all it needs now is a massive EGO module and it will be just like a real shredder guitarist ;)

but have a look at where your bullies are now... do you really want to be like them? Chances are they now want to be like you.

I've been studying bullying recently and the growing body of evidence on bullying behavior reveals a mindset that is unlikely to want to be like another person. Specifically bullies are broken people with mindsets that range from simply dictatorial all the way to sociopaths.

I have no regrets or bitterness about those early years - I often give work to some of my former bullies.

Then you are doing your company a great dis-service. The evidence suggests unless a bully has received counseling and in some cases psychiatric care, it is more than likely that they are continuing to bully the people around them without your knowledge. They may even be undermining you and the real issue to you is what hiring a bully says about you. In Robert Sutton's book The No Asshole Rule you may be bullying people yourself (i.e you may be an asshole) and not even know it as bullies tend to hire bullies. I won't judge you but you should do the Asshole Rating Self-Exam as while it all sounds kind of funny and cute it's actually a serious topic. I did the test myself and rated fairly low assholish tendencies - but there is always a possibility I could turn into one if I am not diligent.

(and learnt to fight)

This is the one reason that makes me think you are not an asshole or a bully. Not patting my own back too much but if you are referring to martial arts or a fighting sport you have probably had the asshole and bully disciplined out of you. I train and most people I have met in this sphere are morally strong. The problem is bullies *do* have social skills and in some cases they are exceptional social skills, the difference is that they are anti-social and destructive individuals. These are not the type of people you want around any form of creative environment as it is shown to severely reduce the productivity of professionals such as these (programmers, graphic artists, scientists etc).

Make no mistake bullies are toxic individual that can drive a company to bankruptcy, kill moral and productivity and drive people into depressive states. I am just thankful that I live in a country where this is recognised and there is a legal framework to deal with it. If you live in the U.S though you have no such protections. A bully does not want to be like anyone, there are only two types of people to a bully those who are targets and those who are not. Do not hire them, bullies should be avoided at all costs.

it was done for the lols

Somewhat of a flaw in the US legal system. The foundational princibles were written to provide extensive protection from government oppression, but none from corporate oppression. At the time there just hadn't been any corporations with so much power that it was seen as a concern. The age of the multinational megacorp didn't come until much later.

At the time of the founding fathers a corporate charter was granted with the express goal of doing something and was forbidden, by law, to diversify. For example a corporation chartered to build a bridge could not start making socks. Laws regarding corporate diversification were repealed in the 1950s. Somewhat cynically, corporations were granted the same rights as any human being on the backs of black people's rights being recognised. I can't remember the exact circumstances.

However one founding father, Benjamin Franklin, did recognise the danger and noted that the constitution would not protect America from falling into despotism;

In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other.

It's not clear to me if this is specifically what Franklin was refering to, I'm sure there were other reasons. It's a simple matter of changing the corporations law to undo the current situation but that calls for the voters to be informed of the issues, which I think is as close to impossible with the control media currently exerts over the media in this day and age. A simpler solution would be to allow corporations to experience the full force of the law and the board exposed to liability for their decisions. but I'm sure that would be fought with as much vigor.

A) Admitting that you've joined one of these sites for the express purpose of obtaining an illicit copy of a game, $7.50

B) Admitting that you are willing to knowingly pay for pirated media, $10.87

C) Admitting to having fallen for the scam. Multiple times, Priceless

Mastercard, for the PAY warez sites seems to seen scams and some even list fake games or other stuff just to make there file list seem big.

I think you have made a lot of assumptions.

Pretty much all of the US designs. Nuclear power has been ridiculously reliable in the past decade.

ALL Nuclear power plants in the US are in the most reliable phase of their lifetime when they are in the middle of their lifetime yet Basis Design Issues (BDI's) are still being identified. You can make the claim about reliability because it's past the first of two phases of inherent failure, at the beginning and the end of the reactors lifetime.

Accident Sequence Precursors (ASP's) are used to identify potential failure conditions in a Nuclear Reactor where it performs outside of the engineering spec for the reactor. A typical example is at Davis-Besse. Management ignored a filtration problem that required filters to be changed more often - they were getting clogged more frequently than the engineering spec said they should. Turns out that an internal leak was spraying a fine jet of borated water onto the inside of the reactor head and this had corroded a six inch hole most of the way through the top of the pressure vessel. I think in this case criminal charges were laid.

