Kudos to NNadir for this piece of fanciful brilliance, for the writer eloquently made many points worthy of top-level debate... except that the parts left out of the discussion are serious enough to destroy the basic arguments of the writer's case.  And the literary attempt to distract from that charade by jump-cutting into touchy-feely reminiscense of Concorde toilettry kits falls away if the missing context is re-introduced to the debate.  Feeding mud to babies in Mali because there isn't enough real food for his/her mom is not the result of a neglect of the wonders of "Our Friend the Atom" as my big red childhood Disney book was called.

Have we included the extent of now documented continual lying and cover-up of nuclear accidents throughout the West?  Have we neglected to ask for the actuarial figures on potential accidents from Swiss RE?  Did this diary cover the connection to weapons-related uses of byproducts of the entire nuclear chain?  Did this diarist examine the incredibly peaceful history of the technological West over the last two thousand years, as an example of how we will guarantee an abiding peace corresponding to the length of time we need to protect the waste?  (Not to mention shifts in the earth's subsurface, which i apparently mentioned.)  Have we even discussed Peak Uranium under the assumption that civilization returns to health only when every growing economy gets 40% of it's energy from centralized nukes?  (Centralized Nukes?:  Is Cheval Fou implying there's an unaddressed social issue here?)

Those are serious holes in the argument, and if i wasn't erkältet from the cold wet winds and serious alcohol depletion from that most wonderful of ET meetup weekends, i would begin to propose an erudite and literary response to this diary.  In fact, i hope to, but not soon, because next week i will be on the road performing Due Diligence on the DeWind 8.2 with Voith hydrodynamic drive, the liquid coupling which on paper provides a windmill with the desired variable speed without the necessity of complex and expensive power electronics.  On paper.

But DoDo sums the response rather nicely.  6 nukes equivilent could be built with enough windpower in the UK, without any of the attendent risk, and with a whole christmas present of various social wonders attached.  And if that was part of a coherent conservation strategy encompassing both real conservation and the introduction of new conservation technologies, we would have doubled the energy addition at half the cost and no risk.

But then we all underestimate the security risk to attacks on the sophisticated fiberglass layup factories which windpower introduces into society.  Me, i'm selling my Concorde sleep blinders on eBay.

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin