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Nuclear Power Regaining Favor Amid Recession, Climate Concerns
Industries want the government to co-sign for more than $40 billion in loans
WASHINGTON - The Obama administration may soon guarantee as much as $18.5 billion in loans to build nuclear reactors to generate electricity, and Congress is considering whether to add billions more to support an expansion of nuclear power.
These actions come after an extensive, decade-long campaign in which companies and unions related to the industry have spent more than $600 million on lobbying and nearly $63 million on campaign contributions, according to an analysis by the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University.
Nuclear power generates about 20 percent of America's electricity, but many existing reactors are aging. No new plant has been authorized since the 1979 incident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, when small amounts of radiation were released and authorities feared for days that a huge surge might escape.
That's in part because it can cost as much as $8 billion to build a nuclear plant, and in part because the problems of nuclear waste and safety remain unsolved.
But the problem of global warming remains unsolved, too, and as the nation struggles to rebound from a deep recession, building new nuclear reactors increasingly looks to some like a big jobs program. The industry, capitalizing on both developments, argues that nuclear energy must be part of any effort to curb heat-trapping carbon emissions.
Its longtime foes - environmentalists, some labor unions, Democrats - increasingly agree.
"This is nuclear's year," said House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., who in recent years has become one of the industry's champions on Capitol Hill.
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has pledged that the climate bill that's making its way through Congress will include new government help for the nuclear industry. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina says he would provide a much-sought Republican vote for the bill if its energy provisions include help for the nuclear industry.
Some Republicans, who have historically have friendlier to nuclear power, are pushing a plan to build 100 reactors over the next 20 years. The industry considers the forthcoming $18.5 billion in guarantees a down payment on a more ambitious expansion.
Electric utilities want more than $100 billion in guarantees for construction that's expected to cost $200 billion. Those guarantees are considered crucial to some companies' nuclear plans.
For example, Dallas-based Energy Future Holdings has applied to add two reactors to its Comanche Peak nuclear plant near Glen Rose. In a 2008 interview, EFH Chief Executive John Young told the Star-Telegram that the company expected to borrow $12 billion of the Comanche Peak expansion's estimated $15 billion cost.
But getting the financing will be just about impossible without federal guarantees, especially for a company in Texas' deregulated electricity market, where the cost of a nuclear plant cannot be automatically recouped from ratepayers, Young said at the time.
The Nuclear Energy Institute contends that the guarantees wouldn't cost taxpayers a dime because the recipients would pay fees that should cover the cost of defaults, much the way that auto insurers cover the cost of accidents with premiums paid by safe drivers. However, the Congressional Budget Office concluded in 2003 that the risk of default on a nuclear loan would be "very high - well above 50 percent."
Critics of nuclear power say these sums would divert resources from other low-carbon sources of electricity that don't have nuclear's safety or waste issues. These include wind, solar, biomass and geothermal generators. The clean energy bank as proposed would "be a big nuclear-coal slush fund," says Michele Boyd, who lobbies for Physicians for Social Responsibility. Carbon capture for coal and nuclear construction are so expensive that there would be little left over for renewables, she says.
Getting to this point has taken lots of time and lots of money, and the debate over the safety and economics of nuclear electricity is far from settled.
During the Bush administration, the nuclear industry got more in electricity-related research and development funding than coal and other fossil fuels did combined, and Congress approved the loan guarantees.
More recently, the industry has been reaching out to newly empowered Democrats, among them Clyburn, whose state is among the nation's leading nuclear-power producers. (President Barack Obama's home state of Illinois is the biggest, and he and some of his closest political allies have long relationships with Exelon Corp., the country's biggest nuclear power company.)
The industry has also begun to build strong ties to important labor unions.
Millions on lobbying
In the first half of last year, when Congress was considering whether to add nuclear loan guarantees to the economic stimulus package and was starting to work on the climate change bill, companies and unions interested in nuclear energy spent more than $55.8 million on lobbying, the analysis found.
Federal Election Commission records also show that the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's trade group, donated a total of $99,000 to 63 candidates in the first half of 2009. Sixty percent of the money went to Democrats. As a group, nuclear interests gave $3.5 million to congressional candidates in the first six months of last year.
It hasn't hurt that all these efforts have coincided with a big run-up in energy prices and growing concern over the effects that coal-fired power plants have on the buildup in carbon emissions and global warming.
