Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Puddin’ Head Wilson’s Cat & Japanese Nukes

I don't like copying out whole posts, good writing deserves the traffic. From time to time though you have to.
In this case the prof wrote so tight that there's no place to cut. On the other hand you do get a bonus if you check out his site, he has as good a feel for Gazprom, and thus Russia and/or NatGas, as as any ex-pat commodities trader.
From Streetwise Professor:
With the catastrophe at the Fukushima reactors in Japan has led to additional scrutiny of nuclear power plant construction projects around the world.  This is indeed prudent, but we should hope that the reviews are done soberly and carefully, rather than in a Chicken Little fashion.

For instance, the “no nukes of any kind anywhere” position advanced by people like Rep. Ed Markey from Massachusetts is a premature over-reaction.  ”No boiling water nukes on seismically active coastlines vulnerable to tsunamis that could destroy emergency generators needed to operate cooling pumps” is sensible.  Just where between those extremes the line should be drawn depends on myriad factors, not least of which is the nature of new nuclear power technologies.  (Spare me the Chernobyl references: even Fukushima analogies are inapt when discussing more modern reactor designs.)
We should, in brief, keep in mind what Puddin’ Head Wilson said:
We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it – and stop there — lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again, and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one any more. [Emphasis added.]
In other words, when evaluating the future of nuclear power, we should not be like Wilson’s cat.
And another Twain phrase also comes to mind while following these events:
If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed.
And that goes double for the internet.  (Present company excluded, of course.)