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America’s Energy Future: Dinner 3. Draft lessons

We’re out with our draft guiding concepts on nuclear energy from our third dinner. Find a full discussion of these concepts here.

You can find the draft guiding concepts from our first dinner here and our second dinner here.

Tell us what you think.

1.
Nuclear power is a significant source of zero to low greenhouse gas energy
that should remain part of a diversified energy mix.

2.
Nuclear is the only zero/low greenhouse gas energy source currently capable of providing the baseload (24/7) power required to meet a projected 35 to 40% increase in demand and/or the international goal of a 70% decrease in greenhouse gas emissions.

3.
If we’re concerned with greenhouse gas emissions, choosing not to build new nuclear capacity is giving up a sure thing in favor of a hopeful bet.

4.
In comparing health effects and mortality rates, nuclear power is statistically safer than coal & natural gas.

5.
The long radioactive half-life of nuclear waste is not a measure of its danger.

6.
While it is true that nuclear waste is radioactive for 100,000 years, the risk decreases substantially in a tiny fraction of that time.

7.
Waste disposal is the fundamental technological challenge ahead.

8.
U.S. nuclear plants are unlikely targets for terrorist attacks given the absence of highly enriched uranium.

9.
With nuclear, subsidies are the rub.

10.
Defuse the debate by knowing whether you’re talking domestic nuclear issues or international nuclear issues.

11.
Building new nuclear plants is expensive, we just don’t know how expensive.

12.
Transparency,
transparency,
transparency.

13.
To maximize our ability to use nuclear energy intelligently (likely with reprocessing) we need to address the challenging international proliferation picture.

9 comments June 10th, 2008

An election manifesto

This week it looks like we have our two presidential candidates, a Democrat and a Republican. So, it’s on. That makes this a perfect time to start work on a Village Square election manifesto of sorts. Just how do you participate in a spirited hard-fought race in a civil way? One that will leave America stronger than it found it? How do you fight like founding fathers? Here’s a first go at it…

Country first, party second. While it would seem to go without saying, apparently it doesn’t. We are living in a time when we must reach deep into our souls to remember that we are Americans first.

Allow facts to inform judgement, rather than judgement to cherry-pick fact. Know that the chickens of factual distortion almost always come home to roost eventually. May as well just man-up and accept what’s real right up front.

Give a hearing to both candidates. While it’s OK that your mind may be made up, your willingness to hear out each man will ultimately help us move on constructively no matter who the winner is.

Listen to whole speeches. There will be many speeches of substance in this campaign. There you will find a more cohesive picture of the breadth of the candidate than in sound bytes. Can you validly spend all that time whining if you didn’t hear all of what they had to say?

Know your source of information. Are you listening to opinion or fact, entertainment or information? There’s a big difference.

Lose the venom. Lose the venom-spewers as well, it’s a job that pays far too well these days. It wouldn’t if we didn’t listen.

Anxiously awaiting your brilliant additions…

2 comments June 10th, 2008