Nuclear Power

[Jeremy]

For pretty much my entire life I have been opposed to nuclear power. I grew up in a strongly left wing environmentalist household and I guess in hindsight I've probably been indoctrinated with those beliefs.

However I just finished reading The Revenge of Gaia by James Lovelock who puts forward a very compelling argument for nuclear power, especially fusion (but also fission).

His arguments are so compelling that were I forced to make a decision, at the moment I would support it completely.

I'll go in to some arguments in a moment.

He joins a growing number of serious and respected scientists that I've become aware of that support nuclear power, which also makes me question the nature of my opposition to nuclear power.

Ok so here are some facts (sourced from the mentioned book, but I'm happy to find the primaries if you like);


1. Nuclear power is exceptionally safe, and nuclear radiation has almost no health risks.

The rise in cancers as a result of the bombs dropped in Japan was 7%, which means that more than 4 times that amount died from cancer as a result of natural processes (mainly oxygen).

According to the WHO organisation the total number of deaths from the Chernobyl disaster 19 years after the disaster was 75. There was no statistically significant reduction in the rate at which life expectancies increased in the region - which is to say that not only did life expectancies continue to rise despite the event, they didn't even slow down in how fast they were rising.

Areas quarantined from people due to nuclear radiation tend to have higher levels of biodiversity (normal number of species present - not mutations) then similar nearby areas - this is because human activity is far more serious a threat to biodiversity than radiation.

Nuclear Power is attributed to the deaths of 8 people per terrawatt year of energy. In comparison Natural Gas is 85, Coal is 342, Hydro is 883.

Uranium and other materials available for current nuclear fission power technology are available globally in super abundance. Although there is decline of high grade uranium stocks, we easily have enough low grade to last centuries.

Nuclear power generates far less waste than alternatives - especially natural gas and coal, that generate approximately 27,000 tonnes of CO2 - which has an atmospheric half life of approximately 5700 years. In a whole process analysis natural gas is not so bad in the long term, but with short term measurements has a greater effect on warming than coal - methane has a very short atmospheric half life but oxidises into CO2 and hydroxide radicals. The same amount of energy production would generate one 2 millionth of the waste. If we take into account the waste from mining low grade ore, the amount of waste is still significantly smaller and has far less impact on the environment.

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The situation with global warming is dire. It's possible that we've already surpassed "tipping points" where even if we stop all warming pollution today, warming will continue until we reach a stabilising point 6 to 10 degrees hotter than today's averages. This will result in a death of tropical forests and most marine life from the photic zone. With current emissions, with in 20 years it will be probably that we've surpassed this point. Obviously we will never know if we have unless we actually reduce our warming emissions to 0% or lower.

Wind, solar and hydro power do not currently have the capacity to replace our energy usage. Likewise our societies are so reliant on energy that we do not have the option of dramatically decreasing energy usage. Our only serious solution is to immediately reduce our emissions by moving over to the only technology we have available that can meet our energy demands - nuclear power.

By doing that right now we give ourselves more time to develop future technologies that better address our energy problems - especially fusion, tidal and solar power.


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There are some concerns with current nuclear power. In particular the emissions from building plants and mining and processing ore. However these emissions are comparable with the building of any energy plant and with the mining and transport of coal (which is usually not included in coal emissions). They are challenges that certainly need to also be met, but even if they are not, nuclear power in the long run still has less emissions than other power sources currently capable of meeting the global energy demand.

There is also the concern of the time it takes to build serious nuclear power plants. However this is an issue of resources - we could easily spend more money on construction and significantly speed up the time taken to build plants if we recognised the size of the emergency. Building new power plants to generate a comparable amount of power also currently takes far too long - we would face the same problem if we chose any power source to replace coal.


So there's my argument for nuclear power. Not written in the most eloquent manner, but hopefully you can understand it . I would really, really, love to hear counter arguments - especially if you can provide some kind of sources with your argument.

