The progressive quiz and renewable energy

On March 11, 2009, the Center for American Progress had a post called "Interactive Quiz: How Progressive Are You?".  On March 14th, someone posted it to a message board.  I took the quiz and said:

81/400 extremely conservative

I don't really like using a scale for these questions and on some of them I thought there could be various interpretations.

A Russian immigrant wrote this:

On re-taking I got 58. Some of their questions could be answered identically both by a starry-eyed lefty and by an extremely reactionary troglodyte, to wit:
"human life begins at conception and should be protected from that point onward"- but a troglodyte who does not believe that it should be protected at all, unless necessary for some other reason, would dial "0" just as a pro-choice lefty would;
"energy transformation" - to renewables, nuclear energetics is not mentioned at all;
"US cannot impose democracy"- a lefty would say that US cannot, and a troglodyte would agree, but with a qualification "unless genociding the natives and re-settling the place";
and so on.

I responded to the part on energy with this:

It would be great to be totally on renewable sources, but in the meantime we have to use fossil fuels. We also don't need progressives and government alliances defining which types of energy are acceptable.

Another person said:

There is no such thing as renewable energy, just energy sources with different densities and price performance curves over time.

Nuclear energy is non-renewable in the same way hydroelectric is non-renewable.

On March 10, the Deseret News had a letter from Gary Sandquist of Salt Lake City called "All energy depletes".  I introduced the article and then shared it:

There was an editorial in our local newspaper last week about this topic:

"Renewable energy is an interesting slogan. The assertion is that only energy sources that are continuously renewed by natural processes are sustainable and therefore preferable. Thus, renewable sources should be pursued regardless of cost in preference to all other energy sources.

Actually, there are no sustainable energy sources. All energy is subject to depletion and the laws of physics and thermodynamics.

An interesting energy source considered nonrenewable is nuclear. The universe taps its energy by converting mass to energy. Even our sun has a finite lifetime measured in a few billion years and is not sustainable. Yet, the "sustainability" sloganeers maintain that only wind, solar, geothermal and hydro are renewable. Interestingly, all our "sustainable energy" sources derive their energy from nuclear reactions."

Another person responded with this:

Uh . . . isn't "depleted uranium" called that because it's depleted of the readily fissionable isotope (U-235)?

That second person who wrote about energy said this:

Yes, the remainder is mostly Uranium-238. Add another neutron in a breeder reactor and you have Plutonium-239, which can be burned slowly as fuel or rapidly as a bomb.

A fourth person said:

Those tails could also be used to downblend weapons-grade uranium to reactor-grade.

DU can also be used directly in nuclear weapons as a third stage of an H-bomb.

Then a fifth person, who is Jewish, made a joke about DU:

Look ... I'm no fan of Democratic Underground, either, but isn't this just a bit ridiculous?