[quote]lothario1132 wrote:
Good points, pookie. It is true that nuclear reactors create more usable electricity than it costs to build them (unlike windmills, which actually cost more to make than they will ever produce in their lifetimes), and the only drawbacks are meltdown/waste issues.[/quote]
Some of the newer designs are supposed to be meltdown-proof. One annoying feature of nuclear reactors is that each of them becomes a terrorist target…
The waste is a more permanent problem. The quantities are pretty small though. I guess we’ll have to figure out solutions to the problem because energy needs won’t stop increasing and coal and oil will eventually run out.
No, not yet. There is an international, multi-billion project being set up in France with the goal of producing the first fusion reactor. Any commercial fusion power is still many years away.
Having a Mr. Fusion on your DeLorean in 2038 is looking less and less likely…
It’s hard to argue the opposite.
If your name was 2nd on a list of 3 guys and the 1st one had just gotten a real bad beating, you might be looking for a gun too.
[quote]endgamer711 wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
It is sheer fantasy to think we ever could negotiate with Iran on this issue.
I’m not sure why you say so. Suppose relations were normalized following a partial resolution of the Palestinian question. Suppose we provide other security guarantees? We are in effect asking for nuclear disarmament, before the fact. We should approach it in that fashion, and the Israelis should be at the table.
We could do a lot that we haven’t done, and I’m not sure why not. They support Hamas, and for this they get labeled terrorist. But they are not the terrorists of greatest concern to us. We don’t approve of their form of government, but we have had much closer relations with much more reprehensible regimes.
We could always do the unthinkable and apologize to them for our interference in their history.
[/quote]
Seeing as you appear to live in a fantasy world, I now understand where you are coming from.
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
Seeing as you appear to live in a fantasy world, I now understand where you are coming from.[/quote]
I forgot to add, to make the scenario for a negotiated nuclear free zone in the Middle East sensible, we have to quit Iraq and we need to make convincing demonstrations that we will not take further unilateral action in the region.
If this is all a fantasy, you had best relax to the reality of the Irani getting the bomb, because there are no sensible military alternatives either.
Oh yes, they accelerated their program since 2001, which we find out from interviewing their main technology supplier, Pakistan’s A.Q. Kahn, father of the Islamic bomb. Observing the inspectors in Iraq, they also got much cagier about hiding it. viz at least one large installation that got all of the surface soil scraped off of it and disposed elsewhere.
If you want peace in the world, you have to imagine something that does not now exist. The same goes for nuclear armageddon. Choose your fantasy wisely.
[quote]doogie wrote:
endgamer711 wrote:
They support Hamas, and for this they get labeled terrorist.
No. For that they ARE terrorists, not just labeled as such.
[/quote]
As you prefer. But on that basis, you could come sooner to the conclusion that the Saudi’s are terrorists, and moreover terrorists of greater concern to us in the present instance.
[quote]vroom wrote:
Seeing as you appear to live in a fantasy world, I now understand where you are coming from.
Umm, yes, perhaps it would be safer to say in some OTHER fantasy world…[/quote]
In my world Hamas is a terrorist organization.
In my world we don’t trust Iran with their current leadership.
In my world we don’t place blame for our longtime enemy’s bad intentions on our current leadership.
I may be an idealist, but I don’t live in fantasyland where we can trust simple negotiations with an enemy that has been calling us the Great Satan and calling for our destruction for more than 25 years.
In my world we don’t trust Iran with their current leadership.
In my world we don’t place blame for our longtime enemy’s bad intentions on our current leadership.
I may be an idealist, but I don’t live in fantasyland where we can trust simple negotiations with an enemy that has been calling us the Great Satan and calling for our destruction for more than 25 years.[/quote]
And I think there in lies the problem. We have a sworn enemy who cannot be trusted with a nuclear weapon.
In my world we don’t trust Iran with their current leadership.
In my world we don’t place blame for our longtime enemy’s bad intentions on our current leadership.
I may be an idealist, but I don’t live in fantasyland where we can trust simple negotiations with an enemy that has been calling us the Great Satan and calling for our destruction for more than 25 years.
And I think there in lies the problem. We have a sworn enemy who cannot be trusted with a nuclear weapon.
What choices are there?[/quote]
The same choices we had last time this happened, of course. Please spare me the lecture about how much more trustworthy the Soviets were. I lived through the Cuban missile crisis.
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
I don’t believe that Bush is influencing them one bit.
They will try to develop nukes no matter who is president or what he says.[/quote]
Gee, wait a minute. I thought Bush was supposed to be very influential over there. You know, the administration is always telling us how Bush has got all those autocrats quaking in their boots. Seems to me you are trying to have it both ways. Are they quaking or aren’t they?
Remember the issue is not that they are trying to develop nukes. The issue is how close or how far we are from the possibility of negotiating nuclear disarmament. And what the president does matters a lot here.
I think by now we have all learned to take what he says with a grain of salt.
