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Obama's Nuclear Vision Suffers Setback as Vermont Plant Faces Shutdown
Vermont would be the first state to close a nuclear reactor after 38-year-old Yankee's history of leaking cancer-causing tritium
Barack Obama's new dream of a nuclear renaissance faces a major reality check today as the state of Vermont is expected to shut down an ageing nuclear reactor with a history of leaks.
The Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant on the Connecticut river, Vermont. (Photograph: Michael Springer/Getty Images) It would be the first time a state has moved to shut down such a reactor, and follows Obama's announcement last week of $8.3bn (£5.4bn) in loan guarantees for the construction of two new reactors
in Georgia. White House officials said the money would help spur a
burst of new construction - the first since the Three Mile Island
meltdown.
The Vermont Yankee, one of America's oldest reactors, has had several leaks of radioactive tritium dating back to 2005, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Monday.
The state senate is set to deny a request to extend its 40-year life span by an additional 20 years condemning the plant to close in 2012, said Peter Shumlin, the highest ranking member of the Vermont senate.
"It is not in Vermont's best interest to run this plant beyond its scheduled closing date in 2012. It is falling apart," said Shumlin. The 30-member senate, which is controlled by Democrats, is due to vote Wednesday morning.
The battle over the so-called Vermont Yankee reactor has attracted an increasingly national audience amid growing disaffection among liberals and environmentalists with Obama's support for the nuclear industry.
Shumlin and other opponents of the plant argue that America has yet to plan for the safe retirement of its existing 104 reactors, which are beginning to approach the end of their original life spans. Some 27 of those reactors have had leaks of tritium, according to the nuclear regulatory commission.
"The debate here isn't whether or not we build new nuclear power plants. The question for America is how can we be so irresponsible and so negligent in expecting our old tired plants to run past their scheduled closing dates," Shumlin said.
The 38-year-old Vermont Yankee plant, which is owned by the New Orleans based Entergy Corp, is among the first of that older generation of reactors, and over the last few years has sustained a series of accidents and leaks.
A cooling tower collapsed in 2007 and again in 2008. In 2009, the plant had three separate leaks of radioactive tritium, which has been linked to cancer. An investigation later established that the plant's owners had lied about the extent of contamination to the local water supply, claiming the facility did not have underground pipes that could carry tritium when it did.
In a statement to the Associated Press, the company said it was committed to safe operations. "Our focus has always been safely, securely and reliably operating our power plants. We take any concerns about the safe operation of our facilities very seriously and therefore finding the source of tritium in Vermont and correcting it is a top priority for our company," Entergy spokesman Mike Burns said in an email.
Arnie Gundersen, a former industry engineer turned nuclear watchdog, said such leaks were indicators that the Vermont Yankee was nearing the end of its life span. "It seems like the plants that came on line before the Three Mile Island accident in the 1970s are predominantly the ones that are spring the leaks," he said. "In the case of the Vermont Yankee the problems of an ageing reactor were compounded by the pressures of trying to generate a 20% increase in power. Nobody else has ever tried for a power increase of 20%."
Vermont has a reputation for environmental awareness - and for independence. The state has sent a socialist to the US Senate. However, the plant is a major source of employment, with jobs for about 600.
But recent revelations about the leaks have consolidated public opinion in the state against the reactor. Last week, two conservation groups called for a criminal investigation into nuclear plant officials for misleading state officials when they testified under oath that the plant did not have the kind of underground pipes that carry tritium.
On Sunday, the Burlington Free Press, the largest paper in the state, said it was time for the plant to go.
"Events such as a radioactive leak unresolved more than six weeks after it was first revealed to the public and misinformation provided by Entergy officials under oath raise serious questions about whether Vermont Yankee serves Vermont's long-term interests," the editorial said.
Elsewhere, activists are hoping that the showdown over the Vermont Yankee will help mobilise protests against other reactors when their licences come up for review. Unlike in Vermont, however, most states require only that the federal government's nuclear regulatory commission sign off on extending the life of reactors.
But James Moore of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group said he detected signs of a backlash against both the ageing reactors and Obama's plans for the birth of a third generation of nuclear plants. "A lot of folks on the left and right are waking up to the reality that it is a bad idea to give hard earned tax dollars to a new generation of reactors when we can't manage the old reactors," he said.
53 Comments so far
Show AllMany recent public construction projects have been executed in a very shoddy manner. Right now, more than ever, the goal seems to be delivering the cash to the contractors and the public be damned.
In New York there is inferior concrete at the new Yankee Stadium, a stadium we did not need and which was heavily subsidized by public money; massive subway station renovations that took many years to complete immediately begun falling apart and have to be redone. Let's not even discuss the plumbing and construction done by Blackwater in the countries we have invaded. There is a severe lack of oversight and quality control combined with excessive cost.
Considering the widespread laxity and corruption at this time, I have no confidence that new nuclear plants will be built to the exacting standards required for even minimum immediate safety. And there is still the unresolved problem of what to do with nuclear waste.
What is behind the decision to go nuclear rather than with clean and safe energy like solar and wind? It seems irrational. But, in my experience, whenever something seems irrational, it means that money is changing hands behind the scenes. I hope there will be some investigative reporting about the connections at work.