[Jeremy]

Here is a really good website about nuclear power;

http://nuclearinfo.net/Nuclearpower

In particular it claims that over the entire life time (including decommission and waste storage) of all major energy sources, including renewables, nuclear power emits the least amount of CO2;

http://nuclearinfo.net/Nuclearpower/Web ... clearPower

[dyalander]

Thanks for this info - I've never been convinced either way. My main concern with nuclear has always been waste and waste storage, so I'm particularly interested in any compative info about storing nuclear waste and tis downsides vs the damage CO2 does in the atmosphere.

[Rieferman]

thanks for the summary of that article, that was very interesting.

I'm curious though... you started with:

For pretty much my entire life I have been opposed to nuclear power.

Would you mind summarizing what your argument was before reading this latest material?

[C-Fan]

I agree that fusion is an ideal power source, but the whole problem is that we've never been able to generate power via fusion. The few attempts that we've done (using high powered lasers in gas) required more energy input than output, which defeats the whole purpose. So assuming that fusion is technologically impossible, that leaves us with nuclear power from fission, which isn't as clean a process (toxic waste).

I'm not saying that we should oppose nuclear power because we can't achieve fusion, I'm just saying that when we weigh the pros and cons of nuclear energy, we should only consider processes which exist or are viable. To date, we haven't come up with a way to create fusion, so that should be taken off the table of debate.

[Jeremy]

Fusion power is definitely possible - there's no debate about that in science. The times when fusion power was generated could have surpassed energy input if we made the process run for longer - but they were experimental meant to show that it could be done - they weren't designed for running for a more than a few seconds and the energy cost is in the initial start up.


But even if we only focus on fission, the toxic waste issue is grossly overstated. There are no examples of nuclear waste accidents that have had a serious noticeable impact on life expectancies. Even the impact of nuclear weapons testing and the Japanese bombs is grossly overstated (in terms of damage from fallout, obviously not from the thermal blast).

Storage of the waste is easy, and can also be used as another energy source to heat water.

Would you mind summarizing what your argument was before reading this latest material?

Ok well I believed a lot of information from what I thought were reputable sources that turned out to be completely wrong.

1. Mining obviously causes significant environmental damage. That's undeniable. Extracting/processing uranium and other nuclear fuels also creates significant waste.

The error in this argument is that the waste produced by the coal industry is far larger than the waste produced for the same amount of electricity through nuclear power. The waste from uranium mining and processing has nothing like the effect on the environment that the waste from coal has.

2. Uranium is a finite resource and if all our power were generated this way we'd run out in a very short period of time - something like 40 years.

This is completely false. Uranium is found everywhere. High grade uranium is running out, but even if all our nuclear energy were generated through the low grade uranium the costs, waste and carbon emissions are still comparable with coal. There are also a number of naturally occurring radioactive materials we could easily use instead of uranium.

3. We have more options than nuclear or coal - we should be using renewables like geothermal, tidal, solar or wind.

There are multiple problems with this argument. Firstly none of those have anywhere near the generating power of nuclear power. The amount of space needed for wind power to replace nuclear power, for example, is monumental. This would also displace either natural environments or farmland - both of which are more important. Wind power also obviously takes energy away from wind. If we had significantly large scale wind farms this could have a noticeable effect on weather patterns. With climate warming, wind patterns are also going to change. Areas that are windy now may become less windy, resulting in losses of power. Geothermal and solar power cannot usually be generated in or around cities. In places like Australia the best spots for this kind of power is hundreds of kilometres from significant populations. This means that over 50% of the generated energy would be lost unless we use theoretically HVDC technology that doesn't yet exist. Again with solar we also face the problem of relying on weather patterns that could change with climate warming. Of course all this isn't to say we shouldn't use those types of electricity generation as well, but at the moment we can't rely on them for the majority of our energy generation.

4. Nuclear power plants take too long to be built to be able to help with the climate warming problem. There's already a significant chance that we've reached a point where positive feedback loops would ensure continued warming even if we stopped all human emissions. In about 20 years time this will have reached approximately a 50% chance and in 40 years time it will almost be a certainty. Making a 50/50 bet on 6 degrees plus of warming is terrible. We need to avoid being in that situation. We need to drastically reduce emissions now. Nuclear plants take about 10 years + to build, in which time we're still also generating our power through coal and actually increasing emissions rather than reduce them.

