Yesterday I had a phonecall with one of my friends in the Netherlands and she told me Nuclear Reactors are on the agenda again. Now, is it only my impression, or is this thing rising again all over the globe? Is there a global Nuclear Lobby? I heard the same thing in New Zealand, with all of it's lakes, hydro energy!

The same thing for Powerlines. The same lies about "safe" radiation are used everywhere, except for just a few countries where they have tolerances providing for safer living/playing/working environments (< 0,4µT). For them it is easy to get organised at the expense of the consumer.

I'd love to hear what is happening in YOUR country.

Only issue with power lines are with the EM effects claimed on people and livestock.
Some farmers claim that their milk producing cows do not produce as well, for example.

What's happening is that other means of generating power like natural gas and coal are becoming more expensive or are being criticized because of carbon dioxide output. Thus nuclear fission is being adopted. Britain has announced a new generation of nuclear power plants after much delay (they more sensibly should have been adopted a decade ago, but this government recklessly avoided the issue until now) and this was the recommendation of the Royal Society. There is no good evidence that power lines are dangerous beyond the danger of electrocution or them toppling down and crushing people.

I simply don't like nuclear power plants because we as a society are not encouraged to behave more wisely, respectfully etc. and responsible for our childrens quality of life. We just dump our nuclear waste on them, for generations.

I'm sorry to say Andrew that there's enough evidence that at least made the Dutch government change their regulations. Helas not to the extend that all problems are solved, but they can't because the cost would be too much, as they try to suggest. I know because I personally had it officially discussed in parlement. As always with politicians, the sneaky ones always fumble their way out. Even the national powercompany gave advice concerning building too near to powerlines in an official paper (which also I used to prove my point then).

There are 2 concerns:

1 is electro magnetic radiation and what it does to blood and hormones.
2 is corona-ions. These are the direct cause of dirty air molecules being attached to lung fibre, causing (in many cases) lungcancer.

One fights the defence mechanism of the body and the other directly attacks it. 1+1=...

Studies (it was Draper or Henshaw) have shown that downwind of powerlines the amount of lungcancer cases is significantly higher than on the other side.

You may want to find this study that proves the mechanics of corona-ions, but this time where it serves the pharmaceutical industry.
Molecular Delivery to Cells Facilitated by Corona Ions: Niraj Ramachandran. Especially this study prooved what the Powerline Industry was (still is) preventing to be public knowledge.

You might want to Google what Draper and Henshaw (from Britain) found out about corona-ions.

I know it is hard to swallow, but it's worth the effort.

There has been some discussion of late about building Nuclear Power stations here in Australia, but it was just pre election time. My guess is our government will chicken out again. Australia is becoming full with politically correct yuppies that just love to get on the bandwagon about things. Never mind finding out the fact first. So I doubt we will see much change anytime soon.

This post has been edited by Dundee: Jun 22 2008, 06:40 AM

It does not occupy a lot of space. Even anti-nuclear activists in their alarmist propaganda say our country's nuclear waste only occupies an area equivalent to a football field, which is not much compared to the size of Britain. The thing is, most of that "waste" is not waste. By mass, about 3% is waste. The remaining 97% is nuclear fuel which could go another round in a nuclear reactor. The only trouble is that nuclear fuel reprocessing is more expensive than storing spent fuel and using fresh fuel in reactors. However, in the future, it will probably become economical to reprocess spent nuclear fuel, and so 97% can be used again, after which another 3% by mass will be converted into waste and the rest may be used again, and so on. The amount of real waste extracted from reprocessed fuel could be as little as 3 cubic meters per gigawatt-year when it is vitrified in glass blocks. And when left alone it is radioactive for thousands of years, so what? Is it unreasonable to assume that technology will reach such a point as to be able to do solve completely the rather exaggerated problem of nuclear waste?


But others were not convinced. I should think that the government of the Netherlands will be much more strongly guided by the precautionary principle than others, and hence far more likely to err on the side of caution merely because of a supposed (but not proven) risk. Although all governments have overly cautious recommendations about allowed exposure to toxins, radiation, etc.


Probably nothing.


I am familiar with a study of Draper into childhood leukaemia in the region of power lines that was an item of national news about three years ago and would dispute that he found any significant relation. The sample size relevant to his study is extremely small and his results extremely tenuous. The rates of incidence of the relevant diseases are very low everywhere, and his "significant" excess in terms of real numbers, as opposed to some supposed relative risk, was only five. His confidence intervals were enormous. This type of junk science nevertheless has great currency with the government of Holland and anti-industrial leftists everywhere.

This kind of pseudo logic gets us nowhere.

And then ending with indirect insults? No mate, not with me.

I thought Andrews response was pretty informative, skylurker. I certainly learned something about the subject from it. There is a hell of a lot of pseudo science around here at times. You just have to dot your "i"s and cross your "t"s here because there are some pretty informed people on AU is all, regardless of what you may think. Why not discuss Draper and Henshaw more and say why you think the response was wrong, instead of branding it "pseudo logic"?

I agree.
Reports by farmers are isolated and I know of a lot of farm where the cows regularly graze under 50,000 - 100,000 volt power lines and see no effects on their cows.

Epidemiological results (along the lines of substance X causes disease Y) can be generated to order.

"Pseudo logic" is probably defined as someone else's views as opposed to Skylurker's.

It seems I may have been mistaken. Last night at work I talked to a few that are farmers and they informed me that many of the farms in my area are having problems with 'stray voltage'.
There are law suits over it and milk producing cows are effected.

http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/livest...ts/strayvol.htm

http://www.wisconsinpublicservice.com/farm/research.aspx

http://www.egr.msu.edu/age/documents/news_...trayvoltage.pdf

I couldn't agree more, here are some happy snaps of some of my cows after grazing under power lines, absolutly no adverse effects at all that I can see...

That's a different electrical phenomenon. The cows are being slightly electrocuted.

This post has been edited by Andrew: Jun 23 2008, 07:22 AM

that was so funny!

Well, nuclear makes me nervous to some extent, but the idea of WWIII over oil is much more plausibe and even worse.

I think nuclear plants and electric cars are the way to go until we figure out something better.