This leads us to our second parameter a Licensee Event Report (LER). This refers to something happening to the reactor that spawns a report to the NRC and is an indication of some kind of failure. Too many LER's and a reactor should be shut down (Palo Verde is under scrutiny for this reason).

Near the end of it's lifetime is where the reactor is encountering failures due to age, a reactor can only last so long because it's component's wear out. The last 10 or so years of a reactors life are dangerous because of simple mechanical failure. The primary factor limiting the age of a Nuclear reactor is neutron bombardment of the pressure vessel (in fact any metal component in the reactor) which makes the metal brittle and subject to cracks. I'm sure everyone can understand why cracks in a reactor pressure vessel is a bad thing.

It's sobering to know that the trend for ASP's are going up whilst LER's remain somewhat static. A reactor is not meant to last forever.

Of course, there are some exceptions to this, but the point I'm trying to get across is that the nuclear industry takes itself seriously, and the results of the dedication are self-evident.

Well no one wants another TMI, yet TMI happened with in the first three months of operation clearly indicating a BDI, i.e. the reactor was difficult and confusing to operate. Yet BDI's are still being identified and each type of reactor has a different set of BDI's.

I think it's important that properly trained people operate a Nuclear reactor for this reason. I also think that it's important that the people who work in the reactor are listened to if they are complaining about a safety issue. They are the ones with the skill to operate the reactor and whose lives are essentially the canary in the cage for the rest of us. I really don't care what the issues are, if the workers with the experience to operate the plant are saying there is a problem - it should be fixed and proper working frame works are in place for the employees to ensure that their concerns are addressed.

I don't mind having a discussion but, is there any reason for the narky comments you have inserted throughout your reply? I'll answer your narkyness in kind if I have to but if you don't have anything to contribute aside for looking for a way to insult me then it proves you have no basis for argument.

It (very probably) targeted their centrifuges. Think for a second about what centrifuges do.

Perhaps this is your way of agreeing with me, do you realise that the centrifuge is part of the enrichment facility? The wiki article you sent me said;

There are reports that Iran's uranium enrichment facility at Natanz was the target of Stuxnet and the site sustained damage because of it, causing a sudden 15% reduction in its production capabilities.

I hadn't read it, so thanks, but it re-iterates the exact point I was making to you.

Which is one of the most irrational stances a person can take on the issue.

Why? I provided a perfectly rational explanation for my reasoning in the post I linked you to. If you have some specific criticisms of that reasoning you should offer them.

While you sound like you've read a little bit about nuclear, if you think that the waste problem is anything but a politician made canard, you're lying to yourself.

Well I know enough about Nuclear power to understand many of the issues, like the difference between a Breeder and Burner reactor. You have offered nothing with which to explain the basis of you statement about the waste situation being a political situation. Politics are certainly a component (i.e the Yucca debarcle) but waste from the Nuclear industry has a variety of physical properties one of the most significant factors being volume.

Have a look at this article, it should help you get a better understanding of the waste situation.

1) If something has a long half-life, it's not very radioactive. You either need a lot of it to pose a hazard, or you can just ignore it.

Plutonium's half life is 25,000 years and one microgram can cause fatal lung cancer or leukemia when ingested.

It's not like the uranium ore is contained in any way before it gets mined.

What do you mean uranium is not contained before it is mined? What do you think Uranium mining entails? If it helps you understand *how* Uranium is contained from it's natural state during the mining process with atypical concentration to get a kilogram of uranium you have to process 500 tons of hard ore and it's not enriched like the products of reactors are. Of that 1 kilo of Uranium about a gram will be U-235.

To break it down for you 500 tons of rock contain 1 gram of fissile material. I think that's sufficiently contained.

2) If something has a short half-life, or you have a lot of long half-life waste, it's not waste, it's fuel.

Keh? You may not be aware, but not everything that has toxic levels of radioactivity can go into a reactor, for example radioactive mine tailings.

The problem with nuclear waste isn't the radiation, it's the heat it generates.

