Gen Y

[Rick]

I want it all

I want it all

I want it all

And I want it now...

[dales]

^^^^^^^^^Boomer mantra^^^^^^^^^^

[dgs49]

While technology races forward, making many aspects of our life easier, safer, and more superficially enjoyable, the problems we are leaving to the next generations are unprecedented. "Irresponsible" doesn't begin to describe our politicians' management of the country. Most of our most noble and expensive pursuits - mainly civil rights and the so-called "war on poverty" - have been a complete bust, resulting in phony campaigns for phony civil rights, massive illegitimacy and poverty - worse than before the War on Poverty, and masses of people who lack even a semblance of a "work ethic."

We have left crushing debt that becomes worse by the minute, and have made no real progress in even confronting it, let along solving it. In the face of this crisis, the current administration has increased the size of government by some 200,000 people (whom we must now support for life), and even the BASELINE spending - let alone "stimulus" and nonsense of that type - increases year over year, as politicians refuse to even contemplate scaling back on the nanny state.

No, this isn't just generational resentment, born out of the crankiness of age. This generation is fucked.

[Long Run]

I am with the group that sees that each "generation" has done some good and some bad. With respect to some of the good and failures attributed to the Boomers, much has to also be placed on the pre-Boomer generation which started the War on Poverty, cemented in place actuarial black holes in Social Security and Medicare, and our healthcare system, got us in two un-winnable wars (Vietnam and Korea) that lost over 100,000 American lives, to name just a few. The fact that the Boomer generation has not been up to the task of fixing some of these inherited problems, and has in many ways worsened them, does not eliminate the prior generation's blame in creating these problems (heck, they are making out like bandits with Social Security and Medicare benefits).

After surviving the Depression and winning WWII, the prior generation had the opportunity of being in the one great economy untouched by the war. We had our way for over 20 years before Europe and Japan finally showed their economic recovery in the 1970s (which, along with OPEC, was the real reason for the "malaise" of the 70s; we had just gotten fat and lazy and didn't realize it), and what did they do with this great opportunity? They did some good things, like Civil Rights, but also created a bunch of expensive, over-engineered programs like the ones noted above.

Of course, our generation was handed the productivity engine created by the computer/information age, and did not use that new wealth to do much in the way of long term problem solving either. But we used the lessons of Vietnam/Korea to at least be smarter about how we use our military personnel when we get ourselves into combat. The continued growth of miracle drugs continues to amaze. And for 30+ years, figured out how to not have inflation rob portions of the population of their assets (though the current Fed seems willing to take undue chances in this regard). And so forth.

[Rick]

[Gob]

[liberty]

On top of all our other problems the environmentalist are working hard to sabotage oil shell fracking; our only visible economic salvation. They instead want to rely in uneconomical alternative energy that doesn’t exist in any practical sense.

[dgs49]

The worst thing (arguably) that my generation did was to infest academe and Gub'mint with upper-middle class wastrels who, never having actually had to work for a living, have foisted on the population all manner of feel-good philosophies and programs, along with the provably-false basic belief that Government is the answer to all our problems (e.g., Hurricane Sandy, poverty, stupidity, crime).

Can it be a coincidence that there are almost no real Veterans in academe? Almost no one in Congress who has ever actually had a JOB?

[Grim Reaper]

On top of all our other problems the environmentalist are working hard to sabotage oil shell fracking; our only visible economic salvation. They instead want to rely in uneconomical alternative energy that doesn’t exist in any practical sense.

Fracking is a short term thing. Eventually it will be uneconomical to continue as the oil reserves run out. The environmental damage will be a longer lasting concern. Maybe if people weren't so short-sighted, we wouldn't be in the situation where fracking was considered so important.

[oldr_n_wsr]

along with the provably-false basic belief that Government is the answer to all our problems (e.g., Hurricane Sandy, poverty, stupidity, crime).

Having been on the front line of Sandy I can tell you that the government presence (FEMA) is almost non-existent. Having been in the area (Masti/Mastic Beach) helping rip out sheetrock and sofa's and wiring damaged during Sandy, I never once saw a FEMA anything, nor any Red Cross (glad RC got millions from that star studded concert). People are still without electricity. Staten Island people are living in tents. TENTS in low teens temperature, some three months after the storm.
The local govs did great getting people out and protecting life and limb, but now with the aftermath and bookooo dollars committed, WTF?!?!?!?!?!?!?

[dales]

Another OBAMA fustercluck?

[dgs49]

Frack You.

The volume of natural gas that can be extracted from deep shale is, for all practical purposes, infinite. It is "short term" only in the geological sense that it might run out if we were to continue to exploit it for a couple thousand more years. There is a similar amount of chrystallized gas deep in the gulf of Mexico which, when technology advances a bit, will also provide untold BTU's for our use and exploitation.

It is NO MORE DANGEROUS or damaging to the environment than the drilling for oil has been for the past 150+ years, yet by some miracle we have survived oil drilling. The difference now is that this country has an army of enviromentalist watermelons (green on the outside, pink on the inside) who make it their business to interfere with anything that smells of industrial prosperity.

It is analogous to nuclear power which, if reprocessing spent fuel were allowed (and there is no scientific reason to prohibit it), would also provide for an infinite source of energy - immeasurably safer than coal, natural gas, or fuel oil.

How long will it take the "greens" to realize that "we" will all burn up due to Global Warming if we do not quickly shift to Nuke? They must be in a hell of a tizzy.

[dales]

Frack You.

Yer Welcome!

