CaptainJJack

Why Invest in Oil Over Alternative Energy

I remember talking to a physicist a number of years ago about carbon and generating electricity.

He said to imagine that you were standing in front of a coal fired plant, and watch as a steady stream of coal cars dump their fuel. For a typical plant this amounts to thousands of cars dumping coal each year.

Now, imagine standing in front of another power plant of the same size where natural gas cars were streaming in. There would only be one fourth the number of cars, in terms of carbon delivered.

Now think about a nuclear plant. He said it would take only a few carloads (I think he said two) for an entire year, and these would have only minimal carbon.

Nuclear power plants are very safe, but nuclear power is not. The problem is that bad guys will eventually make a bomb.

It may take a while, but with a half life of thousands of years, the opportunity will arise. Even with probabilities less than 1 in 10,000, there will be plenty of time.

But, the genie is already out of the bottle. The bomb materials will not likely come from the US, they will come from North Korea, Pakistan, Iran, or Russia.

I say that Nuclear should be on the table. I understand the risks, but they have to be weighed against losing the snow pack in the rockies and the corresponding loss of water in the Colorado and the Ogallala aquifer, as well as the loss of snow pack in the Cascades and Sierras and the impact on our fruit and vegetable crops.