Actually no it isn't. The biggest problem with nuclear waste is that radioactive isotopes analogue nutrients so they bio-accumulate in the food chain. That means;

a) It cannot be detected with the senses (taste, touch etc)

b) It's extremely toxic to life processes

To break it down for you once a radionuclide enters the body, the body identifies it as a nutrient and uses it as such. If it is deposited in the bones, in the case of a calcium analogue like strontium 90 as an example, it will continue to emit radiation creating a condition for cancer to incubate (typically 6 years). When the subject dies radionuclide will be released back into the environment where it continues to be toxic and is available to be ingested again. This is the nature of radioactive isotopes and the primary reason containment of Nuclear industry radionuclide effluent is a critical but poorly understood subject.

Which is why India is looking to use all the waste heat it produces to drive a turbine and generate power.

Are you saying they use waste heat from radioactive waste to produce electricity? Well that's very interesting and I would like to see a link to more information on that if you have one.

Or you can just put the MOX or whatever other products you get out of a reactor into a different reactor (ideally on the same site) that burns the 'waste', closing the fuel cycle. If you burnup 99.5% of your fuel, as the IFR does, then you put the remainder in a coffee can and throw it into a cooling pool on site.

Whilst I can appreciate your enthusiasm your oversimplification certainly ignores many of the logistical issues involved. Building an IFR on a commercial scale is certainly out of our reach technologically whilst pressure vessel embrittlement from neutron bombardment remains a factor in modern reactor design, especially fast reactors. Reprocessing is a key factor of IFR to achieve operating burn-up rates close to 19% the design is reputed to achieve. It's significantly different from existing reprocessing technology so your theoretical burn up rate of 99.5% cannot be achieved because, and I'll break it down for you so you can understand, the technology for IFR re-processing doesn't exist. I hope that makes sense.

Yeah, how flippant of me to think that it's cool to dispose of the DU we have lying around.

No, it's just appears that you don't really care that those kids suffer from the effects of DU poisoning that was exported as a by-product of Nuclear Industry activities. The only merit it seems to have to you is a way for you to get your IFR, not as an arms control issue that has to be resolved. So, yeah, flippant, callous, selfish and very not cool.

Looking at your other post (which again, is rather uninformed), you seem fixated on the illusory problems surrounding waste, so I'm puzzled why you don't think it's cool also to transmute the fuel into a form that is either entirely non-radioactive or with a shortish (100-200y) half-life.

You seem to be under the misconception that the actinides from an IFR would be *less* radioactive and find it ironic that you accuse me of being uninformed. When something is transmuted in a reactor from something with a long half to something with a shorter half life it becomes *more* radioactive. So putting aside the *type* of radioactivity, a reactor product like plutonium (an alpha emitter) which has a half-life of 25,000 years is much less radioactive than a reactor product with a half-life of 100-200 years.

I find your notion that a reactor has to last 1000 years to be a rather novel notion. What threat assumption are you acting under, here?

The peer reviewed science surrounding the net energy return of the entire Nuclear industry when viewed from a systemic level is well known and discussed. When examined as a whole more energy goes into the Nuclear Industry than what can safely come out. I know this notion is probably unbelievable to you but I will remind you that the science is peer reviewed which means it has been challenged and sustained after scientific scrutiny.

There is no Net energy return from the Nuclear Industry the way it is constructed. To break it down for you the reason that a reactor has to last 1000 years is so there is an actual point to having a Nuclear Industry.

We agree on many points. I simply don't want to let perfect become the enemy of good. The lack of stable storage is no reason not to build IFR now and fuel it with the "waste" we already have.

I think resolving the storage issue is the key to developing the reactor technology because it (storage) is the key area of the Nuclear industry that has been neglected. When Dixie Lee Ray was the head of the Atomic Energy Commission he proclaimed that the disposal of nuclear fuel would be "the greatest non-problem in history" and would be accomplished by 1985, yet here we are in 2010, over twenty years past that date and still there is no High level containment site anywhere. The closest anyone has come is the Swiss and even their project is a multi-decade test project and extremely expensive. Design of the actual facility shows the U.S how it *should* be done.

