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TechnoratiUS Lawmakers Seek More Nuclear Power in Bill
WASHINGTON - U.S. lawmakers on Thursday sought to increase incentives for nuclear power and energy efficiency in a measure that would require utilities to generate a certain amount of electricity from renewable sources.
![[Steam rises from a cooling tower at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Watts Bar Nuclear Plant in Spring City, Tennessee, 50 miles south of Knoxville in this September 7, 2007 file photo. (REUTERS/Chris Baltimore)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/lawmakers_nuclearpower.png "lawmakers_nuclearpower.png")
Nuclear power is not currently considered a renewable electricity source in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee bill. Under the bill, a percentage of utilities' total power production would have to be dedicated to renewables.
The committee adopted an amendment offered by Ranking Member Lisa Murkowski that excluded any increases in capacity at existing nuclear power plants and new nuclear plants from measures of utilities' total production for the renewable electricity standard.
By not counting nuclear upgrades within utilities' overall electricity output, the amendment effectively allows power plants to increase energy production without also increasing the amount of renewable power those plants must generate.
Other nuclear power amendments were voted down by the panel, including one offered by Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona. McCain's measure would have counted all nuclear power as renewable energy.
"Reduced greenhouse gas emissions, have cleaner sources of energy and diversity: I certainly think nuclear power meets all of those definitions," McCain said.
The proposed bill would require power plants meet targets to gradually produce more renewable power, beginning with 3 percent of their output between 2011 and 2013 and rising to 15 percent between 2021 and 2039.
Utilities could meet about a quarter of their renewable requirements through energy efficiency gains. The panel voted down an amendment offered by Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana that would have removed the cap on how much energy efficiency can be used to comply with the renewable standard.
"We wanted to incentivize renewable power because it was seen as best way to clean our air and reduce our greenhouse emissions. It's become clear, however, we can do even better and more cheaply by improving efficiency in our existing generation," Landrieu said.
Other lawmakers said the renewable energy targets in the proposed bill were not strong enough. Committee chairman Jeff Bingaman's initial draft would have required 20 percent of power from renewable energy in 2021-2039.
"It seems to me we've come a long way in the wrong direction since November," said Democratic Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey.
Menendez is co-sponsoring an amendment authored by Democratic Senator Mark Udall of Colorado that would direct utilities to produce 25 percent of electricity from renewable sources by 2025. The Senators plan to offer their measure before the full Senate.
The renewable power mandate would be folded into a larger energy package that would address various issues including building efficiency, expanding electricity transmission and domestic energy production. The committee plans to vote on the complete package next week.
(Editing by Christian Wiessner)
25 Comments so far
Show AllEverything Nuclear:
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Nuclear Power* but were afraid to ask
It becomes ever more obvious and urgent that we must halt massive construction projects of many types, considering the post-carbon world, the specter of catastrophic climate disruption and the long life of deadly radioactive nuclear waste.
The compelling new video, Everything Nuclear, produced by David Weisman and the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility, is packed with authoritative interviews of experts on the myriad problems of nuclear power. Featured here is a transcription of the highly informative speakers juxtaposed against industry promotional videos and government propaganda videos.
Watch the video at:
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Here's a transcription of the video Everything Nuclear:
http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=450&Itemid=1
Just a quick check of our friendly radioactive elements:
Radioactive elements from nuclear power plants:
Here is a short list of 'some' of the radioactive
elements being released into our environment.
Common radionuclide | radioactive elements half - life:
Beryllium.........................2,700,000 years
Calcium..............................100,000 years
Cesium-137...................half life - 30 years
Cesium-135......................2,000,000 years
Rubidium.................47,000,000,000 years
Palladium.........................7,000,000 years
iodine-129......................17,200,000 years
plutonium-239........half life - 24,390 years
strontium-89.................................53 days
strontium-90................................28 years
tin-126................................100,000 years
uranium-235.................713,000,000 years
uranium-238...............4,510,000,000 years
Brought to you by:
http://www.thenuclearproject.com/rad%20elements.htm
samosamo,
Here are some more you could include:
technetium-99 (used 30 million times a year for diagnostic studies, mostly heart imaging)
yttrium-90 used to treat non Hodgkins lymphoma
phosphorus-32 used to treat polycythenia
rhenium-186 and samarium-153 used to treat bone cancer pain
iodine-131 used to treat thyroid cancer
americium-241 used in millions of household smoke detectors
hydrogen-3 (tritium) used in self illuminated exit signs
Bill
Washington is still paying for WPPSS but with nuclear power we get tons of depleted uranium to sprinkle on playgrounds everywhere.
harvey wasserman
it is truly amazing how this industry keeps coming at us. after 50 years it can't get private financing, can't deal with it's wastes, can't get private insurance and can't compete in the marketplace. nor can it safeguard the health of those nearby, or refrain from destroying the environment around it, or dragging down the national/global economy, or count on a stable long-term supply of fuel.
and that's just the beginning.
it will be a great day when this technology is finally buried, once & for all. let's just pray it happens before another accident kills still more innocent people.
no nukes/for solartopia....
