That's a very good article.

That article on nuclear energy is very good.  The two nuclear accidents weren't human error per say but humans ignore error signs.  For Chernoble, the owner of the plant wasn't taking the necessary safety percautions and was just ignoring them to make more money.

The writer of the nuclear article kind of hit on this with the electric cars--->  I read some where (can't remember where) if the U.S. would have kept producing nuclear plants at the rate they were producing before 3 mile island happened they would have been in line with the impotent Kyoto treaty.

TO ALL THOSE PEOPLE FOR WIND POWER:  First, someone said (I think it was utemia) that all the wind power in Germany is producing more than 4 nuclear power plants.  If this is possible those nuclear plants must be working at half capacity.  Second, it this is true, those wind turbines need a lot of land to be affective, so that must be a lot of land being used just for those wind turbines.

Wind energy needs a lot of land for it to be effective source of energy.  Then it can also be in certain areas to reach its weak effectiveness.

I don't like many things about France.  I don't think their cuisine is all that amazin (I don't know why many people think it is). I don't think French art is all that impressive COMPARED to surrounding areas.

The one thing (two actually) I do like is their (the French) reliance on Nuclear Power.  Its kind of funny that you don't see any liberals (especially in such a liberal country) protesting the fact that most of the countries (75%) power comes from it. www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf40.html  The one issue is nuclear waste.  After reusing this waste, the size of this waste for a family of 4 for 20 years is half the size of a lighter. 

The second thing France has the best of is UHC.  If the U.S did (which I am against) adapt an UHC think we should model it after the France.  Which due to anomisty between the two countries I don't think we would and that is why we are going with the two horrible models of the U.K and Canadon't.   The drag for the French's UHC system is the taxes.

Back to Nuclear energy, France has been making a killing by exporting its excess Nuclear energy.  Please refer to the article. 

The final thing is that the French did something smart and in 70s saw the oil debacle and possible mess that OPEC could cause in the future.  They cleaned up that mess BUT if Islam can't control you with oil it'll just move into your population and out populate the locales

The Skeptoid article is great!  Thanks for the link.

Windturbines do not need a lot of land to be effective. Just alot of wind. There are serious issues connected to windpower though, it is not without problems like killing birds and they make alot of noise. But you don't need a huge empty field for just one windturbine.

France - interestingly enough, most reactors are along the rhine river. If a worst case accident should occur the radioactive fallout would go down on Germany because the wind is almost always blowing from the west. Now why would they do that if it was so safe?  I don't know how much capacity the nuclear powerplants have here - all in all, they supply about 28% of the energy in Germany. In Europe, about 30% of the energy is supplied by nuclear powerplants. Alternative energy sources like wind, water, intertidal, photovoltaic, geothermic, biomass supply about 16%.

Many municipalities started to build small alternative powerplants to be independant from the big suppliers and I think that trend is upwards. Sometimes, things go wrong there as well as in the city of Staufen. The drilling to provide geothermal heating to the city hall perforated a gypsum layer and caused high-pressure groundwater to come into contact with the gypsum, which then began to expand. Currently no end to the rising process is in sight. To date, the city rose 12cm which caused many houses to have damages in the walls and floors. They're being broken apart in slow motions, so to speak - like the pitchdrop experiment, just faster. There is no way to really stop it - they poured concrete down there and slowed the process down to a standstill but I bet that sooner or later the gypsum will be stronger and break through.

You can buy so called "ecological" power - but often it is just exported excess energy from france.

I found the article from skeptoid not very noteworthy. All he did was playing down the risks, praising technological advancement and painting those who are skeptical as dumb hippies and environmentalists who don't have a clue. He didn't really adress the problem of nuclear waste, instead he waxed polemically about the stupid environmentalists who were against Yucca Mountain for no apparent reason and accused them to ideologically influenced instead of scientifically. He may have a point with the last issue - decisions regarding nuclear energy are always politically motivated and rarely scientifically sound. But he did not write about that problem adequatly.

Iraqi is better, as is Lebanese and Turkish food.

France (but mostly Belgium) produces excellent comic books.

France also used to make excellent movies in the 70s and 80s. US studios usually remade them, but a lot worse.

And dont forget Wine!  Oh wait, Napa valley beat them in 1976 and 2006.

Well, they still are best at making frenchmen.

I just read that Obama greenlighted a 8billion government loan guarantee to build 2 new reactors in Georgia. For the first time since 30 years the US will build a new reactor. I guess we'll see if they're really that much safer and better in practice.