The same choices we had last time this happened, of course. Please spare me the lecture about how much more trustworthy the Soviets were. I lived through the Cuban missile crisis.[/quote]
Gee, I don’t think I have ever lectured anyone on how “trustworthy the soviets were.” However, are you implying that a Middle Eastern country ruled by Islamic militants with atomic weapons in the year 2005 is at all trustworthy?
If you don’t think that they are trustworthy, and you think the times have indeed changed then what do we do?
[quote]ZEB wrote:
However, are you implying that a Middle Eastern country ruled by Islamic militants with atomic weapons in the year 2005 is at all trustworthy?
If you don’t think that they are trustworthy, and you think the times have indeed changed then what do we do?
[/quote]
I trust them only to look out for the survival of Iran.
Nobody trusted the Soviets anymore than anybody trusts the mullahs. Their political vision was just as seemingly irrational, and their foreign policy much more agressive. Yet still we coped, without launching any preemptive attacks. A lot of water had to go under the dam to get us from 1962 to SALT and START, a lot of transparency had to happen and, yes, a degree of trust had to grow. There was none to start with.
I think we need to make clear what our reaction will be in Iran’s direction (and N. Korea’s, and Pakistan’s) if there is a terrorist nuclear incident. We need to leave Iraq soon, on the best terms we can manage. We need to renounce the policy of preemptive war that W has installed. It’s pretty much a dead letter anyway. We should exert whatever influence we’ve got to move the Palestinians into a more reasonable space. We need to provide some kind of carrot for good behavior from that quarter. Considerable foreign aid, perhaps.
I trust them only to look out for the survival of Iran.[/quote]
[quote]Perhaps. Then again maybe they don’t care much about that either. They are extremists.
In your comparison I think you are forgetting one very important point: we (the USA) have already been attacked by muslim extremists! Without notice or provocation. Can you perhaps see why it might be dangerous for Iran to have nukes? I don’t recall a group of Soviets crashing planes into any US buildings…different times…different people!
Nothing wrong with that idea.
I don’t think we should be so quick to give anyone a free pass in this regard. While we should be very careful we don’t need to show our hand.
[quote]It’s pretty much a dead letter anyway. We should exert whatever influence we’ve got to move the Palestinians into a more reasonable space. We need to provide some kind of carrot for good behavior from that quarter. Considerable foreign aid, perhaps.
[/quote]
And I agree somewhat with your final analysis. The first thing we must do is reach out. In the unlikely event that that actually works we need to prepare to dismantle their nukes any way that we can.
However, under no conditions should we allow Iran to have nuclear capabilities! It’s simply far to dangerous and quite a bit different than the Soviet threat was several years ago.
[quote]ZEB wrote:
In your comparison I think you are forgetting one very important point: we (the USA) have already been attacked by muslim extremists! Without notice or provocation. Can you perhaps see why it might be dangerous for Iran to have nukes? I don’t recall a group of Soviets crashing planes into any US buildings…different times…different people!
[/quote]
Nope. Your “point” seems to me a complete non sequitur. 9/11 and Iran don’t connect any more directly than 9/11 and Iraq.
It’s dangerous for anyone to have nukes. It’s dangerous for the United States to have nukes. It’s a dangerous world. It will get even more dangerous for us if we try to intervene in Iran militarily. We cannot prevent, but only delay the outcome of a nuclear Iran. For one thing, there is too much enriched material missing from the former Soviet inventory. And now we have N. Korea to consider, maybe they will sell Iran one of theirs. Blow apart all the centrifuges and reactors you like, you still cannot be sure of safety. We may as well treat them as a nuclear state, they are that close.
Worry about Al Quaeda getting the bomb. The mullahs, after all, we know where they live.
[quote]endgamer711 wrote:
Worry about Al Quaeda getting the bomb. The mullahs, after all, we know where they live.[/quote]
This is all very nice, buddy, but the reaason we should stop Iraniani nuclear weaponry is the very reason you stated above. Hamas is a terrorist organization. Why is our position in this issue not blatantly obvious to you?
And correct me if I’m wrong about your earlier statements, but are you calling for another cold war? Only this time, it’s in the Middle East? Dammit dude, nip it in the bud. He who hesitates is lost.
[quote]lothario1132 wrote:
endgamer711 wrote:
Worry about Al Quaeda getting the bomb. The mullahs, after all, we know where they live.
This is all very nice, buddy, but the reaason we should stop Iraniani nuclear weaponry is the very reason you stated above. Hamas is a terrorist organization. Why is our position in this issue not blatantly obvious to you?
And correct me if I’m wrong about your earlier statements, but are you calling for another cold war? Only this time, it’s in the Middle East? Dammit dude, nip it in the bud. He who hesitates is lost.
[/quote]
Your position, as best I can make it out, is to ignore the obvious limits on American military power and to call for action that would be ineffectual as well as directly injurious to our own interests in the region.
I’m not calling for anything other than common sense. I’m telling you the situation as it exists. We can have deterrence, but we cannot have control.
