it's about efficiency. nuclear has massive process heat that can be used for industrial activity, in addition to electricity generation, water desalination, hydrogen fuel production, etc. that type of energy density is only available as you move up the physics ladder, not down.

it's not high quality energy.... there's not enough power in renewables for industrial process. think you can refine aluminum with renewables? they're fine for houses, kinda. maybe. but try running industry on that, it's impossible. we NEED a nuclear economy if we're to get off fossil fuels. there's no other way around it. nuclear is the best, highest quality, and cheapest clean energy out there. get the 4th gen plants going that can run off the waste and that eliminates the hot stuff that takes eons to decay and you're left with stuff that's safe and fine after a few decades.

but when it comes to spending a measly extra $3 billion on real science and progress they get the finger. wall street must be thrown down from it's slimy throne.

it's in the works... gotta stop the idiot kudrin from influencing russia to spend resources on supporting the carry trade so they don't cut funding to russian railways, it's something that has been on the table for a while with it recently brought up as a reality. i think the guy in charge of russia railways said it could be launched by the end of the decade... putin already announced an infrastructure buildup to the surrounding area so i would assume the reason is the assumption that a tunnel would be built. a global maglev landbridge system is the next logical and obvious step for human development.

no, world war two happened because world war one happened... they should be considered the same war... and we have the brits to thank for that one... it's a pity we sided with the wrong side in world war 1. the japanese attacked us because a british-japanese alliance drew up such a plan decades before it happened.

the world isn't as boring and simple as you think it is. there's a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes that aren't discussed in history textbooks and in the media. world war 1 was a repeat of the seven years war... that's where the inspiration came from... create a war to stop economic development... railroad, land transport that would eclipse sea transport... who was the dominate sea power and dominated trade thru the seas?

thank you china for stepping up and developing land transport. this has been a hundred years coming...

you sir are a very sad individual... please go jump off a bridge or something.

what's up the boomers that think it's cooler to go underwater than ensure the survival of our race.

Sure that's fine, but we need a heavily funded public agency to lay the road before commercial firms can find anything that can be deemed "profitable"... there is no profit in going to the moon to set up a He3 refining facility when the process would probably take 10 years to set up, and another 10 years to finish work on a fusion reactor that can burn it. That's the point I try to bang into the heads of my "free market" blinded friends that stupidly can't see why we should do anything if there is no "profit" involved (hint: there IS profit involved, but it requires a much longer financing term that only can be provided by a public agency). Private firms can help out and get contracts but the project must be led by a stable non-profit constitutional government entity dedicated to the common welfare clause of the preamble of the constitution for this to work.

Why do you see the world within the system of monetarism? Why cut spending? Why do you want to make the "bond market" (aka wallstreet and london) happy? F*ck them. Nationalize the fed and issue low interest rate loans for science and physical infrastructure. What retard dreamed up the idea that we have to borrow money from financial predators on wall street to monetarize bonds into "money"...

Ya it's lovely but Obama doesn't support it. His administration is actively trying to destroy our space capability. If they were serious about correcting this flaw they would have suggested we do DIRECT because it's a better system. Let me be clear: Obama's crackpot team doesn't intend for us go anywhere. They want us to pay the banks, pass a health insurance industry bailout, stay on earth to "study global warming" and die.

In response to your comments: a single payer system could actually work better to increase tech. This is how. Open source all research.

What? You might be pondering while your scratch your head. "There is no profit motive to drive people to innovate." you may be thinking... typically breakthroughs are reached by poor lifetime researchers that are indentured servants to their universities already... what we ought to do is publicly fund research in addition to health care. Ensure plenty of funding available to research, at even greater levels than exist today under the private system, and award out grants on the basis of the intention to making leaps in technology and treatment systems.

Example: Provide grants to apply gold nanoparticles to HIV vaccines to followup on work done last year at UCLA. Of course all research would be open source and manufacturers would compete to deliver the best product at the best price. All medication, even cutting edge technology, would be at market price rather than massively inflated to recover investment and profits over the lifetime of the patent. This would stimulate the economy and improve the standard of living, drastically.

The IMAB, IMAC, IMPB, or any other variant they choose to call it, is effectively a death panel. Why ration? Implement an improved Medicare for all and save enough from taking the insurance companies out of the picture... rationing won't even be an issue. We can do it the Obama way and kill a bunch of women by denying mammograms, etc. and make a lot of $$$$$ for the insurance "industry" or we cut the middleman and not be fascist... I vote for the latter.

so true. too bad some guy with his head rammed deep into the sand downmodded you. i would mod u up if i had points.

sorry, there's PLENTY he could be doing but isn't. he's CHOOSING to maintain this monetary system dominated political world. we were in an awesome position last year to wipe out wall street and rebuild the physical economy with government credit. instead, we choose to give wall street $23.5 trillion (near 0% interest loans for derivatives, federal guarantees, and various bailout programs like TARP, AIG, etc.). imagine what $23.5 trillion could do for the world. can you imagine a global maglev network powered by 4th generation nuclear power? i can... how about a fantastic space program, an industrialized moon, and a real fusion research program? i can imagine that too. there's a wealth of he3 on the moon and if obama was serious about "going green" and being "energy independent" he wouldn't kill constellation, he'd expand it!

we could have expanded the social safety nets, greatly increased benefits to social security recipients, passed an expanded medicare for all, greatly improved the quality of life of everyone here, and approached 0% unemployment with wiser use of money creation and loans. they instead choose to prop up the bubble. if the boomer's stock portfolios got wiped out, well that sucks, but that's why we would have improved the safety nets so everyone would have a guaranteed OK life, as galbraith had suggested. white middle class suburbia would be angry, but the real losers would just be high finance, the bankers, and the oligarchy. to hell with them, i want to live in a modern world... and the way we'll get there is thru a massive credit outpouring into physical infrastructure, not financing vampire traders on wall street.

that's where He3 comes in... directly converts to energy and we'll experience a leap in efficiency as a consequence. somebody please explain to our idiot-in-chief not to cancel constellation.