"We don't believe that nuclear energy is the answer, but as you look at needs for clean energy and the need to protect the environment, there isn't a solution without nuclear," Areva spokesman Jarret Adams said. Areva's reactors would power many of the new plants that are on the drawing boards.
Still, many environmental groups worry about the safety of nuclear power. "The nuclear power industry is always going to remain several minutes away from serious accident and disaster," said Tom Clements, the Southeastern Nuclear Campaign coordinator for Friends of the Earth, a global environmental group.
The Price-Anderson Act, passed in 1957, limits industry liability for a nuclear accident. Most recently renewed in 2005, it requires a private operator to buy the most private insurance possible - currently $300 million - and assesses fees on the industry for a fund to pay out damages above that amount if necessary. If the fund, which now stands at more than $10 billion, isn't enough, Congress would decide whether to require more industry contributions or appropriate public money. The law is in force through 2025.
Opponents also question why nuclear power needs federal subsidies. "If nuclear power is the right path to go down, why can't it pay for itself?" Clements said. "Nuclear power is going to be dependent on subsidies and handouts, and we still get nuclear waste and the threat of accident in return."
The waste issue remains perhaps the biggest stumbling block. Generating nuclear power produces huge quantities of radioactive waste, including plutonium, a key ingredient for nuclear weapons. When many of the current reactors were put into place, there was an assumption that the federal government would eventually create a national repository. After decades of debate, however, that promise appears no closer to being met, and the plants have become de facto storage facilities.
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66 Comments so far
Show AllHere we go again folks, the assholes in Washington DC are putting us on the hook to underwrite the nuclear power industry. Why? Because you can't get any single or group of insurance companies anywhere in the world to underwrite a nuclear power plant. But the American people with their infinite amounts of cash for big business will help out. Just ask the banks and Wall Street. They want to build between 100 to 150 new targets for terrorists within our borders. Brilliant!
Instead of wind and solar plants that would provide many new jobs and a safer form of power they want to build either a bunch of nuclear and/or coal fire plants. Them boys and girls in DC need to quit using their brains as seat cushions!
The other total disadvantage of solar, wind and conservation is that the benefit of the investment is distributed among the people. Wouldn't it be MUCH better to make big loans to big banks for big corporations for a nice centralized terrorist target that can pass on all those costs to consumers?
Corporate welfare gave the nuke industry its start and provides the only means for it to survive.
While nuclear plants produce less greenhouse gas than coal plants, uranium mining, processing and transporation consume lots of fossil fuel, not to mention the fossil fuel consumed in dealing with nuclear waste. Miners are now having to dig deeper for uranium resulting in ever more fossil fuel being burned to mine, process and produce each ton of usable material.
Political reality check--any widespread support of Obama and the Democratic Leadership toward using taxpayer money to subsidize the nuclear industry will be tantamount to slicing both wrists to the bone without hope of anyone arriving to stop the bleeding.
Let's see what Obama's bin Gotten says about subsidizing the building "new nukes" in TSOTUM.
Perhaps Snowbombya will tout nuclear power as a great jobs program.
When I worked for a global engineering firm in the 1990s I had a standing offer to go work at the nuclear cleanup project at Hanford, Washington where they promised 50,000 years of job security.
Yes, 50% default seems improbable. Were conditions to provoke it, rules would simply bend to prevent it.
Of course there's no limit on insurance. However, that does not mean that "merely comply with the law" constitutes the motivation to not buy more. Execs base cost/benefits analyses on what the plant might be forced to pay out, not the damage that it would actually cause.
These are vastly different, as is most simply illustrated by the figure $300 million - surely a whopping sum for any of us to imagine, but peanuts beside the potential damage.
Yes, another reason the corporatists are pushing tort reform! To limit their liability when one of their plants melts down!
This is the issue that will best separate the sold out cancer-forever-increasing cons from the green sustainable society libs.
FloriDUH's already NUKING FUTS with Three Mile Inglis' progress and Turkey (not making this up!) Point's Florida nucular power-mongering!
Thanks for the information.
It is a uncontroversial fact that lots of things with a public benefit are not profitable but unless one is an over-doctrinaire free marketeer, they should be done anyway, through subsidies or full public ownership. These include highways, public transportation, the US mail, intercity rail, and municipal utilities. I have no problem with "distortions of the market" if it is needed. Nuclear is one of the things that need to be on the table along with renewables. Seems unfair to subsidize one and not the other.
