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[Heron TSG]

well, I'm all for nuclear power (so long as it has the appropriate failsafes)

fun fact: an average person gets more radiation from medical X-rays than from nuclear power

Funner fact: Coal plants put out orders of magnitude more radiation than nuclear plants.

3. Also, we've been saying we'd get fusion working in 40 years since the 50's. While I'd like to see them to get it working, I don't think we're going to have large scale fusion power production before the end of the century.

And if it gets scrapped due to the Eurozone crisis, well... at least there's still that Ignition Facility in the US, right?

Ohoho! I actually did my Physics II primary research project on the National Ignition Facility.

This article describes the recent 500-terawatt ultraviolet laser shot. (About 1000x the instantaneous power usage of the US, about 100x that of any other laser array. Also with only 1% variance between the weakest and most powerful beams, it's one of the most accurate.) That was the third shot over 1.8 megajoules on the target, and done just July 5th. The pressure on the deuterium-tritium target was over 50 megabars, getting actually rather close to ignition pressure. (50 million times the atmospheric pressure at that elevation) It caused the target to implode at over 1,000,000 mph. (I think about 1,620,000 kph)

They fired 57 shots in March, a record for them. They've been firing even more since. [Mike Dunne (the project's head honcho) says that they'll have energy gain by the end of 2012. (Though he also says it could be 6-18 months.)

They've got about 40 companies lined up for commercialization, apparently. I'm pretty pumped.

[Kilroy the Grand]

The only evacuated them after the damage was done. The region around Fukushima was evacuated much earlier.

And thyroid cancer are usually non-lethal. And can be prevented by distributing iodine which I'm pretty sure the Japanese did and the Soviets did not.

I've read several books on this subject (although it was quite a few years ago) The soviets sent truckloads of iodine. Personally I thought the fact that the first responders had to make their own lead body armor.

[10ebbor10]

Now Germany's descision to shut down all of their nuclear powerplants looks even more idiot. After all, to make up for that lost power production capability they are building several GW worth of coal fired plants, or about 1 tenth of their total energy useage.

Fusion research proves promising, both the shoot it with a laser method and Iter's method, which focusses on way higher temperatures but incredibly low pressure, to such a point that while you would be standing in a reactor chamber where the temperature is several times greater than that in the core of the sun, it would only feel like a sunny day. (Untill you die of decompression/radiation of course).

ITER* should technically be capable of producing energy (I think the net gain was estimated to be between 100- 500 MW**) but they just didn't incorporate a generator yet.

*Which used to stand for Iternational Thermonuclear Experimental reactor, though that name got abandonned because of PR issues.
** Though that could also be the stats for the DEMO reactor, not sure.

The only evacuated them after the damage was done. The region around Fukushima was evacuated much earlier.

And thyroid cancer are usually non-lethal. And can be prevented by distributing iodine which I'm pretty sure the Japanese did and the Soviets did not.

I've read several books on this subject (although it was quite a few years ago) The soviets sent truckloads of iodine. Personally I thought the fact that the first responders had to make their own lead body armor.

But probably not soon enough. Also, the countries were the fallout landed (Ie Western Europe), were not warned. Then again, the region qround Chernobyl is rather habitable currently, though it is classified as a natural reserve. What proves a bigger problem is that the Concrete sarcofage in which they incased the reactor is not exactly in a good shape.