I'd envisage multiple reactors in a facility in the belly of a mountain, more like 20 or more in chambers, sequentially built, incrementally getting technologically better to reach the target lifespan. Because it's granite even the pressure vessel can be built into rock and may resolve some of the embrittlement issues that the steel suffers from due to neutron bombardment which limits the reactors lifespan. At the end of the target reactors lifetime the entire compartment is sealed with it's fissile ash and all the reactor components, waste products etc are allowed to cool never to be accessed.

This is completely in line with recommendations of a nuclear industry panel (Westinghouse, General Electric, Bechtel, Sargent & Lundy, Northern States Power and Commonwealth Edison) commissioned by the NRC and eliminates a majority of the issues with nuclear power. The most pertinent being that the energetic cost of reactor decommissioning consumes a significant portion of the energetic output of the reactor after it has been decommissioned.

It already exists and we already have nowhere to put it. While we're failing to put it somewhere we might as well get a few TWhr out of it. Of course, we should also be looking for somewhere to put it when we're done with it.

The issue here is that defeats the Integral nature of IFR and significantly reduces the Net energy output. Storing the fissile ash of an IFR on site is one of the design goals and centralises the logistic issues involved in moving pu-239 around a country. Of course, as mentioned, decommissioning and sealing the activated products of the reactor core would impose an enormous energetic penalty on the reactor and the best way to overcome that is to build the reactor with the decommisioning plan already in place. Building them this way mitigates failure and don't forget this is how the Nuclear industry *itself* says it should be done.

It seems to me that the entire discussion has polarised into pro or anti nuclear with few people prepared to engage in the mental effort involved in uncovering the actual engineering issues that have to be resolved within the Nuclear Industry. Thanks for considering my POV and being rational.

Well, good point. You need both, and most modern reactors do both. Reprocessing reduces the overall waste, but produces a Plutonium stream. If you don't have reactors that can burn them, then that's an issue.

I'll refer you to my response to sjames which should help you understand why we don't need both.

If you think that terrorists are going to break into a nuclear power plant, you probably haven't been paying much attention to the world around you.

Again I think you are basing your opinion on a flawed set of assumptions, however I am not going to reveal the details as it would be irresponsible.

Think about what Stuxnet was targeting for a second. Proliferation doesn't mean the USSR or First World countries get nuclear capabilities - it means people like Iran.

Stuxnet targets their Nuclear reactor. If it was to target any weapons capability it would have to target an enrichment facility. That means this has delayed Iran's capability to produce pu-239. The only logical conclusion was to delay the *potential* for Iran to produce Nuclear weapons and those that gain the most from such a tactic is Israel.

NNPT is all about weapons, if Iran has no enrichment facility then they have no capability to produce weapons grade plutonium.

Man, wouldn't it be cool then if we had a reactor like the IFR that could burn the massive stockpiles of DU we have lying around?

I think it would be simpler if we didn't use DU in ordinance essentially creating an atomic war against future generations. It kind of makes me ill that you used the word 'cool' in that sentence, like nothing really matters to you except getting an IFR - it's a long way away. Support the creation of a geologically stable waste containment facility if you want to engage in the type of responsible nuclear advocacy that may one day lead to an IFR. None of those kids deserve that kind of suffering.

In conclusion, if you think that Carter's ban on breeder reactors and Clinton's ban on the IFR didn't set our technology back by decades, and lock us into the fucked up cycle we have right now, with the largely politician-created nuclear waste problem, you're crazy.

oh dear, again see my other response, I don't think you are in full possession of the facts about Carters decision. The "fucked up cycle we have right now" is a result of a haphazzard ill considered program.

The bottom line is current breeder reactors are just out of our reach technologically to make work properly which has more of a bearing than any decision Carter or Clinton made. If we had a Breeder program that worked properly we would simply have three times the amount of plutonium we have now. The is no magic bullet reactor that exists today that is going to solve the plutonium and u-238 issue. I think if you spent more time gathering facts and examining the issues you would be able to make a more positive contribution to the discussion. Ignoring the facts whilst refusing to reason the optimal solution just makes it harder to get the right support to actually solve the issues with the Nuclear industry in a permanent and meaningful way.

Carter's decision made sense at that time. It doesn't now (but then he never claimed it was right forever, just for the time he made it). We should blame all of the subsequent presidents for not reversing the decision when that became the right thing to do.