Nuclear energy has received far, far larger subsidies than wind or solar. The subsidies have been mission-critical deal makers at every stage of development. These include Westinghouse and GE charging power companies for the government-researched technology to begin with, but others have been greater, including public assumption of almost all risk in the form of strict limits to power and construction company liability both for the inevitable health problems and likely financial catastrophes, but also including public subsidy of the ongoing problem of waste disposal.
The federal government offered to house the waste. They have not properly done so because no method exists to do so. The power companies have lined up to sue the government for failing to live up to its obligations.
And guess who pays. Again.
And someone must still pay to store the stuff.
"These generation facilities are, for the most part, not economic."
Depending on how you define "economic". Cheaper by comparison, at the immediate cost level, but given the ramifications of waning raw materials and the consequences of continued pollution and GHG emmissions, the inherent value of resource conservation and the cost of treating diseases related to consumption-based energy production will probably, imo, tip the scale toward cleaner energy in the long run. Not that the industry or gov't see it this way, but I guess that is the point, isn't it?
I hope the unions weren't expecting any jobs out of this. Any attempts to secure union jobs will probably get the same treatment as the made in America part of the recovery bill got. Dumped! The US Chamber of Horrors will make sure of that.
Don't forget that TMI was only 45 minutes from meltdown.
Having said that I recommend that we build the first one by the Senate's chambers, the second one by ........
As someone who's career has been in the construction industry, I'd strongly favor union labor for nuclear power plant construction. Even with the best QA/QC syatem, I'd find the prospect of a nuclear power plant (or a major bridge, dam or other critical structure) made by non-union labor a bit scary. The quality and safety differences between union and non union contractors is noticeable. Increasingly non union, so-called "merit-shop" contractors are employing fresh immigrants, from lesser-developed countries, of dubious qualifications. The training and apprenticeship systems used by the construction trade union halls is superior to the rather poor training, if any, provided by non-union employers.
There are numerous skills involved in even a laborers occupation. As a geotechnical engineer, I learned long ago that the proper preparation of foundations depends on the laborer's skill in using their shovels and jack-hammers. You don't get much quality work from a $7.50/hr non-union El-Salvadoran laborer, with their bosses yelling: "Rapido! Rapido!"
Even with union labor, this kind of project naturally draws monkeywrenching. I'm not talking about eco-activists, though they could be involved. But the following dynamic caused considerable problems on previous sites:
- Nuclear plants tend to be built outside of town (good idea, right?)
- Their construction takes considerable time, so during the construction process, a kind of company town springs up to house the construction workers (speaking generally, engineers and executives tend to house further away, but some may be involved in the same phenomenon.)
- By the time the plant starts to close, people are well into mortgages, children have friends at school, adults have lovers and other connections: they have community.
- Over time, workers realize that finishing the plant means that they will lose their jobs, homes, and communities.
At that point, odd things start to happen around the plant. At one site in Arizona, for instance, something like a dozen bulldozers went missing overnight. The tracks led out to the desert and faded in the desert wind.
I am all for union labor, but where it helps most is not that there is anything wrong with that 7:50-per-hour Salvadoreno, who is not subjected to substandard wages through lethargy or incompetence, but because a strong union brings worker self-interest into somewhat closer alignment with those management and clients.
The only that can work with this technology, though, is to have a union of concerned locals who stop the plant before those workers get gulled into making investments.
PS
The construction work likely will be mostly union. However, everything in the upkeep of the plant that involves the radioactive internals will not.
The reasons are pretty straightforward. The proximity to the core involved in many internal repairs and maintainance affords a natural work life of 45 minutes before the worker has absorbed a lifetime allowance of radiation.
This presumes that the suit does not rip on a narrow hatch or something.
The industry places radiation detection badges on the person's suit. They have tried badges on the top of the head, on the broad of the back, and so forth. The person leaves the plant when the final button goes off.
Of course, no such laborer works for any company like GE, Westinghouse, or a power supplier directly, for obvious reasons. The work is subcontracted.
The subcontractors would probably love to hire people who felt that they personally had a future. But that is a little difficult, especially since they have to keep re-hiring.
The career people complain long and hard about difficulties caused by the contract labor. Complaints include not being able to reach work sites because of contaminated equipment and supplies left about by ". . . those [name-of-contractor] people."
Union labor? Not for every job intrinsic to this project.
This technology, for certain projects, intrinsically requires a class of worker who can be disposed of quickly and inexpensively.
Z1 hits the nail on the head.
Taxpayers bailing out the nuclear energy industry. An industry that nobody trusts nor wants in their backyard.
