No, I think they should be spending WAY more money, on things that would actually make a radical difference.

nuclear energy has two problems, radioactive waste, and superheating water sources. it's not even a valid argument, but he's acting like it's some godsend. what a ****ing moron.

why doesn't the government ever (seriously) discuss renewable resources? last time i checked, it wasn't a four letter word.

oh, never mind. we can just go drill in alaska. gas problem solved.

I live a mile from school. It's either walk to school every day (not bad at all) or drive ($1000 a year in parking plus gas). I would totally be down for just walking it but because I can ride I save time and have more fun.

The sad thing is I have many, many neighbors who drive every day to the same building. :roflmao:

i read in an article for enviro class a semester or two ago that france is the leader of trying to make nuclear energy more environmentally friendlier but having the waste not dumped back but used somehow else. mainly the waste before was leaking into water sources and such but france has devised a method to not allow leakage and properly disposing of said contaminants. that being said the politician is still a jerkoff.

The issue is not whether radioactive contaminants will enter the groundwater, but when. The other issue is how far will that contaminant move. There are many contaminants that are not considered to be much of a hazard due to their short half-lifes. However, there may others with long half-lifes and travel through ground water relatively quick and are not considered conservative (absorption and adsorption must be taken into account). Other issues are that the rate of release are quite variable and so are difficult to model. Many, many more issues exist making the entire process of determining contaminant plume modeling quite difficult and so determine a place to dispose of nuclear waste becomes quite difficult. In the USA we require a 95% confidence interval on the plume extent after 10000 years. Not an easy task.

Sorry, we are just talking about a subject that I am, in fact, a bit of an expert. I tried to keep it as simple as possible. If any one cares to ask question, have at it.

oh by no means am i an expert after reading 1 article. thanx for clearing it up tho! more info for all of us now!!

is this the same energy bill as this?

http://www.democrats.org/a/2007/06/victory_senate.php

if so

YOU LOSE Mr. McHenry

i think americans think bikes arn't manly enough. unless you throw lots of money at them but still, then they're only valid for weekend warrior expeditions, not forms of transportation to work... EVEN IF your weekend ride is longer than your work commuter, still not manly enough, no balls credit- i'm sure you understand.

a couple of points:

1. a million bucks? how many tax payers are there in the united states? 200 million? that's one half of one penny per year per taxpayer. sheesh.

2. bicycles are 'nineteenth century technology'? maybe if mchenry is driving a model t that argument holds water, but the last time i checked bicycles with equal-sized wheels and parallelogram derailleurs didn't make the scene until the late forties.

3. nuclear power? to halt climate change? has no one ever factored in the amount of energy used to mine and, more importantly refine, the uranium used in these reactors? when the darlington plant came online in ontario the government was talking about a seven to ten year payback on co2 savings if high-grade ore was used. that means that it would take at least seven years of full operation before any savings in co2 was realized. now, based on a forty year lifespan, that still means a win, but it ain't a magic bullet. oh, and enrichment requires the use of cfc-114... a pretty heavy duty ozone-destroyer.

Darlington is a CANDU (CANada Deuterium Uranium) reactor, and the thing about CANDU reactors is that no enrichment process is needed. CANDU reactors can use a U-235 ore of 0.7% (natural ore) while LWR (Light Water Reactors) and PWR (Pressurized Water Reactors) require a much higher rate of enrichment (between 2.5-20%). The whole design of a CANDU reactor is based off the use of natural uranium, this is the reason it uses heavy water (deuterium). There are a few other things that make CANDU reactors nice compared to LWR and PWR, such as it ability to use MOX (Mixed OXide fuels), RU (Recovered Uranium), and DUPIC (Direct Use of PWR fuel In CANDU). MOX is a mixture of uranium and plutonium. The plutonium can be obtained from nuclear weapons that are being dismantled and therefore always for "recycling". RU is actually is spent uranium from a LWR. The use of both MOX and RU allow for less nuclear waste. However, the CANDU reactor only deals with waste issues that were anthropogenic in its nature, and of course has waste itself.

There are other problems inherent in CANDU reactors, because of the use of Deuterium, but I am not going to even bother getting into that.

I'll bet dollars to donuts that the nuclear power industry gives more money to his campaign than bicycling advocacy groups. Its hard to fight Monty Burns...

Did this man grow up in a gated community where cycling was banned? It's not necessarily that he thinks spending on biking is a waste, he seems to think that biking has no place in society.. or at least that what I gathered from his pathetic "comic" spoutings.

What does he do when he's being driven around D.C. and he sees a cyclist? "Wait! WHAT THE **** IS THAT!!!?? What is that man doing?"

This is like the twilight zone.

He seemed to suggest that Bikes were antiquated, quaint, and that US Americans are too good to ride a bike.

..or that we are too smart to do something so "19th century".

I think we should do a lot more things 19th century. Let's get back into pedestrianism.

i totally agree.

i believe amsterdam, does exactly what the democrats plan is. they might even put more money into bike culture. they are also in the top 3 of the "greenest" cities in the world.

what a dumb idea, it would never work...