Ok, I find myself being caught up in mis-information here, Carter never banned breeder reactors he banned reprocessing, here is the history surrounding Carter's decision.

• 1975 the first commercial reprocessing plant at West Valley, NY, had been shut down for modifications to double its size. The regulators called for complete seismic upgrades and the owners gave up. Another pilot-sized plant had been abandoned without operating. But a full-sized commercial reprocessing plant named Barnwell was under construction.
• Sept. 25, 1976 speech in San Diego, Jimmy Carter raised concerns about proliferation and promised that he would stop Barnwell until it was"needed" and safe, and only ever allow it to operate if it were on a multi-national basis.
• President Ford initiated a secret study to set a nonproliferation policy. Ford's statement was finally presented in a campaign speech at Portsmouth, Ohio, just five days before the 1976 election. He said that control of nuclear proliferation had to take precedence over commercial and national economic interests. He called for a delay of up to three years in starting the Barnwell reprocessing plant. Some argue that it was Ford who actually stopped reprocessing, not Carter.
• On April 7, 1977, President Jimmy Carter announced that the United States would defer indefinitely the reprocessing of spent nuclear reactor fuel. He stated that after extensive examination of the issues, he had reached the conclusion that this action was necessary to reduce the serious threat of nuclear weapons proliferation, and that by setting this example, the U. S. would encourage other nations to follow its lead.
• President Carter's Executive Order also announced that the U. S. would sponsor an international examination of alternative fuel cycles, seeking to identify approaches which would allow nuclear power to continue without adding to the risk of nuclear proliferation.
• In early 1982, President Reagan rescinded the Carter policy, allowed programmatic (as opposed to case-by-case) approvals for reprocessing of U.S. origin fuel by the Euratom nations and Japan, and even said that reprocessing could again be considered in the U. S.

So there you have it. Carters policy was rescinded by Reagan just 5 years after it's inception. Any argument and gnashing of teeth about Carters decision has been a moot point for well over 2 decades. Arguments about breeder reactors must be carried out on the basis of the merits of the technology which is known to be costly to implement and very hard to run safely.

If you are arguing for the creation of a plutonium economy it still isn't the right thing to do. There is ample reserves of plutonium (as I mentioned well over 70,000 tons) and absolutely no need to create any more so breeder reactors still don't make any sense. We have reached the limits of our existing infrastructure to handle existing pu-239 reserves, still have no proper plan to contain it and Yucca mountain has proven itself to be totally unsuitable.

As for IFR, we have actually run such a reactor (minus the reprocessing) already.

Indeed, a 62 megawatt reactor for 30 years, I have read a lot about it. Quite promising if the materials technology becomes available to make it reliable. The ability to utilise existing plutonium and u-238 makes approximately 5000 years of fuel from existing reserves. With such a technology a plutonium economy makes even less sense.

It need not run for 6000 years to be a net benefit since it is able to actually use some of that surplus plutonium we have sitting in "temporary" storage pools now. That stuff will last 100,000 years unless "burned" somehow. The waste after burning lasts 200-500 years. However, the plant itself does not become such waste, it would become safe in decades.The change in time frame changes the entire decision process. All that hand wringing about how to contain something for longer than written history and how to convey the warning to the future all goes away.

I quite deliberately said 600-1000 years, not 6000 years. Building a complex structure that could last up to 1000 years is almost within our technological grasp. Some who have read my criticisms of the Nuclear Industry may be surprised to find that I actually support the development of a reactor that addresses the issue of 70,000 tons of Pu-239 (and much more U-238) currently stored in reactor sites around America, simply because it's irresponsible for our generation to foist these issue onto later generations.

One of the core reasons I support the development of such a reactor because it is capable of utilising weapons grade plutonium as fuel creating an impetus for disarmament and, hopefully, slowly defusing the asymmetrical weapons threat.