[Grim Reaper]

The volume of natural gas that can be extracted from deep shale is, for all practical purposes, infinite. It is "short term" only in the geological sense that it might run out if we were to continue to exploit it for a couple thousand more years. There is a similar amount of chrystallized gas deep in the gulf of Mexico which, when technology advances a bit, will also provide untold BTU's for our use and exploitation.

Every natural resource seems infinite until you suddenly start running low on it. As oil gets harder to extract, natural gas will become more viable, which will mean increased extraction.

It is NO MORE DANGEROUS or damaging to the environment than the drilling for oil has been for the past 150+ years, yet by some miracle we have survived oil drilling. The difference now is that this country has an army of enviromentalist watermelons (green on the outside, pink on the inside) who make it their business to interfere with anything that smells of industrial prosperity.

For a given amount of "survived" since the global temperature is really starting to rise now. Let's see how well we survive over the next 150 years if we continue to pollute the environment.

How long will it take the "greens" to realize that "we" will all burn up due to Global Warming if we do not quickly shift to Nuke? They must be in a hell of a tizzy.

That would be nice, but we still haven't really figured out what to do with the nuclear waste from our existing plants. Scaling up production to take over from coal plants would lead an increase in waste as well.

Also, we need a stronger way to ensure that companies don't cut corners during construction so we don't end up with a Fukushima-type problem in the future.

[rubato]

Nuclear power does have the advantage that it is very expensive so there is an effective incentive to conserve.

yrs,
rubato

[Lord Jim]

Nuclear power does have the advantage that it is very expensive so there is an effective incentive to conserve.

LOL!!! Wrongway strikes again....(he manages to make both one ignorant and one stuipid assertion in just that brief sentence)

At this link :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_el ... _by_source

If you scroll down, you will come to a table ,titled :

Estimated Levelized Cost of New Generation Resources, 2017[

(I was hoping that the table was an image, but it it isn't and given the problems with trying to copy and paste columns in this forum, it would probably take hours to get it to look right, so I'm afraid a link will be the best I can do.It's a huge chart, the first one at the link; you can't miss it.)

The table is sub-titled:

U.S. Average Levelized Cost for Plants Entering Service in 2017 (2010 USD/MWh)

If you check that out, will find that the USD/Mwh total system levelized cost for nuclear power is marginally higher than some sources, and lower than others, (considerably lower than wind or solar) not "very expensive".

Okay, that takes care of the factually ignorant thing he said; now for the stupid one; this idiotic notion that higher energy costs are some how a good thing....

Yes, rube, let's push up the price of energy! That way we can completely wipe out the tiny bit of progress we have made in crawling out from under the recession...

And of course higher energy costs would be the most regressive form of taxation imaginable, creating far greater pain for those at the lower ends of the economic scale than at the upper ones, but so what? Those poor folks will just have to go find somebody well off who they can marry and have support them....

[dgs49]

(a) "Nuclear waste" is an attempt to draw a conclusion by using false words. "Spent fuel" is the more accurate description. GR, if you would like to resolve your ignorance on this point, kindly spend a few moments and look up "WIPP." Even if we never get our collective heads out of our asses and start to reprocess, WIPP has sufficient permanent storage capacity to hold all the spent fuel generated in the world for the next ten thousand years.

(b) The future of nuclear power is in Small Modular Reactors ("SMR's"). They bring the cost and permitting time down to a reasonable level. None has been built yet, but the future, in this case, is well known by everyone who is knowledgeable about the trends in the industry.

[Grim Reaper]

(a) "Nuclear waste" is an attempt to draw a conclusion by using false words. "Spent fuel" is the more accurate description. GR, if you would like to resolve your ignorance on this point, kindly spend a few moments and look up "WIPP." Even if we never get our collective heads out of our asses and start to reprocess, WIPP has sufficient permanent storage capacity to hold all the spent fuel generated in the world for the next ten thousand years.

It's waste material. You're just childishly arguing semantics at this point. The web site for WIPP, that you think is the cure all for all our storage problems, calls it waste. Even the name, which you deliberately didn't spell out, Waste Isolation Pilot Program, calls it waste.

And the WIPP is only authorized for low level waste, reprocressed waste is not stored there. So WIPP can't hold "all the spent fuel generated in the world" for any period of time, much less the next ten thousand years. And it's planned to close down in the next couple decades when it reaches storage capacity and have everything collapsed and sealed with a massive amount of concrete.

So maybe you should be the one to spend a few moments and do some research on the subject.


I don't even know why you're arguing over calling it waste other than an immature need to insult anyone who even slightly disagrees with you.

(b) The future of nuclear power is in Small Modular Reactors ("SMR's"). They bring the cost and permitting time down to a reasonable level. None has been built yet, but the future, in this case, is well known by everyone who is knowledgeable about the trends in the industry.

Again, if they can be built without cutting corners and held to regulations, that would be great.

[rubato]

How quickly people forget.

Fukushima has raised the costs of Nuclear power a great deal; and caused people to re-think the catastrophically high costs of the indirect subsidy of arbitrarily limiting their liability (we would never have built even 1 civilian reactor if the plant owners were required to be insured against all losses). Many countries have come to believe that the cost is too high to bear (Germany). Take a map of the United States and draw two circles around each civilian reactor, one 20km in radius and one 80km in radius.





yrs,
rubato

[Econoline]

And yet...

The Onagawa nuclear power plant on Japan's northeastern coast - the closest plant to the epicentre of the massive earthquake and tsunami of 11 March 2011 - suffered remarkably little damage, a mission from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has concluded.