This argument has some weight, but we need to dramatically reduce our coal power or stop completely. All power sources take a comparable length of time to build to get to that kind of capacity. We can also dramatically speed up production of nuclear power if we put more resources into building the plants.

5. Nuclear power would only be a minor reduction in carbon emissions. There was a report just recently that claimed that nuclear power would only reduce carbon emissions by 5%.

This is rather misleading. Firstly it was talking about all global emissions - 5% of global emissions is about 16% of energy emissions. Secondly it looked at the entire nuclear fuel cycle, including waste storage, while only looking at the direct carbon emissions from the burning of coal - discounting mining, refinement, transportation, construction etc. emissions. Other studies (such as the one I posted earlier) have been much more favourable towards nuclear power, so it's hard to be clear about the facts. Things like waste storage can actually be used to reduce emissions further, rather than increasing them. Instead of having our plutonium locked away, we should be using the heat it generates for water heating etc. If each house had a small amount of nuclear waste used for heating there would be no security risk, but free hot water.

6. Danger of disaster. We're all familiar with Chernobyl, Three Mile Island etc. The fear of cancer and nuclear waste is serious. There are countless examples of accidents at nuclear power plants. Something to be afraid of?

I've already addressed these concerns a fair bit. The risk is enormously, unbelievably overstated. The reality points towards an insignificant risk. I won't repeat previous statistics, but for example there is no evidence of any harm as a result of the nuclear accident (apart from stress from people's completely disproportionate fear of nuclear radiation) and the safety procedures worked perfectly.

7. Some nuclear waste has very long half lives. For example plutonium 244 has a half life of 80,000,000 years. Nuclear waste from nuclear power will certainly be around for thousands of years. While we can store it safely now, we can't guarantee that it will be stored safely forever. Places that are currently geological stable will probably become unstable - many different events could lead to its release.

This argument is silly. Firstly atmospheric carbon also has a massive half life and does real and serious damage to our environment - not potentially could do damage in the future. If we cause a temperature rebalance to our climate, unless we then take drastic further action, it will last at least hundreds of thousands of years. Nuclear waste is also far less dangerous than popular culture will have us believe. We can also take advantage of the radiation rather than storing it and spreading it out dramatically reduces what is already a tiny risk.

8. Terrorism. I never bought this argument. It's false logic and fear mongering. Terrorism is not and has never been a significant threat to the Western world. Let's not pretend that it is. The damage caused by coal power right now is far worse than the potential damage caused by a terrorist attack on a nuclear plant.

[Jeremy]

Here is an interesting counter argument article that Allan H posted a few weeks ago on facebook;

http://www.alternet.org/environment/132 ... s./?page=1


Certainly I agree that there are problems with a lack of regulation and unethical exploitation in the third world. I would argue this is a separate issue to nuclear power. It's like saying that all clothes are bad because of the sweatshops in third world countries.

I also think this is worth mentioning;

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_d ... rom-cancer

Of the 16 countries listed, France has the 12th highest/5th lowest rate of deaths due to cancer.

Note that the country with the highest level of deaths from cancer is the Netherlands with 433 deaths per 100,000. That's 0.4%.

Here is a list of countries that have nuclear power;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_by_country

It's hard to see any link between nuclear power and cancer on a large scale. I would conclude that nuclear power has no significant impact on deaths due to cancer, although these are obviously not sources we should 100% accept, and greater analysis is probably needed.

[Frank_Sinatra]

But even if we only focus on fission, the toxic waste issue is grossly overstated. There are no examples of nuclear waste accidents that have had a serious noticeable impact on life expectancies.

Firstly, this is not true, as at least 56 people died from radiation exposure following Chernobyl, with estimates that 4,000 out of the 600,000 people exposed following the disaster died of thyroid cancer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster Secondly, we can't only measure downsides in life expectancy. For instance Chernobyl resulted in the displacement of 365,000 people.