Unfortunately, because there is no geologically sound Nuclear waste dump in operation it's totally inappropriate to discuss building a new reactor facility until a proper containment facility is available. Yucca mountain is not a suitable site because it is made of pumice and geologically active evidenced by recent aftershocks of 5.6 within ten miles of a repository that is supposed to be geologically stable for at least 500000 years. The DOE's own 1982 Nuclear Waste policy Act reported that Yucca Mountain's geology is inappropriate to contain nuclear waste, and long term corrosion data on C22 (the material to contain the Pu-239 and mitigate the ingress of water - yet another Yucca problem) is just not available.

We need something made of granite. The only human made structure with the potential to last 10000 years is Mt Rushmore, so it has to be an engineering project of that scale, because the logistical problems of transferring the 70000 odd tons of Pu239 to the spent fuel containment facility are so involved that you want to get it right the first time and only do it once.

Even doing that will probably take 30 years to complete, but there is more to it than that.

I was a big fan of the Integral Fast Reactor as a potential solution and in a way I still am. But the reality is 3rd and 4th generation reactors are a pipe dream because our material science is not advanced enough yet to produce a reactor design that will last the thousands of years it will take to use that fuel. If you are going to build reactors then do it properly and build a Terra-watt scale nuclear reactor facility the belly of a massive granite mountain with an attached waste facility and chomp up all your remaining plutonium or end all commercial nuclear activity altogether.

Why? Because Nuclear power is energy intensive *after* the energy has been produced simply because said technology (material sciences) are not adequate to produce a Nuclear reactor that has a life span that matches the geological time frames of the fuel. This exposes the facility to all the issues associated with de-commissioning reactor sites every 4 decades or so. A reactor design that lasts at least 1000 years and is a closed loop, i.e. the plutonium goes in and nothing comes out (except electricity and possibly hydrogen) and avoids all the energetic costs associated with mining, enrichment and de-commissioning/demolition of the reactor.

As long we are producing plutonium and there is no where for it to go we will have a Nuclear Weapons threat and this is the price we pay for opening that pandora's box. I don't hide the fact that I don't like the constant failure of the Nuclear Industry. But I'm also being realistic. I realise that the only way out of this mess is a well thought out and designed project because we have no other choice due to the nature of the materials. It entails redesigning the entire industry, and it's a long term solution. A well designed and secured facility resistant to attacks even from orbit because that's the type of 21st century threats it would have to face.

But it has to be done properly, and I don't think private industry is capable of delivering such a project. If we really think about it it will be a massive undertaking that will present many challenges that must be overcome if we are sincere about producing a well engineered safe Nuclear industry and sincere about a platform for disarmament.

(You know all the political mess we are in over waste products, and how California has banned new nuclear until the waste issue is resolved? Breeder reactors use nuclear 'waste' as fuel, burning over 99% of the fuel, instead of the 1% or so efficiency we get from traditional PWR/BWR reactors. IFRs can also burn depleted uranium, and weapons-grade plutonium.)

You are confusing two different types of *FAST* reactors technology, breeder and burner. Roughly, the process Breeder reactors perform combine similar quantities of two other elements with plutonium within the reactor and transmute them into plutonium. In other words Breeder reactors produce about three times as much plutonium that goes in creating a plutonium economy.

The IFR is a Burner reactor prototyped at Argonne National Laboratory's EBR-II. It achieved a burnup rate of 20% of the fuel before the remainder of the fuel has to be removed and reprocessed. The ambition was to have reprocessing facilities and all other facilities on-site, hence the name Integral Fast Reactor. Given this knowledge your claim that Californian policy on Nuclear reactors is a mess is, at best, not well informed.

Nah, Jimmy Carter set back the US nuclear program by 30 years by banning breeder reactors.

No he didn't. While people like to piss on Carter for this decision it is highly ignorant to do so. We have over 70,000 tons of waste plutonium *now* as a result of the once through cycle reactors we have now and still no plan to properly contain it. Had Carter not stepped in and ended the plutonium economy 30 years ago we would have an epidemic of plutonium production. Additionally Breeder reactors are much less forgiving than the once through reactor cycles that are currently in operation. Carter's decision to ban breeder reactors was a wise decision considering the lack of appropriate facilities to contain plutonium available today.

