You can blame it on humans attempting to undertake a science they have yet to have the capacity to undertake.

Greed is a factor in that.

>>5086
We have the capacity to understand energy. Problems arise when profit is prioritized ahead of human life.

>>5087
Well, people die all the time, no need to make a huge deal about it. But on the flipside, there is no reason for advancement either, we keep at it but I have no idea for what end. Those who push it forward will likely never see its accomplishments.

Interesting seeing so many people on /tc/ up in arms during the earthquake threads about how valuable human life is, when as I see it, most of us seem to really dislike normals.

Why all the care? I don't mean to be rude, sorry if I came off that way, I was just being honest.

Well, every second people die and people are born. Nothing new about people dying, of course. I don't care as long as I get what I want. Another person's death has nothing to do with me unless if they are my parents or close relatives.

>>5089
well, Japanese culture has a big influence in our lives, it's where our animu mango vns figs and many of our games that we waste away our lives on come from.

we might not be obsessed with japan or it's people, but we do value what comes out of it.

>>5091
>we might not be obsessed with japan or it's people, but we do value what comes out of it.

That's the main difference between /tc/ and obnoxious cancerous weeaboos. Normals may call us both weeaboos, but they don't understand and lump us in with the gaiafags, narutards, cosplayers and the rest of the weeaboo cancerous ilk.

Nuclear power thread?
I think nuclear power is cool. It's very reliable, viable and powerful ; and nuclear power is the biggest power we can control so far and it's worth learning more about it, using it is the best way to learn.
I don't find the human lives statistically that important but when I think about them as individuals, the people that died, those that lost their family, well, I get sad and value them more.
So I'm pro nuclear but if it's done responsibly, following the rules that have been set so that risks are as low as humanly possible and no one will have to die if possible.
That, so far it seems, wasn't the case in Fukushima.

>>5089
>Interesting seeing so many people on /tc/ up in arms during the earthquake threads about how valuable human life is, when as I see it, most of us seem to really dislike normals.
I'm not seeing the connection. Anyone who isn't a sociopath is a normalfag?

Basically what tohno said. I wouldn't have given a shit about this quake if it happened anywhere else, but since Japan produces the things that make my life tolerable the whole thing made me quite concerned

>>5087
We have not the capacity to foresee otherwise foreseeable consequences. For instance, the mistake of building a nuclear power plant so close to an active faultline is actually quite common around the world, since it's one of the few areas where solid bedrock is exposed. If humans were to not take unnecessary risks, a habit we have failed to rid ourselves of, a lot of the major problems we face now would not have happened. However, risks must be taken, but all options must be weighed before a risk is accepted.

This is what humanity lacks. When it comes down to it, all problems and mistakes can be avoided by making the right decision. Tepco decided to save money by taking risks, GE decided to save money by taking risks, the politicians that accepted the plan decided to let them build the powerplants and implied that they accept risks that they may have not known about.

You don't give a six-year-old a hard candy until they are old enough to understand how to eat it carefully, but even a 40 year old can choke on that same candy.

On the nuclear issue, however, I support small facilities instead of the huge ones like Chernobyl, 3 Mile Island, and Fukushima 1, 2 and Onagawa. The small ones are easier to make, easier to maintain, last longer, and if something bad did happen to them (which it has yet to), it isn't a broad-scale disaster. People are angry over nuclear because it was introduced to the world in the form of the atom bomb and ballistic missiles, not in a reliable fuel source context. This is idiotic because the napalm dropped on German, Japanese, and Vietnamese villages was made from the same gas people fuel their cars with, but nobody's protesting that.

I support mass utilization of wind and solar power. Of course the oil industry can't have this though.

Tohno-chan, I'm severely disappointed in some of you right now. Even with the reactor accident far less people over the last 10 years have died to nuclear power than coal or oil(we're talking two or three magnitudes here, or more), which are the only two real alternatives right now. It took one of the largest disasters in human history to even put people in danger of dying at the Japanese power plants. And you know what? Wikileaks is huge in size. It's every political cable over a span of years. You can find a warning about anything in there. Trying to use it as an "I told you so" is really dumb.

How about this, if you're against people dying for using energy you just keep all your electronics permanently off? Try and have some perspective people.

>>5162
Not him, but the technology is there and it's undoubtedly going to improve. There are already loads of wind farms in parts of the US and Europe. Obviously we aren't going to stop using more effective but dirtier forms of power if we can't make up the difference in supply.

>>5163
Sorry, I deleted that post before you responded because I felt I was a bit too harsh in it. That said, my opinion hasn't changed. Wind and Solar are just unfeasible right now. The only reason to make them at all is in the hopes that they'll get better. In the mean-time the world needs its candles lit and something needs to be built and used right now, you're right.

I also don't foresee wind or solar even being feasible in the near future. Unless some new branch of technology opens up we've never expected they're completely pointless. It basically works like this:

The energy grid must have enough power available at all times to meet the demand. If that demand is not met black out results. Wind and solar are not able to give a consistent number.

Nuclear on the other hand does give a consistent output. Doing the equivalent of disconnecting the nuclear plants for the duration of a sunny day is pointless as the plant will still be outputting energy, also no one would ever be dumb enough to try and meet any quotient with solar or wind in the energy business because if it fails everyone gets a nice "brownout".

So in the end we're stuck with some nifty looking and good feeling turbines and panels which can't do more than supplement during good harvesting periods, and the only thing they can supplement is individual users as the grid still needs to produce enough for if all those good feeling energy harvesters stop working.

>>5164
Yeah, it seems like wind and solar in their current forms aren't that effective at all. But the idea of using wind and solar power by opening up new roads of technology, as you say, could work. I'm not an engineer or anything, so I don't know the details.

We can only hope fusion energy becomes available in our life time (last time I heard, they're about to break even; a state at which energy produced equals the power consumed to sustain it). No radiation, deuterium readily available in large quantities, no air pollution, no dangerous by-products. Why don't we invest more in fusion research? I really hope ITER will be a success.

The reign of oil should already be over, if you want my opinion, but we're artificially maintaining it.

>>5165
My grand parents installed a small wind turbine on their ranch. Costed around $12 000 and it produces about 2.7kW, which is enough to power some their machinery. Of course, they still need a secure energy source.

I like to imagine a world where every household has some kind of wind turbine or solar panels.

Fukushima's Nuclear Plant had already survived two big earthquakes without considerable damage, by precedent, in the event of an earthquake they should've been fine.

>>5207
That's the thing; The plant wasn't even damaged by the earthquake. The tsunami wiped out the backup power generators and damaged the cooling system. Basically, this was a freak accident that could happen anywhere where a nuclear plant is on the coastline. The earthquake didn't do any substantial damage.

>>5191
Most people don't have 12,000 dollars and a ranch to build a wind turbine on, but maybe with more advances the technology will become more practical.