So I'm not really sure how you support this statement:

I won't repeat previous statistics, but for example there is no evidence of any harm as a result of the nuclear accident (apart from stress from people's completely disproportionate fear of nuclear radiation) and the safety procedures worked perfectly.

Moving on:

Storage of the waste is easy

Short term, yes. We've already built several storage facilities around the world. Long term it isn't so easy. It may seem like more an intellectual and less a practical problem, but one obstacle has been constructing a means of warning people who will live 5,000 or more years from now not to open the casks of spent fuel.

Here's what you wrote:

This argument is silly. Firstly atmospheric carbon also has a massive half life and does real and serious damage to our environment - not potentially could do damage in the future. If we cause a temperature rebalance to our climate, unless we then take drastic further action, it will last at least hundreds of thousands of years. Nuclear waste is also far less dangerous than popular culture will have us believe. We can also take advantage of the radiation rather than storing it and spreading it out dramatically reduces what is already a tiny risk.

So, you basically start with an ad hominem tu quoque (carbon is also unsafe), but you don't really address the point. You blame pop culture and call the idea silly, but that doesn't make the health effects of high doses of radiation exposure over a short term, or lower doses over the long term, any less real. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_poisoning

Just thought some fact checking was in order.

I've got to admit I'm ambivalent. I think you're right to point out that the dangers of carbon fuels are real, present, and more of a danger than those of nuclear. Nuclear as a transitional fuel source to reduce the use of carbon over the next 100 years seems like a sound course of action. Maybe it'll buy the time needed to develop better alternative sources.

Moving off of carbon has got to be the priority.

But I also have my doubts. I used to work as an organizer for the Minnesota Public Interest Research Group, for a few years I was involved in a lobbying campaign to hold the Minnesota state legislature to the binding agreements passed some years ago on above-ground nuclear storage on Prairie Island (an island in the Mississippi river). The idea at the time it was originally passed was that nuclear would be a transitional source, the power companies in Minnesota would begin investing in/developing more renewable energy, and eventually they would build no new above-ground storage.

It didn't work out that way in reality. I'm not sure that it could have entirely. But what I am sure of is the power companies made no efforts on renewable energy. So basically, I just don't trust the power companies/nuclear industry.

I'm fully aware of the limitations of renewable energy (wind/biomass/thermal/tidal/solar). A major drawback is so far there's no renewable source that can generate "base line" power. In other words, you've got to have capacity at all times to power hospitals, schools, businesses, and so on.

I do think we can do a lot more with renewable energy than we are currently. But we need to re-engineer the power grid to some extent in order for the renewable sources to "plug in" to the baseline sources in an efficient manner. In other words, to be able to reduce how much coal we fire up on days when its very sunny (if we've got solar resources) or very windy (if we've got wind resources) - but we can't be fully reliant on these sources.

So as an example of doing more with renewables - after the legislature didn't go our way on this, our chapter of MPIRG (that's the University of Minnesota - Morris chapter) took a different course. We convinced the campus to invest directly in renewable energy - biomass and wind specifically. We started building wind turbines and developing renewable energy research course work. We started building a biomass plant to convert farm waste from the surrounding area into energy. Ground broke on the plant last year, and now the school is being recognized as a leader in renewable energy. When the plant is up, it will power the entire campus, the local high school, and other city buildings.

We paid for part of it by recycling more.

Now obviously this isn't a solution for everybody, and globally it doesn't even put a dent in the problem. But it supports my point that more can be done with renewables.

Another side of this - we can do a hell of a lot more to conserve energy.

Again, conservation/renewables aren't a complete solution. I think nuclear probably makes the most sense as a way of completing the puzzle. I just have some personal doubts due to dishonest dealings by the nuclear industry in the past.[/url]

[Jeremy]

But even if we only focus on fission, the toxic waste issue is grossly overstated. There are no examples of nuclear waste accidents that have had a serious noticeable impact on life expectancies.

Firstly, this is not true, as at least 56 people died from radiation exposure following Chernobyl, with estimates that 4,000 out of the 600,000 people exposed following the disaster died of thyroid cancer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster Secondly, we can't only measure downsides in life expectancy. For instance Chernobyl resulted in the displacement of 365,000 people.