Fear none, though. Since the SCOTUS decision, Congress has sprung into action. Both political parties are now groveling for big corporate cash in an all out fight to prove which party is willing to funnel more of the money we don't have their way.
But damn those lazy seniors with their hands out. They are driving up the debt to unsustainable levels. Time to slash entitlement programs.
Obama, Congress, and Wall Street is fast tracking us to the bottom now.
Americans must refuse to participate in this faux democracy. Say no to Fascism.
Boycott all US elections.
Don't vote.
Let them stand before us and the world declaring how great it is to have free and fair elections that allow for a peaceful transfer of power. What a farce!
Man, the floodgates must have really opened up big time.
It will be interesting to see how Fox News gets the tea partiers to support rate increases in advance for nuclear power construction after getting them so riled up about "Cap and Tax".
I think James Hansen has it right. Nuclear is, and will continue to be, a big part of reducing GHG's. We just have to do it right.
Sadly, "right" means not doing it. The plants heat water; the steam turns the turbine and generates the electricity. The water passes through metal and has to pass through metal to allow the heat to conduct from the primary water by the core to the secondary water in the steam generator.
The metal rusts.
What's inside gets outside.
And you can bet that all those lobby dollars that go to pushing for the subsidies for plants now will push to relax emission standards so that the folks who run the plants can live farther from them and the rest, who do not, closer.
The technology is inadequate, the social structures around its centralized ownership at least as inadequate.
THERE IS A NEW COMPACT TECHNOLOGY THAT IS SUPPOSED TO BE A LOT SAFER and mucho cheaper..
It is being developed by China and other nations and is getting ready to convert old coal fired plants with a series of these mini nukes that are self contained and buried under ground for about 7 years and then reserviced...
I think I heard about this at our local mind control meeting.
At least to last year, all plants proposed, in the States at least, were light-water reactors, hence subject to the same problems that shut new construction down in the 1980's.
Of course we cannot count on those who invest those billions to tell us whom they will kill and how.
I stand corrected. Thank you for the update.
The light water reactors that have been applied for are the sub-categories called pressurized water reactors and boiling water reactors. Not one of the pending orders is a hard order yet. Not one of these 20+ orders is using a design that has been approved by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission yet. The NRC had started to certify a couple designs but reeled in the process, not having had the time to adequately review them. With about 2 years left of this process, this means that no new nuclear reactors would be completed for, if past averages are projected, about 12 years.
Nuclear energy is too slow to be implemented, to expensive to build, too subsidy-intensive, creates too much security exposure and creates too much CO2 with the 20 steps of the nuclear energy cycle (mining, milling, etc.), has a bad safety record which will only get worse as these plants age, and undermines our civil liberties. Nukes are really good at one thing -- they are good at gobbling up huge amounts of money.
F*!!!!!!
This will happen OVER MY DEAD BODY!!!
You know there has to be a point, a Point at which we will not put up with this stupitidy anymore. There is no way I would sit back and let this happen. What do they expect us to do, sit back and say go ahead, screw us, screw the earth and all our children?
What is it that these idiots do not get. I ask, why do we need to keep up this chase for more and more energy, electricity etc. I see that most people cannot fathom going back to the way that humans lived for millenia. We are a sorry species if we have given up. We think we are supposed to live in some luxurious life style. I'm sorry it took me so long to understand that we should go back to a much simpler life. Does that mean that life saving medicines and such should go by the way side. No one wants to tell a parent that their child should die because we have to go back to no electricity etc. But, I say this would be the one area in which we could keep an energy source, preferably wind, solar, etc. Should we try to continue to invent something else that would work? Maybe, but it seems to me that everything we do ends up a negative and then it gets abused for war and stupid sh*, you know like Las Vagas...
I'm sick with digust at what's happening. I get older people, in their 70' and 80's who actually tell me they are glad they won't be here to experiance what is coming.
I don't really like sounding like a self righteous idiot. But if we had leaders who could lead us in the right direction, who would not bend and spread for the power brokers. I don't mean just our own leaders. This whole thing boils down to the nature of humans. The greed and narrowness of thinking like "as long as me and mine get ours" is what is killing off the human race.. There needs to be a global shift. Will we do this on our own? I really just don't think so. I think that nature will do it for us.
First we had the Edison Institute, made up of Electric Utilities to promote propaganda for the industry. Now we have the Nuclear Institute...Do they have scholarships?
