think many of them would prefer mankind to get back into caves... or to be extinct entirely (except for their CEOs of course).
And yes they say that everyone is working there on an honorary basis, but they do spend lots of money all the time (that honorary workers collect for them from idiots that believe the hype). Now when you spend a lot of money, it has to go somewhere... and some people will reward those that make sure that the money gets spent into the right pockets... Clear?

Josh Cryer wrote:I'll never forget having to explain Polywell aneutronic fusion to a greenie. He had his head so far up his butt that he couldn't comprehend that you could theoretically have nearly radiation free fusion, and spouted all this non-sense about how he was part of the anti-nuke crowd and "knew everything" about it.

Still shocking to me because the guy is a pretty bright guy.

..that just reminded me that they would be against it regardless. Why? Because with cheap power comes cheap EVERYTHING. With cheaper products, demand will grow, and we would "exploit earth`s natural resources" even further. Tree huggers don`t like that, even thou it would be clean technology. So having said that theres no making them happy, unless we roll back to the cave from which we once emerged.

This "exploiting the planet's resources" soft-propaganda, mantra that's running rampant is a deadly viral meme for a technologically-based society.

It is based on the implicit false premise that all resources are naturally occurring and not man-made. A resource does not exist until a human mind creates a technology that requires it: remove the technology and it's just a lump of clay or a rock or a tree or whatever. Many resources are substituted by another as the technology utilizing it is superseded. The marketplace of innovation and the better widget race guarantees it, if not interfered with by state apparatus. The one true resource that is the font of all others is the human mind and the capacity for reason, something which does seem to be in short supply of late.

I wonder if fusing Boron-11 and H into Helium in a Polywell at some miniscule rate would be considered "exploiting the planet's resources" by the eco-nazi misanthropes?

What is a resource but some form of matter or energy and thus all elementary energy? Energy is never created or destroyed only transformed. The exploitation is the stuff of dark age, subjective myths.

Gotta love the Luddites.

If I told you that I had a technology that could get people from point A to point B faster, but that it would kill 40,000 people a year, would you be for it, or against it?



But nobody is willing to give up their car.

If people claim that they are against technologies because they have some risk involved with them, tell them that they should first work to get rid of cars. If they're not willing to tackle that mass-murdering technology (which has killed more people than all of the wars we've fought combined), then they have no business arguing that any other technology needs to be stopped.

Put more simply, we as a society are willing to put up with a certain amount of risk for certain benefits. If they want to stop using cars, to avoid the risk, or live far from nuc plants, those options are very viable. Nobody is requiring them to accept the risks involved. It's purely a choice made by our democratic process.

I actually could buy arguments against cars... there are viable alternatives. But how many people have been killed by radiation from nuc plants in the US? Any? Ever? Perhaps some small number of employees who got cancer before their time because of exposure? Maybe? Damage to the environment amounts to - what - some holes in mountains?

Now, how many die early from problems with air pollution caused by coal plants? Wouldn't you have to be for nuclear if risk is your model?

And if you had a technology that could provide really cheap energy - cheap enough that you could use it to disintigrate waste, including the waste from the fission plants - wouldn't you have to be behind that?

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for reducing use, too. I think the escalating model of consumption is essentially flawwed. But that's not to say we can't find some happy medium where we all get to enjoy the comforts that we have today.

It's not about being "Green" or "Conservative" or "Liberal," it's about being reasonable. Skip your identity politics, and just do the right thing.

Mike