[ RadSafe ] Engineering & science reduced sadly to political abortions.

[Maury Siskel]

The US over the years has contributed great achievements to the rest of 
the world as well as for ourselves. On the other hand, the poor quality 
of leadership in the US often is impressive. The nation complained 
bitterly about fuel prices even as one of our former leaders selected 
the largest deposits of the cleanest, highest quality coal to declare 
its deposits a wilderness area and thus inaccessible for mining without 
an act of Congress. And our selected leaders outlaw drilling off the 
east coast of Florida, off the west coast of Florida, off the entire 
Atlantic coast, and off of the entire Pacific coast.

A national "executive" agency sets pollution standards for refineries 
making economic jokes of the construction of such facilities. And as the 
nation refuses to accept unsightly drilling rigs in coastal waters, it 
tries to welcome huge toy windmills in those same areas. And solar 
energy panels are pursued in spite of their known inefficiencies and of 
the pollution produced by their manufacture.  And we still outlaw the 
recovery of oil from an area in Alaska which is less than 1% of the 
Wilderness Area containing those oil deposits -- like the coal deposits, 
a wilderness no one can even see unless they backpack into it or fly 
over it! Are these not impressive achievements? Our leadership 
subsidizes the production of grain alcohol for its addition to gasoline 
-- even though alcohol reduces the efficacy of the gasoline and 
contributes more to air pollution than does the unadulterated gasoline. 
Under current conditions, no such production and usage of alcohol would 
take place in the absence of the federal tax credits for it.

Holland has successfully recovered a huge productive land area and 
protected this below sea level area from  repetitive severe storms from 
the sea. But the US has failed to construct even a simple lock or 
gateway across a narrow waterway connecting a big lake with the Gulf of 
Mexico. Such a gate would prevent a storm surge from overfilling the 
lake which overflows to submerge a major city.  Truly remarkable!

Science and engineering are made into a political miscarriage to produce 
the US abortion shown below in Table 1. It shows electricity as a 
percentage produced by nuclear energy in each country. This is an absurd 
reality. It should be noted that:
_________________
"Nuclear power certainly looks good to the rest of the world. France 
gets nearly 80% of its energy from nuclear power and has demonstrated 
[that] the problem of nuclear waste is political, not technological. At 
least it's waste that doesn't get into our lungs on a daily basis."

"Like Britain, Germany, Japan and Belgium,  France reprocesses its spent 
nuclear fuel rods, letting the country reduce its volume of nuclear 
waste to one-fifth its size while generating even more energy, making 
nuclear power a "renewable" resource."
 From Investors Business Daily
____________________
And now for decades, US politicians have argued vehemently over the 
suitable hole in a desert mountain to bury our unprocessed spent nuclear 
fuel. Is it not amazing? -- perhaps the 9th wonder of the modern world. 
It is as though the acceptable US political solution to nuclear 
proliferation might be bows and arrows ....

Table 1. NUCLEAR OPTION: Percentage of electricity derived from nuclear 
power in 2004. (by IAEA)

Netherlands      3.8
Romania          10.1
UK                  13.4
US                   19.9
Spain               22.9
Finland            26.6
Czech Rep.     31.2
Germany         32.1
Hungary          33.8
Slovenia           38.8
Switzerland     40.0
Bulgaria           41.6
Sweden            51.8
Belgium           55.1
Slovakia           55.2
France              78.1
Lithuania          72.1

Are there any leaders in or outside of the Congress with the ability to 
alleviate the problems described above? Are we willing to elect  or 
insist upon rational performance by them?
Cheers,
Maury&Dog   maurysis at ev1.net

PS. It must not be overlooked that US voters generally selected (hired, 
elected) their leadership.