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Ted Cruz

7 (6.5%)

Rick Santorum

16 (14.8%)

Michelle Bachmann

13 (12%)

Chris Christie

23 (21.3%)

Rand Paul

49 (45.4%)

Total Members Voted: 107

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Actually quite a nice image actually.

Also, it's not like anything dangerous ever happened there. The danger of nuclear power plants is gravely overstated.

I'm not certain, but that may not be a nuclear plant. That water looks really, really bad, and those are just cooling towers. It could be something else.

[10ebbor10]

To be fair, green, gray and fossil fuel power can destroy the local environement.

Find me one example of solar energy impacting a local ecosystem negatively. I'll give you time.

Here's your progress. [You ninja'd me with that q]

Those are the rare earth mines in China. Average life expectancy 40 and dropping.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Actually quite a nice image actually.

Also, it's not like anything dangerous ever happened there. The danger of nuclear power plants is gravely overstated.

I'm not certain, but that may not be a nuclear plant. That water looks really, really bad, and those are just cooling towers. It could be something else.

It's the 3 miles Island plant. Google reverse image search

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Then ban coal mining and hydrogen boring as well. Oh wait. You don't seem to understand solar's energy output itself is not a detriment to a single local ecosystem. Chinese mega miners will strip mine no matter what you want. And the only reason they have such massive unregulated mining is due to the US and others deciding to not produce their own.

[GlyphGryph]

Mict - I don't think anyone was saying it wasn't better than the alternative, just that there is in fact an environmental cost to most of them.

[Nadaka]

3 mile island was not a disaster. The amount of radiation leaked over the entire lifetime of the plant was less than is put out by an average coal plant in a single year even if you include the minor release of irradiated steam.

[10ebbor10]

Snip

Then ban coal mining and hydrogen boring as well. Oh wait.

((Nuclear power guy here.))

On another note, it's a fact that rare earths are the most polluting minerals to be extracted, much more so than any other kind of mineral. Then again, all of us are typing on a thing that probably uses at least a small amount of them.

(Also, why would you dig for hydrogen?)

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Anyway, my argument on the mining front is that we can significantly limit the environmental damage from mining with proper regulations. Not even assuming any technological improvements or changes in materials used, employing procedures we have available now can allow us to mine without wrecking everything.

3 mile island was not a disaster. The amount of radiation leaked over the entire lifetime of the plant was less than is put out by an average coal plant in a single year even if you include the minor release of irradiated steam.

That said, 3 Mile Island had the potential to be a disaster that would make Chernobyl look peachy. At one point there was a giant pressurized bubble of hydrogen inside the reactor, and had it ignited the whole facility could have spectacularly exploded, throwing radioactive material into the atmosphere.

[10ebbor10]

3 mile island was not a disaster. The amount of radiation leaked over the entire lifetime of the plant was less than is put out by an average coal plant in a single year even if you include the minor release of irradiated steam.

That said, 3 Mile Island had the potential to be a disaster that would make Chernobyl look peachy. At one point there was a giant pressurized bubble of hydrogen inside the reactor, and had it ignited the whole facility could have spectacularly exploded, throwing radioactive material into the atmosphere.

I require facts on that.

Because AFAIk, the cooling system is designed to vent steam, so it's impossible for water temperature to reach the 600 degrees required to split into hydrogen and oxygen.
Secondly a hydrogen buildup and explosion is exactly what happened at Fukushima. Multiple times even. No radioactive exhaust plumes there.

Edit: Reread the wiki. Apparently the fuelrod coating reacted with the water, forming hydrogen. Well, that hydrogen actually exploded at least once, with no reactor breaches.
You need a far heavier explosive charge to break reactor core containment. Besides, while there was hydrogen, there wasn't any oxygen for it to burn with.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Here you go. (Ctrl-F "hydrogen bubble")

And yes, there was fortunately a lack of oxygen, making ignition impossible. Had oxygen found its way inside, however, there would have been catastrophy. I don't know about Fukashima, but in this instance the hydrogen was inside the pressure vessel.

[10ebbor10]

Here you go. (Ctrl-F "hydrogen bubble")

And yes, there was fortunately a lack of oxygen, making ignition impossible. Had oxygen found its way inside, however, there would have been catastrophy. I don't know about Fukashima, but in this instance the hydrogen was inside the pressure vessel.

Still wouldn't have been worse than the Tsernobyl disaster. There you had the equivalent of a 10 ton TNT explosion on the bottom of the reactor, while the 3 miles island detonation would, at worst, only blown of the top.

Besides, there was an overpressure inside the reactor, so oxygen can't find it's way inside. Hydrogen can leak outside though.

As the water boiled away in the reactors and the water levels in the fuel rod pools dropped, the reactor fuel rods began to overheat severely and melt down. In the hours and days that followed, Reactors 1, 2 and 3 experienced full meltdown.[9][10]

In the high heat and pressure of the reactors, a reaction between the nuclear fuel metal cladding, and the water surrounding them, produced explosive hydrogen gas. As workers struggled to cool and shut down the reactors, several hydrogen-air chemical explosions occurred.[11][12] It is estimated that the hot cladding-water reaction in each reactor produced 800 to 1000 kilograms of hydrogen gas, which was vented out of the reactor pressure vessel, and mixed with the ambient air, eventually reaching explosive concentration limits in units 1 and 3, and due to piping connections between unit 3 and 4, unit 4 also filled with hydrogen, with the hydrogen-air explosions occurring at the top of each unit, that is in their upper secondary containment building.[13][14]

Exactly the situation you describe. Worse even. Catastrophic containment and coollant failure and complete destruction of the outer shell (The inner shell was breached during the earthquake). In the end, not much happened.

[misko27]

Ebbor, that middle image. As I scrolled past it I thought it was a Shock image at first.

[Sheb]

Well, GlyphGryph, it's not just Belgium, all the reasons I listed will be valid pretty much everywhere, so PV on roofs will always be much worse than PV on a field.

[Zangi]

Anyway, my argument on the mining front is that we can significantly limit the environmental damage from mining with proper regulations. Not even assuming any technological improvements or changes in materials used, employing procedures we have available now can allow us to mine without wrecking everything.

I would think proper enforcement and oversight would have a more significant impact these days. 
Cheap is the default way to go for many businesses, as long as they can get away with it / it is cheaper.

[10ebbor10]

Doesn't take away that there will be damage. Rare earths are stupidly difficult to refine, and even with state of the art technology are hard to refine.

Besides, the "proper regulations" argument counts for everything.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Mining is a somewhat egregious case. We don't have to strip away all of the earth, create gargantuan slush ponds, or blow up entire mountains and fill the valleys in with the leftovers.