Lovelock addresses this in his book. The World Health Organisation put out this report in 2005;

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/rel ... index.html

Now we can debate which is a better source, WHO, or Wikipedia, but I'm going to go with the WHO.

Of course note that while it says in the summary;

As of mid-2005, however, fewer than 50 deaths had been directly attributed to radiation from the disaster, almost all being highly exposed rescue workers, many who died within months of the accident but others who died as late as 2004.

It does go on to predict that up to 4000 people could die from the radiation.

That's certainly terrible, as is any amount of life lost. We have to consider though the difference between the official WHO figure of "less than 50" (I think Lovelock's figure of 75 includes people who died from the fire etc. not radiation), and your figure of 4,000 to 600,000. Even if the smallest number is correct, that's wrong by 99.99%. How can such a massive error be so widely believed, let alone figures above 4,000?

The other thing worth considering is that if the prediction is correct and 4000 people die, it's already been over 20 years. If they all die today that's 200 a year. Certainly terrible and something we should be working to avoid, but in terms of deaths per unit of energy generated, nuclear power would still be the safest form of energy generation we know of - and that's ignoring the deaths due to climate change.

So I'm not really sure how you support this statement:

I won't repeat previous statistics, but for example there is no evidence of any harm as a result of the nuclear accident (apart from stress from people's completely disproportionate fear of nuclear radiation) and the safety procedures worked perfectly.

Sorry I somehow missed a sentence there. This was in reference to three mile Island, not Chernobyl.

Storage of the waste is easy

Short term, yes. We've already built several storage facilities around the world. Long term it isn't so easy. It may seem like more an intellectual and less a practical problem, but one obstacle has been constructing a means of warning people who will live 5,000 or more years from now not to open the casks of spent fuel.

How about we don't base our decision of what power source to use on the presumption that civilisation is going to collapse. I would argue 200,000 years + of a significantly warmer planet is far worse than the localised effect of nuclear radiation, and if civilisations collapses to the point where people are mining and breaking open blocks of cement without radiation detection technology than we should also expect modern medicine to have disappeared and life expectancies to have reverted back to pre-modern medicine levels, which means the risk of cancer is almost negligent (100 chest x-rays will reduce your average life expectancy by 4 days).

This argument is silly. Firstly atmospheric carbon also has a massive half life and does real and serious damage to our environment - not potentially could do damage in the future. If we cause a temperature rebalance to our climate, unless we then take drastic further action, it will last at least hundreds of thousands of years. Nuclear waste is also far less dangerous than popular culture will have us believe. We can also take advantage of the radiation rather than storing it and spreading it out dramatically reduces what is already a tiny risk.

So, you basically start with an ad hominem tu quoque (carbon is also unsafe), but you don't really address the point. You blame pop culture and call the idea silly, but that doesn't make the health effects of high doses of radiation exposure over a short term, or lower doses over the long term, any less real. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_poisoning

This is not a "you too" fallacy at all. It's a risk assessment. Based on the technology we have at the moment we have 3 options. Coal powered electricity. Nuclear powered electricity. Massive reduction in electricity usage. We have to consider the consequences of those three options and make a decision. The question really is - what is more dangerous, nuclear radiation or atmospheric carbon. I choose carbon.

Of course radiation poisoning is real. Not only have I never claimed otherwise, but I have repeatedly confirmed this. The question is, how serious a threat is it, compared with the threat of global warming? Given the premise of my argument is; "Global warming is so serious that we need to use nuclear power," I think you have to accept that that question is at the core of the debate.

I've got to admit I'm ambivalent. I think you're right to point out that the dangers of carbon fuels are real, present, and more of a danger than those of nuclear. Nuclear as a transitional fuel source to reduce the use of carbon over the next 100 years seems like a sound course of action. Maybe it'll buy the time needed to develop better alternative sources.

Exactly, except your time frame is wrong. It's not the next 100 years, it's the next 10. If CO2 has reached over 400 ppm by 2020, we're in big trouble. We might already have reached a point of no return (within the next few 100 thousand years anyway).

