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A bellwether is any entity in a given arena that serves to create or influence trends or to presage future happenings.

The term is derived from the Middle English bellewether and refers to the practice of placing a bell around the neck of a castrated ram (a wether) in order that this animal might lead its flock of sheep.

You have to be kidding me. You are citing an article from a Notre Dame professor about nuclear energy that says, “The government’s own data show that U.S. nuclear reactors have more than a one-in-five lifetime probability of core melt”? A professor that teaches in the “College of Arts and Letters”? From a school that doesn’t have a nuclear engineering or a mining program?

There are over 60 nuclear power plants operating in the United States…many with more than one reactor, so let’s say there are 100 reactors in operation. Assuming the allegation that there is more than a 1 in 5 chance of a core melt during the plant lifetime and the plant lifetime is say 40 years, then there will be at LEAST 20 meltdowns over the 40 years. Either they are all saving up all the meltdowns to happen at once and we have a major shit storm a coming, or the professor of arts and letters never studied science and numbers. My bet is on the later seeing as how there has never been a meltdown in the United States.

Perhaps Professor Whackjob and Sergeant Sierra Club ought to consider their proposal. How much metal and plastic go into a wind farm rig? How much greenhouse gas is generated in fabricating it? How much of the landscape will be covered in wind farms in order to meet the energy demand?

Also, just to point out the reality of our area…KCP&L uses 15% nuclear energy and that is 5% LOWER than the national average. I cannot say nuclear is for certain the best option, but I can say for certain, the Sierra Club and Professor Whackjob are the least qualified to determine the answer.

Ah, Trevor, we meet again. You're dead-on and sensible here, and that pisses me off more than the countless times when you're loony. If smart conservatives start posting on place like the Pitch, people might start, like, listening to each other. I want my echo chamber!

The problem is that people like the author seek out information sources that reinforce their misinformed opinions and they're not fussy about how reliable the sources are. Greenpeace, Sierra Club, and a biology professor. Yep, that's about what you'd expect.

Then they get angry because no one takes them seriously. Well, what can you do?

It would take a wind farm the size of West Virginia to produce as much power as one nuclear reactor

Check out www.pickensplan.com. If you want something cleaner than coal, go Nat Gas, if you want something cleaner than Nat Gas, look at augmenting with Wind. Please look at the site referenced www.pickensplan.com.

it would take a windfarm the size of West virginia to generate the number of posts it takes robert to make his point.

seriously, though it's happened to me, too. hey, pitch, get a server hat doesn't seem to hangup when we post our brilliant musings!

I've been looking hard at wind farms bacause in my gut I like the idea and I really want to be a solid pro-wind farm guy. A few problems keep interferring.

Most obvious, if you have wind power you also have to have enough fixed generating capacity to cover the baseload if the wind isn't blowing. And the back-up plant has to be kept running at some minimum level (where incidentally the plant operates less efficiently) because a plant doesn't startup like a car; it takes a minimum of half a day to startup a small, simple steam based elecltric power plant. So the wind mill generator is expensive all by itself, and you also have to have the same power plant as if you didn't use wind.

And by the way, wind has to be between 5 and 35-55 mph. Turns out they only actually produce power about 1/3 of the time. So you really need about 3 times the generating capacity to produce rated output. The Department of Energy promotes renewable energy sources, and the Energy Information Adminstration produces an annual report (google it for some great info). Oddly, with one exception (up state New York) wind power is available in areas where populaiton density is fairly low. Wind farms have to be located where the ability to move large amounts of electricity don't exist, and the cost of power line and sub station installations are very high, which makes the cost of the installation even higher.

Wind mills are only econmic if there is a lot of government support, which means money comes out of my pocket to generate electricity in someone else's home. In the absence of government subsidies and tax breaks, the cost of a wind mill generator is not viable unless the cost to the consumer is about 5 times current rates.