Harvey,
The way the nuclear power industry is structured in the US, the utilities cannot directly deal with the used fuel. By law, they pay a fee to the federal government to take possession and dispose of that material. The DOE has screwed up its end of the contract but not the utilities. There are no severe technological problems dealing with the used fuel but there are enormous political ones.
All 104 nuclear reactors are privately insured. It is a requirement of their liscenses. If you know of one that does not have insurance, this is your chance to actually shut down a nuclear power plant by reporting it to the NRC.
There is actually some truth to your statement that nuclear power cannot compete in the market place. If there are no constraints, it is less expensive to build and operate a coal plant than a nuclear one. At the same time, renewables such as wind and solar also cannot compete in an unconstained market.
Bill
Billy, when did the insurance thing happen? As of the mid-1980's, no plants in the US had private insurance to cover major catastrophe.
If this has changed (and yes, it's been a while since I was following this) what are the limitations of the insurance? It would be fairly easy -- and totally typical of the performance of this industry and the regulatory commission -- to arrange an insurance with a deductible and a cap and thereby render the plants insurable.
They aren't otherwise. Try calculating the cost, even in dollars, of a major incident near a metropolitan area (and in some places, metropolitan areas have grown towards plants).
Also, I doubt your appraisal of an "unconstrained market" is correct. Of course a coal plant costs less, but it generates less as well. A lot of the expense of nuclear plants has involved extensive retrofitting to keep with with progressive realizations about the toxicity of emissions. Through the '70's, estimates changed by factors of 1,000's.
The regulatory picture is as big a factor in costs as the subsidy picture. Nuclear power would be far more effective if human health were not an issue. Likewise, I suspect that you are calculating the cost of coal plants without entering the cost of global warming. I don't have a figure for that either, but at this point it seems unlikely that $0.00 is close.
bardamu:
There is no change in the insurance situation. The nuclear plants in the US have always had insurance. Each plant is required to carry at least $300,000,000 of liability insurance. This is not a new requirement but the required minimum may have been increased. If this limit is exceeded, there is a common pool from all the nuclear operators, this pool currently is $8,600,000,000.
The individual policy was exceeded in the aftermath of the TMI accident. The excess costs were covered by the common pool. No government money was involved in the cleanup.
The idea that the nuclear utilities don't have/can't get insurance is disinformation from people like Harvey Wasserman and other antinuclear activists for whom truth is optional.
The details of the insurance requirements are outlined in this NRC white paper: http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/funds-fs.html
Bill
One of the key parts of the bill will be carbon allowances that can be sold if a utility no longer needs them. A utility that builds a 2400MW nuclear generation station and retires a couple 400 or 500MW coal fired plants will have excess allowances, even if nuclear isn't a renewable source.
That might be enough nuclear stimulus in itself.
Is it fair if a utility replaces 25 or 50% of its fossil fuel generation with nuclear, or increases its total output by 25 or 50% with nuclear and still have to build renewables to a percentage of the non-fossil (nuclear) total? The goal is to reduce CO2 emissions, and utilities should have the flexibility to decide what options work best for them.
"The goal is to reduce CO2 emissions, and utilities should have the flexibility to decide what options work best for them"
No, the goal should NOT be just to reduce CO2 emissions. It should be to reduce overall environmental impact.
But, since you want to talk about CO2 emissions, what are the CO2 emissions involved in obtaining the nuclear fuel? In processing it? In storing it after it has been used? There are CO2 emissions involved in all that.
You do not get to externalise those costs onto the rest of society.
Very good, Rfloh, but it's not just the total carbon footprint of the nuclear plants that's harmful. They're actually not too carbon-destructive in the short term. The trouble is that they're toxic and that the process of supplying and maintaining them creates a trail of radioactive toxicity:
--* Radioactive tailings around mines
--* Mysteriously missing radioactive materials
--* Increased leaks as plants decay beyond repair
--* No moderately adequate manner of handling waste after over 1/2 century
-----+ Metal cannisters sunk in ocean trenches crush, split, and rust.
-----+ Storage in pits without bottoms allow materials to leech into watershed
--* Chances for catastrophe accident that have scared away ALL private insurance
--* Natural targets for military/terrorist attack
--* The PROCESS TO SUPPLY light water plants provides material for depleted uranium ammo (thanks to Billy for a correction to a previous post).
The huge investments made in these plants give industry strong motives to lie about plants already built. Construction personnel have often purchases property and begun to raise families near plants. They have STRONG motivation to keep construction from finishing properly and often monkeywrench production -- not something that makes for smooth operation later.
Shutting down most power production for half a state means the Co has to buy electricity itself. Shutting down a plant permanently would often bankrupt the institution running it. These plants are therefore run in HUGE secrecy, though so-called "national security" issues may still be a larger factor, the electorate cannot vote away the motivation that comes from investment without appropriating power companies. So power companies subcontract cleaning personnel to go where engineers know better than to go, then falsify and distort radiation readings.
