That's a good article regarding PBMR's. It's too bad that it's in the wrong place.
I think that we should try to avoid too much affiliation with those who have obvious ideological axes to grind. I saw links on the 'American Daily' and on Paul Driessen's site to global warming denial material. The majority of scientists who know about climate and atmospheric/oceanic matters are not denying global warming.
Denial of global warming can only hurt the nuclear cause and help the fossil fuel cause, in my humble opinion.
By the same token, a lot of the people in the 'environmental movement' have kneejerk anti-nuclear biases that cause them to reject the most obvious, efficacious solution to global warming. You can see such debates frequently at The Oil Drum. Shame on those global warming activists who don't take James Lovelock seriously and who think that folks are willing to do without sufficient electricity to maintain a decent lifestyle!
It's better to align oneself with scientific opinion on non-nuclear issues as well as the nuclear ones. I do believe that the majority of nuclear proponents have enough background in science to be able to distinguish between ideologically-motivated opinions and rationally-based ideas.
Both parties in the U.S. have major problems with ideologically-motivated opinions vs. rational ideas regarding science. On the Republican side, it's global warming denial and creationism. On the Democratic side, it's opposition to high standards in the schools (necessary to teach science and math properly) and the anti-nuclear hangover from the 1960's-1970's-early 1980's.
I consider myself a centrist who believes in strong improvements to, and investments in, infrastructure. Most liberal Democrats reject my ideas on education, law and order, and nuclear issues, while most current Republicans don't like the fact that I believe that global warming is real and the fact that I think that working folks' standard of living has gone down over the last 25 years or so.
I definitely believe in private investment, hopefully without a lot of push from the government. However, American firms have the problem of too much focus on this quarter's financial results, rather than looking at the longer term results.
This is why Detroit is in so much trouble right now. The Japanese firms looked 5 years ahead and have been designing cars for fuel efficiency and 200,000 mile reliability, using the latest technology, including hybrid technology, while Detroit rested on its laurels (1980's technology) and focused on upping this quarter's profits with gas-guzzling SUV's and 8-cylinder trucks.
In conclusion, I believe that those of us who support nuclear energy need to ally ourselves with those who favor other things that will improve the scientific literacy of the public, such as higher educational standards, and to be wary of allianc
Ruth:
As usual, I found your comment to be well thought out and worth reading. Thank you.
In this case, however, I disagree a bit with your conclusion. Based on what I have read about him, I do not think that Driessen is an ideologically motivated, junk science kind of author. In contrast, I find his work to be well researched and thoughtful.
It seems that your major reason for questioning him as a source is that you found a few links on his web site that question the validity of current predictions about the effects of CO2 emissions on the global climate.
Though I happen to agree that the majority of published evidence points to human activities as a contributor to global climate changes, I also recognize that learning stops once people with reasonable questions get silenced by those that point to majority opinions and belief systems. Science should value questioning attitudes and should never operate on dogma. Skeptics on global climate change do not deserve excommunication.
There are plenty of reasons to work for alternatives to fossil fuel without having to "believe" that the world is going to end if we do not stop emitting CO2. I am actually far more worried about such local pollutants as SOx, NOx, mercury and fly ash than I am about CO2.
By education, I am a systems technologist, with a pretty good background in controls and feedback loops. It looks to me like there are several understudied feedback and control mechanisms focused on CO2 in the natural world. I do not think that our current predictive models are very good predictors yet for the ultimate concentration and effects of that concentration on the world's climate.
Ruth:
Pro-nuclear people simply can't afford to exclude unscientific people--creationists are something like 62% of the public, for instance. But we don't need to work with them--we just shouldn't get in the way when they support nuclear power. As you say, though, we need to establish scientific people as the mainstream as quickly as possible. We need some kind of science advocacy network.
(BTW, I disagree about "higher educational standards"--we need a good education for every child, not the same education for every child, and we need to recognize as a society that teachers are college-educated professionals who should be recognized as such.)
An interesting comparison about education between France and the U.S. is public acceptance of evolution. Unfortunately, the Science article from which the link came is now subscription-only.
By the way, my father taught high school English out in California. Thirty-five years ago, housing was affordable for a California teacher, and California's schools were excellent. My grandfather was an Ohio high school principal.
During the mid- and late-1970s in California, the schools dropped academic and behavior standards, and teaching became a much less-pleasant job. I saw the stress affect my father's demeanor and ultimately, his health, as I was growing up. His first teaching job was at Lake Forest Academy in Chicago, so he was geared toward teaching achieving students, rather than the remedial classes he increasingly got stuck with during the late 1970's.
