(ii) We are two small cities...
(iii) ...on north west coastlines of the Empire.
(iv) Both need protection from high tides. Recently, Lancaster was flooded.
(v) Lancastrians also might have an ecological disaster because we have two nuclear power stations right on the coast.
(vi) Both cities are at the end of an Age...
(vii) ...and speculating about what is to come.
(viii) Seagulls circle around Ysan towers and also around Ryelands Park in seach of dropped food, in our cases chips and bits of burger.
I spent today at Ryelands Park. This is the 150th post for May and it is the 30th of the month so I will see you all here again in June.
6 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I only wish the UK and US had LOTS more nuclear power plants! Much better than depending on oil extracted from stormy difficult places like the North Sea or violent, unstable regions like the Mid East.
I think Anderson's "The Saturn Game" describes our times as the "Chaos," which is all too apt a name! A time of chaos I date from 1914. And I see no foreseeable end to it.
Currently reading Pournelle/Stirling's PRINCE OF SPARTA. A very interesting fictional depiction of "Low Intensity Conflict" (sic) and how civilized should handle it. To paraphrase what various characters say, "The great thing is not to lose our nerve." Not letting terrorists goad you into lashing out blindly and playing into their hands.
Sean
Sean:
A case where I agree with everything you said in a comment.
I would like to see Canada build some CANDU reactors in the provinces that generate a significant fraction of their electricity with fossil fuels, like Alberta. It would be hard to replace all fossil fuel use, but we should pick the low hanging fruit there.
As for ecological disasters from nuclear: When the tsunami damaged the Fukushima Daichi nuclear plant, 1 death was dubiously attributed to radiation release. In the area around Chernobyl the wildlife benefited from the removal of humanns *far* more than it received harm (if any) from exposure to radiation.
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/06/update-of-death-per-terawatt-hour-by.html
Kaor, Jim!
Absolutely! So even the incompetently run Soviet nuclear power plant at Chernobyl caused surprisingly little harm?
Problem is, too many "environmentalist" Luddites are blindly hostile to nuclear power.
Merry Christmas! Sean
Sean,
You condemn your opponents in absolutist terms. Many educated and informed people oppose nuclear power. They are not blindly hostile.
Paul.
Actually I do consider the hostility to be rather blind.
Every anti-nuclear claim I have looked into is at best a misleading half truth.
The half truths generally take the form of fussing about some way in which nuclear falls short of perfection while ignoring how everything else is no better & usually considerably farther from perfection.
See the fuss about nuclear being dangerous.
Investigations of deaths per unit energy find nuclear to be one of the bottom few on that scale.
https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/06/update-of-death-per-terawatt-hour-by.html
Of course some nukes are better than others. Take out the Soviet RBMK design used at Chernobyl & the death rate from nuclear drops
http://alderspace.pbworks.com/w/page/122016519/why%20on%20earth%20did%20they%20build%20the%20RBMK
Kaor, Paul and Jim!
Paul: I disagree, nuclear power is one of those cases where opposition to it is esp. blind and misleading.
If I sound "absolutist" that's because I am so angry at fools and dunderheads who oppose solutions to our problems that WORKS for no better reason than them not being absolutely perfect.
Anderson could be absolutist as well. E.g., see the "Commentary" he wrote for SPACE FOLK.
Jim: Thanks! I also thought of Robert Zubrin's defense of nuclear power in his book THE CASE FOR SPACE.
Merry Christmas! Sean
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