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Ok, but then to be fair a substantial portion of the defense budget should be counted as subsidies to oil companies. I've heard this before and it makes no sen

Ok, but then to be fair a substantial portion of the defense budget should be counted as subsidies to oil companies. I've heard this before and it makes no sense to me. The US spends a lot of money on defense because Americans love the military and use it to funnel money into all sorts of places that would otherwise be quite poor. And most US military operations around the world don't do anything to reduce the price of oil. I mean, Iraq is not exactly giving us oil for free now is it? The French seem to not be starving. True, they're not. But the original claim was that liberal opposition to nuclear power was the problem. My counterclaim was that you will find zero support amongst American conservatives for a nuclear power policy anything like the successful one used in France. Can you point to any important American conservatives who publicly speak favorably about the France's nuclear system and advocate for adopting it in the US? And large projects being late and over budget is not at all surprising, regardless of the field. I have friends that do design and construction for power plants and, according to them, the cost and schedule overruns in nuclear plant construction really are surprising.

anamax 16y ago
> My counterclaim was that you will find zero support amongst American conservatives for a nuclear power policy anything like the successful one used in France. Can you point to any important American conservatives who publicly speak favorably about the France's nuclear system and advocate for adopting it in the US? So what? Note that US conservatives do support more nuclear plants like the ones that we have. It's also fairly easy to find conservative support for nuclear power under a variety of other circumstances. Yes, France does use reprocessing, but the US nuclear power industry didn't ban that here. Do you want to argue that the French system is cheaper because the French govt is not subject to the review cost that US companies must pay? Or is it that the French govt doesn't have to pay certain "in operation" costs by virtue of being a govt? In either case, imposing those costs is clearly a choice. BTW - You can't damn someone for not going along with an "authority" unless you accept said authority. In other words, by suggesting that we should agree with said conservatives in all things, you're saying that you do.
anamax 16y ago
> I mean, Iraq is not exactly giving us oil for free now is it? Good point. Suppose that you wanted to use the US military to get cheap oil. Would your plan for doing so have anything to do with how the US military is currently deployed?

anamax 16y ago

> My counterclaim was that you will find zero support amongst American conservatives for a nuclear power policy anything like the successful one used in France. Can you point to any important American conservatives who publicly speak favorably about the France's nuclear system and advocate for adopting it in the US? So what? Note that US conservatives do support more nuclear plants like the ones that we have. It's also fairly easy to find conservative support for nuclear power under a variety of other circumstances. Yes, France does use reprocessing, but the US nuclear power industry didn't ban that here. Do you want to argue that the French system is cheaper because the French govt is not subject to the review cost that US companies must pay? Or is it that the French govt doesn't have to pay certain "in operation" costs by virtue of being a govt? In either case, imposing those costs is clearly a choice. BTW - You can't damn someone for not going along with an "authority" unless you accept said authority. In other words, by suggesting that we should agree with said conservatives in all things, you're saying that you do.

anamax 16y ago

> I mean, Iraq is not exactly giving us oil for free now is it? Good point. Suppose that you wanted to use the US military to get cheap oil. Would your plan for doing so have anything to do with how the US military is currently deployed?