Anyone altering their driving habits due to outrageous gas prices?

[unotis]

Originally Posted by F91

Perhaps they could store the safe nuclear waste in Florida?

I know you're trying to be funny and don't mean that but, I'll explain it to you anyway (just in case).

Where they plan to deposit the spent nuclear fuel is in Yucca Mountain New Mexico, it wil be put into concrete encased containers and buried like a 1000 feet below the surface. It will be safe there because there is no ground water present nor any rainfall that could seep down through the surface to possibly cause runoff from the buried spent fuel (if by some miracle it was exposed) which could not happen.

Florida incase you are not aware has one of the largest underground aquaifers in the world (billions upon billions of water) and the water level is just a couple of feet below the surface so it would not be a good place to deposit spent nuclear fuel. Infact if they buried the containers, they could just pop right back onto the surface if we had an excessive rainfall that cause the ground water aquaifer to swell.

Don't think I am lecturing you because I think you are ignorant but, the truth is most Americans are woefully ignorant about nuclear power and even alternative fuels like Hydrogen Fuel cells and even Electically powered vehicles.

In the last 10 years there have been so many technological changes that most Americans are suffering from a form of information overload and instead of trying to learn all those new things they have just shut down their interest in learning anything new, it is just easier to keep doing the same old things, even if it becomes both dangerous and much too expensive to reconcile their continued usage.

I'm actually afraid it will take the situations to become so bad that we are in actual mortal danger to our economy and to our very lives in order to wake up and actually start to do the things we could have easily started to do right now before things progressed into placing all of us into a dire panic stricken set of circumstances.

[Lee Stewart]

Unotis:

The second plus of Yucca Mtn is that geologists have determined that this area has no risk of earthquakes and has been stable for hundreds of millions of years.

And as a FL resident - I am sure that you saw that the state of Florida denied FPL the license to build a coal fired power plant due to environmental concerns and issues. (So what is new?)

I posted an article about this about 10 posts ago.

Oh and the previous poster was pulling your leg as to say, " Let's put the nuclear spent fuel depository in YOUR state . . . not mine!"

The old NIMBY thinking - Not In My Back Yard.

[unotis]

Originally Posted by Lee Stewart

Unotis:

The second plus of Yucca Mtn is that geologists have determined that this area has no risk of earthquakes and has been stable for hundreds of millions of years.

Oh and the previous poster was pulling your leg as to say, " Let's put the nuclear spent fuel depository in YOUR state . . . not mine!"

The old NIMBY thinking - Not In My Back Yard.

Yes, I knew that about Yucca Mountain, my friend was the Geologist used to do the studies on Yucca Mountain, he works for an International firm that does ground studies on stability, and ground water movement, he also travels all over the world supervising Toxic waste clean-ups (there is really good money in that business).

And I assumed the other poster was pulling my leg but, sometimes it is hard to tell (especially on this forum), people react very differently to the thought of nuclear power, and sometimes they have this nasty knee jerk reaction and aggressively attack even the discussion of it's usage.

[F91]

It's funny, as a native , born and raised Floridian, to have you guys lecture me on the ecology of my home state. BTW, I don't live in New Mexico either.
How in the world is it Nimbyism on my part,when you folks won't accept the waste, but it's a good idea for others? You guys are the ones touting the "safe" spent nuclear waste. It's safe, or it isn't. Or, is it only safe in certain areas or as long as it's not near you?
Lastly, when you drive around, check out the Indian River power plant or Turkey Point. I helped build them.
Oh, and FPL is a horrible, horrible company. You guys are getting so screwed, their system is a joke. No maintenance, substandard equipment, sky high rates and the next hurricane, 3 week outages. Great....

[Lee Stewart]

Originally Posted by F91

It's funny, as a native , born and raised Floridian, to have you guys lecture me on the ecology of my home state. BTW, I don't live in New Mexico either.
How in the world is it Nimbyism on my part,when you folks won't accept the waste, but it's a good idea for others? You guys are the ones touting the "safe" spent nuclear waste. It's safe, or it isn't. Or, is it only safe in certain areas or as long as it's not near you?
Lastly, when you drive around, check out the Indian River power plant or Turkey Point. I helped build them.
Oh, and FPL is a horrible, horrible company. You guys are getting so screwed, their system is a joke. No maintenance, substandard equipment, sky high rates and the next hurricane, 3 week outages. Great....