Then, during the 1980's-present, housing in California became so expensive that a teacher could only afford it if he/she was married to a high-income professional. That's one of the reasons I moved out of California to the South.
Teachers are professionals who have hard jobs and are underpaid. The content knowledge standards for teachers should be a little higher, and I think the new emphasis on testing in the schools is a good thing. I realize that not every kid has the same talents and abilities.
Student behavior contracts are helpful, and that classrooms should have much higher behavior standards. I probably would have gone into teaching had there not been all kinds of discipline/behavior problems in the schools when I grew up.
That being said, back to the main purpse of the discussion here, which should definitely be all-inclusive.
Edited By Siteowner
oops - should have previewed that!
Ruth:
No problem - I managed to fix the broken tag.
The reason for that is that France is mostly Catholic, while the US has a huge proportion of fundamentalists. No education gap there, and there's nothing you can really do about people whose church advocates the scientific equivalent of the Moon being made of cream cheese.
As for "loosened behavior standards," that's basically saying that it's now legal to keep your shirt untucked. Compared with the 1960s, today's "behavior standards" are stricter and just as pointless (what should be regulated isn't and what shouldn't be regulated is far too strict), except that now it's less community-based and far more rigid. For example, today's "zero-tolerance" policies (which would be absurd in their illegality if applied to adults) routinely force administrators to expel students who had drugs/guns/weapons/"lookalikes" (read: GI Joe action figures with 2-inch plastic rifles or grape Kool-Aid) literally planted on them. One case that I can think of involves a student who drove his brother's pickup truck to school. Due to a moving violation in the parking lot, the truck was thoroughly searched and a shotgun turned up. Despite the fact that he was leaving the parking lot, he didn't know it was in the car, he clearly had no intention to use it, and I don't believe it was even loaded, the student was expelled and now (I recall) has a criminal record. That type of overkill and irrelevance should be familiar to you: it happens at the NRC all the time. Like when they issued an order releasing a tree for unrestricted use, or tritium standards that keep these "radioactive pollutant discharges" less radioactive than orange juice, or many others that you've probably heard. In the 1950s, students were almost expected to have pocketknives. Today, it is not even news to hear of a student expelled for carrying a knife--regardless of any legitimate use. I could talk for days about zero tolerance nightmares, and if you want more examples I can easily give them, but what standards do to schools is the same mistake made by industry and the AEC/NRC prior to TMI. Serious problems are ignored and irrelevancies are slammed with brute force, all in a framework designed to people-proof the organization instead of using the skills of capable people.
The NRC is not short of standards. They seemingly have a standard for everything but how to stock the breakroom refrigerator. But we have seen that this method is not effective, and it is even less effective when you're dealing with people, not components, because you can't standardize people. All you end up doing is letting people slip through the cracks. In other words, you waste talent.
Experience has shown that standards for every tiny thing miss the forest for the trees. There's no NRC rule against kludging, and no real way to write one. Likewise, there's no real way to legislate that people learn something. For example:
There's a standard in Illinois (and probably everywhere else) that says that a
[continued]
...all students must read on grade level by the end of the third grade. How is this performance measured? A standardized test.
Teachers respond to this standardized test by spending the whole year (or a significant part of it) preparing students for the test instead of teaching material. Emphasis is placed on "beating the test," and test manufacturers respond by rewriting the test to make it harder. The next two years' worth or so of students are used as guinea pigs to figure out what must be taught for the test, while politicians moan about how the scores are mysteriously lower. Then, scores skyrocket and everyone's happy--except for students who don't know the material.
What's wrong with this? It reduces a complicated idea, really an art, to a number. Focus is placed on getting that number higher instead of educating people.
Since this has gotten pretty far off the original topic of Rod's post, shall we continue this discussion in your blog?
Hi Scott! -
You're indeed correct that we're off-topic from the original post, but that continued discussion is cetainly welcome!
For the time being, I've (hopefully..assuming the changed settings went through) made commenting a little easier on We Support Lee.
I hope that the change will work, both technically and people-wise.
I'm a bit tied up for the next day or so, but later, I would love to explain why I'm so conservative on education but much more open-minded on science, economics and the like.
Since you're in Chicago, do you know Lake Forest Academy? I assume of course that you've visited the U of C? 
:-D (including, of course, Stagg Field, "where it all began"...!)
Stewart - sorry!!!!
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