Well, Clinton can take some of the blame too, for killing the IFR

Indeed. Killing the research into IFR and it's complementary processes was probably a mistake. However material technology is still not available to make IFR a working proposition, especially as the reactor ages. IFR is only appropriate technology when the lifespan of the reactor matches the decay time of it's waste product. Yes, I am saying we should learn how to build a reactor that lasts 600-1000 years as the decommission of an IFR reactor every 40-60 years severely reduces it's viability and practicality. Still developing the surrounding Integral technologies would be a good step forward until the material technology is available for the reactor as the fuel reprocessing technology is as important as the reactor itself.

You mean back in the 1950s when the first breeder reactors were built? :p Sure, I'll grant you that...The modern Type IV reactors safe(r), and since they get rid of most of the waste that causes most of the political problems with nuclear power,

Again you are confusing Breeder and Burner reactor technology. Breeder reactors allow less time to control run away reactions. Since they are cooled with sodium as the age any air that leaks into the system makes them explosive and they contain far more radioactive materials than a reactor like Chernobyl. The only new breeder reactor under construction that I know of is in India, in a flood prone area and sodium and water aren't friends in a nuclear reactor.

I'd say that it was a pretty bad decision by Clinton to kill the IFR research project.

Yes it was, because it has great promise for burning up not only pu-239 but also U-238, or depleted uranium, DU.

if you're looking at risk levels from nuclear vs. other plants, the numbers just aren't there to support the anti-nuclear crowd. If nuclear killed even a hundredth of the people that have died from coal power (while it has been producing about half the power for our nation vs. coal), we'd have panicked and shut down all of the nuclear sites ages ago. We're fundamentally stupid about it.

You have the atypical "reactor-only" view of Nuclear power, not of the entire industrial process. Consider that less than 1% of refined Uranium ore actually makes it into a reactor and that of the remaining U-238 or DU some is used as ordinance, especially in Iraq. Take a look at this quick google image search and tell me if you think that these children deserve to be counted as victims of the industrial process that produced the du that will be present as a respirable dust for generations to come. This is un-acceptable collateral damage when even US soldiers are warning locals to stay away from tank wrecks destroyed by DU ordinance.

Sure, and I get what you're saying. But the main reason Carter and Clinton banned breeder reactors was not for safety reasons, but really about concerns over nuclear proliferation. The thinking is that if we had breeder reactors we'd not be able to morally take the high ground when we tried to stop Iran from going nuclear... oh wait. And also certain fears that people could steal the Plutonium coming out of the reactors and turn them into terrorist bombs. (Because, you know, if there's any place in America that is easy to steal from, it's a nuclear plant with all of its barbed wire and armed guards with machine guns.)

Again the basis of your criticism of, at least, Carters decision is based in the flawed assumption that breeder reactors "burn-up" plutonium when they actually produce plutonium. It is safety and proliferation as equal factors in a decision such as this. If a plutonium economy was in place it would have forced the then USSR into a similar stance and it would be hard to imagine less access to plutonium if more was available and a much larger Cold War. For that motivator alone it was the right decision.

Iran is light years away from producing a Breeder reactor - if that is what you are getting at and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, of which Iran is a signatory to, only applies to Nuclear weapons not reactors, so the claim that there is some moral high ground to stop Iran is meaningless. I hate the idea of Iran having Nuclear weapons but the reality of their political position wrt Nuclear weapons becomes the same as Israel's policy to deliver uncertainty on the matter.

As for terrorists, well lets just say that that your assumptions will allow you to sleep better at night.

Murdoch is not making documentaries, he's making propaganda/entertainment pieces. His presentation is not factual, it is slanted to tell a story he wants. Now that's fine, nothing at all wrong with that, however if you see him as a hero, well that just says that you aren't well informed on the issues. Not surprising, the world is complex and most people, Americans or otherwise, don't care to spend time to learn about all the shades of gray involved in something but there you go.

If you buy in to his version of the healthcare situation or the Iraq war or any of that all that speaks to is your lack of information on the matter. The reality is far different, far more complex, than the story he wishes to tell.

fixed that for ya.

Moore is a flaming psycho with a warped view of reality and a strong desire to push his views regardless of facts. He doesn't want people to think; he wants people to side with him like sheep. We have enough bullshit artists in the media; we don't need more.

80% of them are right wing bullshit artists and 20% are left wing bullshit artists. Though the pun is hard to avoid, perhaps we do need Moore.