Why not require all commercial building to have solar power?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Why not require all commercial building to have solar power?

crabcakes66: May 24, 2012; by exmarx

But replacing the largest and most used/worn parts of our infrastructure with something much more expensive and harder to maintain for virtually no benefit sounds like a great idea!

I mean why put a solar panel in that empty field when you can rip up a road?

# ¿ Sep 18, 2014 02:47

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# ¿ May 20, 2024 23:34

crabcakes66: May 24, 2012; by exmarx

Continuing to run older less safe reactors beyond their original service life instead of building new efficient and incredibly safe reactors makes tons of sense when you think about it. :bang:

# ¿ Sep 18, 2014 04:10

crabcakes66: May 24, 2012; by exmarx

Rent-A-Cop posted:

Pretty much. It was a big industrial disaster and besides radiation threats there are a ton of really hosed up chemical contaminants all over the place. The Soviets were really bad about both chemical and radiological contamination. Large bits of the former USSR are seriously bad news due to negligent handling of all kinds of horrible industrial chemicals, and improper disposal of chemical and biological weapons.

The sort of thing you have to remember is that not all accidents are equal.

At Chernobyl the Soviets pretty much had a giant nuclear bomb factory burn to the ground in a totally uncontrolled shitstorm. Their reaction was a pretty minimal evacuation that came very late in the game. The result was a lot of preventable exposure that lead to fewer than 100 deaths.

Fukushima on the other hand was a generating station that got obliterated when the ocean decided to come visit. Because the Japanese aren't totally insane and actually build safe plants it didn't go totally tits-up immediately. A few design flaws allowed some of the reactors to get out of control before they could be fully shut down and they destroyed themselves and breached containment. The Japanese government reacted with an abundance of caution and evacuated a HUGE zone. The result was a lot of people displaced, no serious exposures to the public, and some mildly radioactive fish.

Three Mile Island went all wonky and melted down but because it was a safe design, and not under a mountain of water or on fire, its containment system worked as intended. The result was no danger to anyone, and a very expensive remediation process.

The initial response and cleanup efforts to Chernobyl were also completely reckless with little regard for responders lives. I mean they were incredibly brave for what they were asked to do. But it was a top to bottom shitshow.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2014 04:16

crabcakes66: May 24, 2012; by exmarx

Bedshaped posted:

Things that are cheaper rarely end up being better. I wonder how many solar plants or wind farms could be built with the $100 Billion the US government still had to spend as of 2014 to clean up the Hanford site.

http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/etox/resources/case_studies/hanford.pdf

Are you really equating the damage done by the very first production of nuclear weapons to a modern breeder design that produces a small amount of relatively short-lived waste? And even that 'waste' has medical and space exploration applications.

It's hard to take anything you say seriously after that.

# ¿ Sep 20, 2014 00:51

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Why not require all commercial building to have solar power?