Martin Spring's On Target
Comment of the Day

September 19 2011

Commentary by David Fuller

Martin Spring's On Target

David Fuller's view My thanks to the author for his ever-interesting and wide-ranging socioeconomic letter. Features include "Escape to Your Own Private Island", which sounds like prison to me but Martin offers a lengthy check list of factors to consider, to "Ludicrous Consequences of Carbomania". This feature ranges from duff electric cars to the CERN story mentioned above.

Here is a short item on "Atomic risk", posted without further comment:

Notwithstanding what happened at Japan's oldest reactors at Fukushima, nuclear is the safest of all energy sources, relative to output. According to wallstreetdaily, there have been only 0.04 deaths per terawatt hour generated by nuclear, compared to 0.15 for wind, 0.44 for solar, 1.4 for hydro, 4 for natural gas, 36 for oil and 161 for coal. Presumably the very high figure for coal reflects the dangerous business of mining the stuff.

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