Please cut out the propaganda and tell us about the waste that
they produce and what the Industry will do about it.
Nice source.
Let's be clear, though: this is not 25 years of waste. Most radwaste is not fuel.
Easy how for whom where and when?
Certainly it is less intensively toxic, but it is considerably greater in bulk. The degree of danger varies considerably with the degree of exposure.
And the materials are far easier to hide with other waste than are many similarly dangerous chemical products. If no one walks by with special equipment, no one knows. And, while it is true that this is attended by lots of regulation, it is also true that the regulation is rife with conflicts of interest.
Then there are those folks who sign off on shipments of fuel or radwaste as "Mickey Mouse," "Adolf Hitler," or "Attila the Hun."
They may be making a good point, but if so, it is not one whose background I care to support.
It's made into depleted uranium bullets!
Unfortunately, that's actual uranium, not the equipment that has passed near it.
This picture of the Maine Yankee's waste is only of the solid waste from the reactor core spent fuel. It does not picture the leaks that have occurred at this plant, nor the mining waste (45 billion years before U238 is relatively inert -- longer than the planet is expected to be viable for human life),
nor milling waste,
nor conversion waste,
nor enrichment waste including depleted uranium,
nor reconversion waste,
nor the fabrication waste,
nor the reactor vessel itself which will have to be guarded for 1 million years (per D.C. Court of Appeals ruling).
So it's true! You ARE Reddy's rogue twin brother!
· Yr Obd't Servant
"Areva's reactors would power many of the new plants that are on the drawing boards."
I think Areva would also be involved in processing the nuclear waste.
Areva is a French corporation with government involvement (I don't know if they own it outright.). They've spent big bucks advertising on Jeffry Immelt's channel. Also, if you google, you will find that nuclear is not as universally loved and trouble free in Europe as we are told. Anyway, I guess the Supreme Court ruling means Areva can back which ever party's candidate for president who will offer the best terms for them, not us.
I wonder what the actual anticipated default rate if the one of 50% cited in the story is not accurate. I hope it's not 50%, but $200bn worth of construction is going to generate some very nice underwriting fees, so expect the banks to be exercising their free speech rights as well.
The French Government owns about 90% of Areva and about 85% of EDF. Areva is the largest nuclear company in the world, and has many lobbyists pushing for nukes in D.C. to bail out their sorry financial condition of their home operations.
NUCLR by bush jr;The best pronunciation of toxic shit ever uttered by a dc cesspoolite and all branches of this cesspool out to pick our pocket clean with out even a kiss!There is nothing even remotely elite about these assholes and so they will be refered to by me as assholes or when writing that too often as "cesspoolites" or Loo dwellers as there is not the inclination,desire,need to pay them any respect and no written or computer generated message to them by me will have any of the normal polite appelations.After all the stuff that we have read here and all that has built up over so many years there is nothing worth saving there as even the country's laws do not apply to them or their corp. asshole budies,nada,zip.Read else where that scotus thomas says that this is just the beginning.Something to look forward to.Tony
I'm trying to work on my cynicism, so my "half-full" take on this is that at least those energy-guzzling incandescent light bulbs will become obsolete when we all start to glow in the dark!
· Yr Obd't Servant
Thank goodness for hydropower in AK and the PacNW as that reduces the pressure here to consider nuclear.
All that's needed to generate electricity by conventional technology is to turn a wheel, for petes sake. And all a dangerous over-priced nuclear reactor does is boil water! It's utterly insane to consider building more of them.
Clearly the push for nuclear power development is not primarily to provide Americans with power but to benefit those with vested interests. I also suspect there may well be plans to build more nuclear weapons with the waste. Even if new nuclear power plants could be built and run safely, I don't trust the b*stards to do so.
If the USA was as efficient with its use of Energy as Japan or of Europe, there would be no need for ANY new plants.
Why does it take twice the energy to build a car in the USA as it does in Japan?
>>Efficiency and conservation can only do so much.
What do you ,mean "They can only do so much?"
Energy use per Capita in the USA 10381 watts per capita. Energy use in Germany is 5597 watts per capita. Energy use in Japan is 5381 watts per capita.
Thats a whole lot of "Only so much" in savings. If the US Cut Energy use per capita to even 7000 Watts per capita thats a whole lot of Coal fired Plants that can be retired and a whole lot of Nuclear plants that do not need to be built.
Increasing efficiencies and losing less energy per capita will do a heck of a lot more for the enviroment then building more Nuclear plants will and it will be a heck of a lot safer.