[Jeremy]

Misunderstandings on both sides.

I misread your post to say 4,000 to 600,000 deaths - when clearly you said 4,000 out of 600,000 people exposed (0.007% of people most highly exposed might die). I apologise for this error.

Likewise you misread the wikipedia article, which actually is based on the WHO report I posted (although I'm unsure about the figure of 56 since the summary contradicts this, but that's completely trivial) says;

...estimated that there may be 4,000 extra cancer deaths...

Emphasis mine. It's saying that that number of people might die in the future, not that they've already died. As Lovelock says - everybody dies, the question is what impact does this premature death have on their lives. I'm sorry I don't have the book on my right now, and probably won't be able to respond until Tuesday next week, but he says the evidence shows that the reduction in life expectancies of those people worst exposed is so small that it's insignificant. Less than a week per person I think - and this is a figure less than their predictive life expectancy - which has been rising consistently this century - so in real terms their life expectancies are still going up - just for some of the people in the region, very slightly less than without the disaster.

Of course that's not to say we shouldn't make every effort to avoid future disasters, clean up waste etc. or be careless with safety. It's just saying that the threat is grossly overstated and it's not a reason to oppose nuclear power.

[FlexThis]

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/0 ... index.html

[Jeremy]

Interesting article, but of course the radiation from 456 nuclear tests, including 116 above ground nuclear bombs is obviously going to have a much more significant effect than a single nuclear power plant - even one that melts down like Chernobyl. There's also no kind of quantitative information. We don't know how many people have suffered negative consequences or what percentage of people are impacted. Without that information all we have is a scary anecdotal story designed deliberately to evoke an emotional response in opposition to nuclear radiation.

[FlexThis]

The problem is that Russia will not disclose that data to you, me or even it's own people, so ....

I believe it is safe to say that of those living in and around the area in which all these bombings took place, that 100% of them were affected.

I posted the article as a reminder that Nuclear Capabilities do indeed have the potential for negative impact on society.

These people are not an anecdote, but rather a very real reality. Not only were people directly affected by radiation, so were their DNA. That makes it extremely dangerous.

While I agree with you that Nuclear Power is awesome for a number of reasons, it is important to never forget just how powerful and far reaching Nuclear Power can be in the wrong hands. ie. Iran, N. Korea, etc...

I imagine that while we have egos in footbag however minimal to society, world leaders have even larger more powerful egos and I fear that that alone is reason against Nuclear Power. No one is above anyone else, yet in the political arena we have seen that anything goes. Russia just proved it for us first.

[Jeremy]

1. You're entitled to believe whatever you like, but I'm not going to believe anything without evidence.

2. This happened in Kazakhstan, not Russia.

3. When we talk about number of people effected, we need to be clear about the difference between being effected through physical events - ie. cancer or genetic mutations, and being effected through having family members have cancer etc. When you say that 100% of people were effected, you're definitely wrong if you're talking about the first definition - which is the one I was using and the one we should be using to make decisions about. I don't think the second definition is practically definable.

4. A 10 second google scholar search has brought up hundreds of papers about the impact these tests have. The claim that; "the problem is that Russia will not disclose that data to you, me or even it's own people," is ridiculous and ignorant. Apart from maybe 8 countries in the world, the thing that holds medical and health research up is not national censorship but just a lack of people doing the research. As we see in this case neither is a problem, but you do look silly for making an assumption without first checking to see if it is correct or not. Again - don't believe anything without evidence.

5. There's no doubt the effects in this region are serious and extreme, but there are many non nuclear ways such damage could also be done. The problem here was not nuclear power but a lack of concern for people or the environment. We're talking about a scale that is not comparable with what anybody has suggested occur in the world today. We're also obviously talking about nuclear bombs, not nuclear reactors.

