Nukes and artificial leaves
Ah, it seems my original ambitions fell a bit short and its been a year since my first post. Oops. Lets hope I can do better in the future. My thoughts have been turning to energy this last week, mostly due to the Fukushima nuclear power plant problems. I'd briefly considered putting "power plant disaster" there, but the scope of the damage from radiation seems so relatively small that it feels like doing so would trivialize the tsunami. Some back of the envelope calculations make me think that even if you assume a linear no-threshold dosage model for how radiation causes cancer (i.e. the silly conservative assumption) the plant meltdown will end up causing some tens of cancers. I'm generally a supporter of nuclear energy. Its a lot better than, say, coal which in the US kills tens of coal miners each year, and over ten thousand people through pollution. Its certainly possible to do better than that, but its possible to make nuclear plants much safer as well.