You dont have to store waste Nuclear Fuel from Energy you never have to use in the first place.
On the other hand -- if you take the billions required to build new power plants, and spend it instead on retrofitting existing homes with new insulation and energy-efficient appliances, coupled with a combined subsidy/building code upgrade for new construction, you'll create more jobs and save more energy years before the net cost and energy footprint of a single new nuke plant hit the break-even point, if ever. You can't just keep adding lanes to reduce highway traffic. At some point, the idea of simply adding capacity to a sloppy system just doesn't make sense.
I think every potential dam site should be used. Many do not agree and it's almost impossible to get a new dam approved in USA. My understanding is that almost all big economic sites already have dams in the US and that maybe you could double existing hydroelectric capability using the "lesser" sites. But the sheer amount of USA energy usage is overwhelming, and growing. ... I think Norway has the most progressive energy plan to totally get rid of fossil fuels and use no nuclear and basically use wind powered electricity (and maybe electric derived hydrogen) and that's maybe possible with economic costs. But they have severe tax penalties for fossil usage (green incentives) like taxes tripling the price of a new gas car! Similar policies pervade the society. Of course there are off-setting quality of life aspects. Lots of complicated tradeoffs not even hinted at here, but the bottom line gets down to what kind of life and individual freedoms and wastefulnessness the USA wants. ....and we rely on politics to determine those things and what to act on ---- enough said---- USA politics is dysfunctional----so no rational way to guess what will or should be done.USA responds best to crises, so a series of crisis short-term responses will determine what kind of energy mix we have 100 years from now.
18 U.S.C. § 201 : US Code - Section 201: Bribery of public officials and witnesses
(b) Whoever -
(1) directly or indirectly, corruptly gives, offers or promises anything of value to any public official or person who has been selected to be a public official, or offers or promises any public official or any person who has been selected to be a public official to give anything of value to any other person or
entity, with intent -
(A) to influence any official act; ...
shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than two years, or both
Are Corporations PERSONS? If so it would seem the above would apply.
What about the slave labor used to mine the uranium. It was on this site that I read an article many months ago, about how the rich who own these mines in the Congo etc, are subcontracting to some in that country, who inturn enslave people to extract the stuff. The rich owners get rich while those doing the dirty work get sick. This would is a replay of what happened to the navajo who mined uranium in the 50's in the southwest. Plus, how much uranium is left anyway. It' just another fossil fuel.
While your point taken that reserves of Uranium are depleting, it most certainly not a fossil fuel.
What's a few hundred billion amongst friends?
Gee ( or should that be "G.E.") It's a good thing the Voting Rights Act isn't up for renewal or Obama would likely cave on that one, too. Is there ANYTHING the Democrats will stand firm on? I'm tired of prefacing my critiques with "while I'm not yet sorry I voted for Obama...." when, with this latest move I think I actually AM sorry. Not that I'd have welcomed his rival, mind you; I still think my vote was one of necessity, but how much more back-peddling will it take to void even that assessment?
Hey--isn't the natural gas lobby telling us in their TV commercials that we have 100 years of NG left??? A Combined cycle gas turbine generating plant produces power at less than half the cost of coal and with about half the carbon footprint.
We could phase out one nuclear plant and one coal plant for every two gas plants we build, provide jobs and still emit less carbon. Nuke plants require the importing of many costly components that will never be built here. Does anyone know of a place here that can build components for a nuclear reactor core?
In the process we could also eliminate mountain top removal as well as the dangerous pollutants or by-products emitted by coal and nuclear facilities.
Seems like a "no-brainer" to me.
Yes and two years ago they were telling us that the price of natural gas was going to go up just in time for winter, because there was a shortage of natural gas. Go figure!
That would be a plus, Bill, but these would still be far more expensive per additional MW of generating capacity than it would cost to add a "bottoming cycle" based on the Atmospheric Vortex Engine to existing nuclear plants.
By doing so, these could increase their output by up to one-third, but also extend their operating life for another decade, due to the possibility of reducing the severity of operating conditions to increase safety margins. Having such "back-up", each fuel rod could also last 20% longer, reducing fuel mining and enrichment energy requirements.
Let's "optimize the base-case" before building more nukes!!!!
Obama's enviro. record prior to election revealed a pro-nuke and pro-coal stance. He is carrying out that agenda now.
From the raw materials to the waste, nuclear energy presents too many hazards.