6. Whether countries like Australia or the US use nuclear power or not will have no impact on whether Iran or North Korea make nuclear bombs or not. As yet both those countries have much safer nuclear records than either the US or Australia and it's widely accepted that neither country is a serious threat. The concern is more because in the post Cold War world we're trying to reduce the number of nukes in the world, not increase them. The leaders of both countries are completely aware that if they ever used their weapons in anger they would bring down the wrath of the entire world, and would not be leaders of their countries within a year. They know they can't take on the entire world and they're never going to use their weapons. They just want them to make invasion of their countries a less appealing idea.

7. Anecdotal doesn't mean 'not real' - it means, in this context, that the article you posted is just somebodies opinion, full of emotive language, that doesn't contain any meaningful information.

8. The best article I could find with a short amount of searching was this;

http://www.bfs.de/de/ion/wirkungen/epi_kaz.pdf

Although it's a little unclear we can see that the percentage of people negatively effected in a physical quantifiable manner as of 1999 is a lot less than 100% despite these people being subjected to the fallout of nearly 500 nuclear bombs.

[FlexThis]

I am starting to understand why people dislike you so much.

The way you speak to people is a real turn off.

I have nothing more to add to this topic.

[Jeremy]

Ok you're right, I said a couple of things that were a little confrontational in that post and I apologise.

The reason I said those things is because your preceding post made two racist comments, presumably out of ignorance rather than anything else, and I find it very difficult to respond in a civil manner to racism.

Russians and Kazaks are not the same any more than all Asians are Chinese. Lots of people find it offensive when they have their race confused out of a generalisation. Both Russia and Kazakhstan may have tighter control and censorship than the US, but not on many issues - especially science. Claiming that they do without doing any research at all is a silly stereotype - it would be like me saying that all Americans are loud, dumb and fat. You must know that's the global stereotype of Americans and you must know it's not true. Why then would you assume stereotypes about other nations are true?

So while I apologise for the way in which I made my last post, I stand by the meanings of what I said.

Regarding why people dislike me. I look at all the people I get on really well with in footbag, and all the ones I don't and find it very easy to draw a conclusion...

[FlexThis]

For the record I am not a Racist. Gosh Jeremy even your apologies are a turn off.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan was indeed once a part of Russia, the official language of the country is Russian, and 25.9% of the country IS Russian.

Again, all I was attempting to point out is that Nuclear Power can be bad, "mKay".

[Jeremy]

I didn't say you're racist, I said the comments you made were. Most people make racist comments inadvertently- it's an easy thing to do, especially when they are comments based on ignorance. Your comment about not being a racist tells me that you're also ignorant of racism, have obviously never experienced it in any significant way and don't know what it is.

The current country of Russia is not the Russian empire. That's like saying that England used to be part of Italy. It's also important to note that Kazakhstan only became part of the Russian empire in the mid 1800s. That's not a long time ago.

You also fail to mention that while 25% of people in Kazakhstan are of Russian heritage, 67% - more than double - are from Kazakh heritage. Kazakh's and Russians are clearly different people, which is why they have different countries (obviously with some immigration, especially due to assimilation policies by the Russian empire and the USSR).

A little research tells me that 62.5% of people in Kazakhstan speak Kazakh, which accounts for 83% of all Kazakh speakers in the world. You again fail to mention that Kazakh is the official state language. Russian is clearly the official language due to the country being a former member of the USSR and there are many countries around the world where the official language and the language people speak are different.

Of course you are right, it is possible to use nuclear power to do things we would deem morally "bad," or that have negative consequences - just like the use of anything can have negative consequences. Nobody has denied that point. At the same time, such comments are barely relevant to the discussion about nuclear power.

[Pinkus]

If nobody in the world is racist, but racist remarks are often made by accident... then racism does not exist; just different ways to communicate an idea.

[Jeremy]

I'm not sure where your comment that nobody in the world is racist comes from...

I would argue that (almost) everybody in the world is racist, and that generalising people into different groups based on superficial reasons is an evolved psychological trait in humans. The way to combat racism is therefore in bringing it to attention when it happens and being aware of it and why it's racist. When you're aware that your reaction to something is inbuilt response that's outside of your control, you then have the power to keep it to yourself and respond in a more civil and rational manner. If you're not aware of problems it's very difficult to respond to them.