All true.

But we don't get snow

[junehhan]

Originally Posted by F91

It's funny, as a native , born and raised Floridian, to have you guys lecture me on the ecology of my home state. BTW, I don't live in New Mexico either.
How in the world is it Nimbyism on my part,when you folks won't accept the waste, but it's a good idea for others? You guys are the ones touting the "safe" spent nuclear waste. It's safe, or it isn't. Or, is it only safe in certain areas or as long as it's not near you?
Lastly, when you drive around, check out the Indian River power plant or Turkey Point. I helped build them.
Oh, and FPL is a horrible, horrible company. You guys are getting so screwed, their system is a joke. No maintenance, substandard equipment, sky high rates and the next hurricane, 3 week outages. Great....

Bottom line when it comes to toxic and radioactive waste, is put it where people ain't. Last time I checked, Florida had a bigger population that is also more dense. Florida also has a much more fragile ecosystem whiel Yucca Mountain is supposedly in the middle of a desert away from civilization.

[bruceames]

I'm not altering my driving habit because I work 1/2 mile from home. I've had my 2003 Chevy S10 for almost 4 years and I only have 26k miles on it. However we usually go out in my wife's car so that helps. Seems anybody with at least one kid and many with none are buying SUVs these days. This is a gas-guzzling, selfish and domesticated society we live in.

[enmoco]

Originally Posted by bruceames

I'm not altering my driving habit because I work 1/2 mile from home. I've had my 2003 Chevy S10 for almost 4 years and I only have 26k miles on it. However we usually go out in my wife's car so that helps. Seems anybody with at least one kid and many with none are buying SUVs these days. This is a gas-guzzling, selfish and domesticated society we live in.

Marin county is a truly beautiful area and many would love to live in San Rafeal. It would be safe to say there are people who would envy you......as well.

[unotis]

Originally Posted by F91

It's funny, as a native , born and raised Floridian, to have you guys lecture me on the ecology of my home state. BTW, I don't live in New Mexico either.
How in the world is it Nimbyism on my part,when you folks won't accept the waste, but it's a good idea for others? You guys are the ones touting the "safe" spent nuclear waste. It's safe, or it isn't. Or, is it only safe in certain areas or as long as it's not near you?
Lastly, when you drive around, check out the Indian River power plant or Turkey Point. I helped build them.
Oh, and FPL is a horrible, horrible company. You guys are getting so screwed, their system is a joke. No maintenance, substandard equipment, sky high rates and the next hurricane, 3 week outages. Great....

The truth of the matter is, you put Radioactive waste where it will not do any harm.

Where there is no chance of ground water contamination, like in the desert in New Mexico, where ground water ( if there is any) moves like several inches yearly.

If you are the great "native born and raised Floridian", then you would know Florida does in fact have some small amount of ground water (like billions upon billions of gallons).

This is not a case of I don't want the waste in my state, it is a case of put it where it could be safely kept for years and years with no problems at all.

I said I thought you were pulling my leg, so what is the problem?

[daleb]

Imagine being a politician (sorry..) and trying to sell your constituency on using nearby land for nuclear waste.
It is very obvious why NE is stalling, and politics has almost everything to do about it.
Hell, we have local bars frequented by hardcore bikers and gangbangers twisting the arms of politicians to ban half-way houses for drug addicts from opening up 2 blocks away. (Guess they are scared of some of their former clients.) And they are winning. What chance does nuclear energy have?

[bruceames]

Originally Posted by enmoco

Marin county is a truly beautiful area and many would love to live in San Rafeal. It would be safe to say there are people who would envy you......as well.

It is very beautiful as you say and I would not wish to live anywhere else. However, I don't think too many would trade me their house for my high apartment rent. Hopefully I can get a house here soon but it's tough...