Another cute trick is to blow the radiation out of an area before one sends personnel in to clean it. I suppose the personnel appreciate that. Of course, the primary penalty for having high emissions of radiation is to have to shut the plant down, so there's reduced motivation to keep the radiation in when the plant's already shut down.
The industry stopped building new plants not out of the goodness of its heart but because the attempt to show responsibility before a somewhat awakened public after TMI and Chernobyl rendered nuclear power less profitable per financial risk than both older and newer systems.
There's no clean nuclear power.
--- * If there's a peaceful atom, it is not generating electricity.
--- * The technology itself favors centralized control and militates against transparency and responsibility.
--- * It has never been made both financially profitable and medically responsible at the same time.
After a reactors' 30 year lifespan, it becomes a radio active concrete footprint far into the future!
The carbon footprint of a nuclear plant over the lifecycle is quite modest. Most of the footprint is from manufacture of the concrete used in construction rather fuel mining and processing. A study from the University of Wisconsin reported these lifecyle numbers. The numbers are in grams of CO2 per kilowatt-hour:
Coal:......950
Gas:......450
Solar-PV:.45
Nuclear:...25
Wind:..... 13
Solar-thermal was not included in the UW study. It would probably be about the same or slightly higher than wind. (I cite the Wisconsin study from memory-the numbers may be off a little but the magnitude and the rank ordering are correct.)
Bill
The carbon footprint of a nuclear plant over the lifecycle is quite modest. Most of the footprint is from manufacture of the concrete used in construction rather fuel mining and processing. A study from the University of Wisconsin reported these lifecyle numbers. The numbers are in grams of CO2 per kilowatt-hour:
Coal:......950
Gas:......450
Solar-PV:.45
Nuclear:...25
Wind:..... 13
Solar-thermal was not included in the UW study. It would probably be about the same or slightly higher than wind. (I cite the Wisconsin study from memory-the numbers may be off a little but the magnitude and the rank ordering are correct.)
Bill
The only difference between the area around Three Mile Island and the Chernobyl dead zone is the strength of contamination. Like with cigarettes, people will put up with a bit of slow death for little or no benefit. They just won't put up with near-certain death.
The old saw "You can't fight what you can't see" may not be totally true, but it relates here. It's not just that radiation seems less important because we cannot see or feel it. It's also hard to know exactly which cancer deaths would or would not have happened. One can find out fairly simply that more cancer deaths occur overall. The following shows how cancer rates for 6 years or so after the Three Mile Island leak-accident-event-whatever sharply correspond to likely patterns for radiation release.
www.ehponline.org/.../105-8/correspondence.html
(Unless you have great eyes, view this map in a separate window).
However, none of this proves that one person rather than another died from the TMI accident.
Altogether, it may be easier to fight what you cannot see than to sue what you cannot see after you and the kids are sick.
every decade prints new reality due to energy policy / america since 70's should know it
edweg
It's not energy from renewable sources that we need but energy from non-polluting sources.
Burning things, coal, oil, gas are obvious no-nos. Nuclear power also pollutes. Just trying to cool these atomic monsters boils our rivers and lakes and seas. It's far, far better to use solar energy that falls upon the earth every day - use it or not until our sun burns out.
quite simple if they want nuclear plants make them live next to them.they would make
carl lewis look slow running away from that bill.
Not always, strangely. The radiation trail of some plants can pass through some fairly upscale neighborhoods, especially if you count the smaller reactors at universities.
Apparently the government is willing to sacrifice the rich too when the rich are fools enough to let them.
for know we have to breath your exhaust system
edweg
"By not counting nuclear upgrades within utilities' overall electricity output, the amendment effectively allows power plants to increase energy production without also increasing the amount of renewable power those plants must generate."
Check that out: gifts for both the coal-fired power and nuclear power production industries: less renewable production required, incentives for more nuclear power production as a way of lessening renewables requirement. Wow, Christmas in June, thanks Ms. Claus aka Lisa Murkowski.
I don't understand how this is a supportive of a coal plant. As I read the article (and I have not read the legislation itself):
Suppose a utility has a 20% renewable requirement and currently has 500MW of Coal and 500MW of nuclear. The utility would then need to add about 200MW of renewable generation to meet the 20% standard.
Now the utility needs an additional 100MW of baseload. It can upgrade either the coal plant or the nuclear plant. If it adds 100MW of coal, it would be required to also add 20MW of renewables. If it adds 100MW of nuclear it would not have to add to the renewables.
As I understand the legislation it favors nuclear. (This would make sense since Murkowski is a pronuclear legislator)
Bill
Billy_Y4 Maybe I did "read into" the description of the bill that it would encourage coal as well as nuclear power production. Though as others on this thread have noted, nuclear power production does typically itself require large amounts of power usage, possibly from nonrenewables. But maybe the nuclear industry did get a shiny new bike and coal got only a lump of coal (so to speak.)
Gee, I hope my GM dollars can afford a few multi-billion dollar plants that'll come online in no less than two decades.
I'm writing my representatives that we must do everything to save our poor, poor, energy monopolies.