I have personally seen lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of posts from people who act like
nuclear energy has reliability problems.
In fact, nuclear energy has the
highest reliability of
any form of energy on the planet. In the United States this capacity utilization is better than 90%. I could post data on the subject - I've done it lots of times - but that has not prevented the SELECTIVE ATTENTION that characterizes the anti-nuke position.
If you have posted ONE post on this website about the reliability of a coal plant, you are free to point it out. If you have posted ONE post on this website about deaths associated either with coal accidents - which are relatively regular - or the deaths associated with
normal operations of coal plants, you are free to link it.
Frankly I have long argued that people who are particularly obsessed with whether a door hinge at a nuclear power plant are mostly notable for the fact that they couldn't care less about dangerous fossil fuel reliability or dangerous fossil fuel accidents.
Unlike the dangerous fossil fuel shills who work this site, I have remarked previously on lots of dangerous fossil fuel accidents. I can, should I desire, produce hundreds of remarks on dangerous fossil fuel accidents that I've produced. Here's just one:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/8/19/21588/6802">Situation Grave at Chinese Coal Mine: 172 Human Beings Missing Underground.
These people - and they are hardly unique - died less than one year ago. The number of fundie anti-nukes who have written posts commemorating these deaths - or even noting them - is ZERO.
You could - if you were interested - easily prove otherwise by producing a post from
anyone who has made a big Chernobyl memorial on this website - that mentions these dead in China, or any of the coal deaths in the Ukraine in the last 10 years, or any of the coal deaths anywhere in Europe, South America or anywhere in Asia.
You won't because you can't.
But the subject was not the moral indifference of the yuppie anti-nuke community - which is spectacular - but rather the reliability of energy systems.
For coal, capacity utilization, it is in the low 70% range. Gas, partially by design, is less than 50%. Solar is LUCKY if it reaches 25% capacity utilization and wind is just as pathetic. One reason that neither solar nor wind is an alternative to coal is that they are trivial forms of energy. Another reason is that they are wholly unreliable.
On the other hand, if you would like to assert that people only turn their air conditioners on after they check to see that either the wind is blowing or the sun is shining, I'd love to hear some data supporting this case. Frankly it would surprising to learn that the peak moment for air conditioning is precisely coterminous with the time that the wind is blowing.
Now, I couldn't care less if rich people want to buy solar toys. It's better than buying a Hummer, even a hydrogen Hummer. But that's not the issue here. They have probably managed to displace tiny amounts of dangerous natural gas with these toys, although obviously hardly a
significant amount.
The issue here is that the anti-nuke community is claiming - with zero evidence - that nuclear infrastructure should be vandalized and destroyed during a severe climate change crisis that threatens all human life. In particular they are claiming that their 50 years of bullshit talk about how we don't need nuclear urgently should be believed when in fact, their talk is spectacularly reminiscent of Bush's claims to have restored dignity to the White House.
Doublespeak is
wrong.
Got it?
No?
Why am I not surprised?
In fact there are ZERO types of power plants that do not shut down because of malfunction, maintenance or unavailability. Nuclear energy is spectacular only because it sets the world standard for reliability. No other form of energy comes close.