[junehhan]

Originally Posted by bruceames

I'm not altering my driving habit because I work 1/2 mile from home. I've had my 2003 Chevy S10 for almost 4 years and I only have 26k miles on it. However we usually go out in my wife's car so that helps. Seems anybody with at least one kid and many with none are buying SUVs these days. This is a gas-guzzling, selfish and domesticated society we live in.

Like it or not, it drives the economy and may be the only thing keeping some automakers from entering the history books as so many other automakers have in the bad sense. For some automakers, it's the only thing they seem to earn a profit on while it pads the pockets of other firms that are financially doing pretty well. Look at how GM's new lineup of redesigned mega-utes and trucks appears to have temporarily slowed down their bleeding of red ink. The thing about America, is that people have choice and they choose to live comfortably. America is a big spread out nation, and solutions that work for other more densly populated area's of the world either won't work or are not acceptable by our standards. Whether America is selfish or not, the world could not possibly exist at the current economic level without America as we are the largest consumers of export products for many nations of the world.

[Lee Stewart]

Good News!

Gas prices seem to be going down!

Price of regular is $2.99 at a number of stations in my area - Chevron, Mobil, BP. Liberty Gas is now $2.97.

OK - no more worries. We can forget all this talk about H2 and Ethanol and such - business as usual - just a scare.

[bruceames]

Originally Posted by junehhan

Like it or not, it drives the economy and may be the only thing keeping some automakers from entering the history books as so many other automakers have in the bad sense. For some automakers, it's the only thing they seem to earn a profit on while it pads the pockets of other firms that are financially doing pretty well. Look at how GM's new lineup of redesigned mega-utes and trucks appears to have temporarily slowed down their bleeding of red ink. The thing about America, is that people have choice and they choose to live comfortably. America is a big spread out nation, and solutions that work for other more densly populated area's of the world either won't work or are not acceptable by our standards. Whether America is selfish or not, the world could not possibly exist at the current economic level without America as we are the largest consumers of export products for many nations of the world.

What I don't understand is why car makers have to sell some vehicle types at a loss and make up for it by padding truck and SUV prices? Can't they break out of that cycle and just charge what they're worth?

I meant selfish in a really general way, in the sense that Americans are very domestically oriented and thus think of themselves more. But that's to be expected expected from a society that doesn't envy any other and wants to keep what's theirs.

Anyway, I like my S10 and I get a lot of work out of it on my weekend side jobs.

[junehhan]

Originally Posted by bruceames

What I don't understand is why car makers have to sell some vehicle types at a loss and make up for it by padding truck and SUV prices? Can't they break out of that cycle and just charge what they're worth?

I meant selfish in a really general way, in the sense that Americans are very domestically oriented and thus think of themselves more. But that's to be expected expected from a society that doesn't envy any other and wants to keep what's theirs.

Anyway, I like my S10 and I get a lot of work out of it on my weekend side jobs.

I highly recommend that you trade in that S10 for a nice F150 or HD Silverado. It will increase your manhood by 25% and will increase your sex appeal for 40% as well as overall confidence going up 15%. You get the picture, but part of our lust for large vehicles is in how driving these vehicles are percieved by others. We seem to be an incredibly image oriented society as well, where mommy often cares more about what Babs(Barbra Streisand) did last weekend than what grades her kid just got in school. The other issue as I stated earlier is that America is an incredibly spread out country with wide open spaces. You can often drive from tip to tip of many other countries in a few hours, but that simply doesn't happen here. Because of our spread out lifestyle(which is partially responsible for urban sprawl), our lifestyles often also demand these types of vehicles which goes hand in hand with the high level of disposable income that most American's have in comparison to the rest of the world. You can't tow that trailer or that boat with a car, and fuel efficiency requirements have basically made the full body on frame car obsolete. I will honestly cry if Ford even discontinues the Crown Vic, because that car has a special place in the heart of automotive enthusiasts who have appreciate such robustness(I owned one before selling it to my father).

The bottom line is that people should not be restricted, as the market will do a good enough job of that. High gas prices are forcing people to rethink their car buying strategy even without the government forcing new regulations. Look at how much SUV and truck sales have dropped. Of course the CUV segment is exploding, but these vehicles are a nice compromise as they provide almost the utility of an SUV, and almost the fuel economy of a larger car.