Joe
As soon as the Obamanuke corporate welfare program is in place cost over-runs will start and there will be pressure to ease up on health and safety regulations to control costs.
Obama will continue to call it "clean, safe nuclear power" even though nothing has changed in decades.
"What is behind the decision to go nuclear rather than with clean and safe energy like solar and wind?"
To be fair on the issue, a solar-termal project in California recieved a $1.6B loan guarantee, and wind gets a 1.5 cent per kwh production tax credit. I assume small hydro and PV-solar gets something similar. Problem is, most of the land area of the US is not suitable for wind and/or solar. Where it is suitable, wind is being developed quite rapidly. At least that is what is happening in a wind-rich area of Pennsylvania/Maryland/West Virginia highlands near where I live. The visual impacts, and possibly wildlife impacts are significant. Turbines are going up right on the border of the Dolly Sods wilderness, but I accept their necessity.
Pretty much all the roofs of America are "suitable" for solar energy. So are vacant fields (which would not affect future stock or many crops).
Gary
“I have no doubt that we will be successful in harnessing the sun's energy... If sunbeams were weapons of war, we would have had solar energy centuries ago.”
-- Sir George Porter
No, the sun has to shine. Where I live, from November through March, we may get 50-70% sunshine for one or two days per week. Wind is likewise unreliable, not to mention the impacts and hazards of a 100 foot tower in everyones backyard. And why do you assume we all live in suburbia? May of us live in urban neighborhoods - townhouses and apartments - and thereby have far smaller carbon footprints anyway.
And even in sunny climates, I suspect that few people who promote home PV generation have actually looked into what is required to do it - many thousands of dollars worth of panels, high-power DC-DC converters and regulators, battery banks and AC inverters.
You are incorrect, pjd412 ... again. The sun does not HAVE to "shine". It's better if it does, but not necessary to generate solar power. What you need is an unobstructed "view" of the sun.
You post a lot on CD and I generally like what you say, but your blind spot when it comes to nukes is astounding. Have you found that football field to put all the nuke waste in yet?
Bottom line, son. Nuclear is the dumbest, sickest, most inefficient, insane, environmentally-catastrophic, dangerous and immoral way to heat water EVER INVENTED.
Time to stick a fork in it -- hope you can find a place to bury the fork afterwards.
"I suspect that few people who promote home PV generation have actually looked into what is required to do it - many thousands of dollars worth of panels, high-power DC-DC converters and regulators, battery banks and AC inverters."
what an idiotic statement. How do you expect that people "who promote home PV generation" actually do what they do? I take back my statement taking back my statements that you are an ass. Of course we look into it! One of the problems with your statement is that the most common method of utilizing solar involves feeding it into the grid: no need for batteries and other ancillary equipment, just grid tie equipment and the panels. Solar works in Germany fine, which gets 20% less sunlight than California on average, and it would work in your area, too, albeit at a slightly less cost efficient rate than in California. I promote and sell solar systems, and your post clashes completely with the facts on the ground: solar is effective and has satisfied hundreds of thousands of solar users for years.
What gets me is that you think that nuclear is more cost efficient! And that mental estimation, I am sure, comes from from a paradigm that does not acknowledge the externalized costs of decommissioning, waste storage/disposal, human health costs, increasingly shoddy construction processes leading to out of control maintainance costs and leading to drastically increased risks of failure, resource extraction costs, on and on and on.
Solar provides TRULY clean energy at a fraction of the internalized costs of nuclear. Also, you act as if there are not excellent, proven, and cost effective storage technologies. You say that you do not believe that people who advocate solar have done their research, however I think you merely reveal your own ignorance when speak in favor of nuclear over solar (either that or you have a personal stake in the industry). Only the ignorant, greedy, and those who just don't give a fuck about their grandkids think nuclear is the way to go.
Our 4Kw PV system cost around $30K in hardware, I did all the labor. With rebates, it cost less than half that amount.
What you may be missing here is the employment opportunities for producing all that hardware. All my hardware was manufactured overseas, because the US was so short-sighted that it poked itself in the eye.
I do agree that wind will not work in urban environments, unless the turbines are run along the sides of freeways. They are noisy, but are much quieter than freeways (except during a traffic jam).
And if you lived here in Sonoma County, the Sonoma County Energy Independance Program would have paid all the upfront costs with a 7% interest loan. We try to zero out the customers electricity bill so the pay back period varies depending on how much of a customer's bill is in the upper tiers (more expensive power) but we see typical pay back periods of 6 to 7 years on a home solar system in a net metered structure. Net metering is not the best method because it discourages production of solar power in excess of the customer's use; on the other hand it still works and solar is big business and provides a ton of jobs in California. Much better policies like feed in tariffs have worked great in Europe and are one of the reasons that European efforts have been so successful. If we pumped the humdreds of billions of dollars sure to be going into nuclear into solar and wind instead, we would have a more assuredly positive outcome, less meltdowns, less leaks, less mining pollution, less nuclear waste, more solar jobs (of course), more general manufacturing jobs, less excessive financial risk on local consumers... WTF! It is just, on its face and any way you look at it, 1 billion percent better.
Its time to stop waiting for the feddies (except maybe Bernie Sander's 10 million solar roofs bill) and start pushing for local initiatives to encourage wind and solar in your areas. Communities which possess large scale implementation of these renewable energy sources stand a much better chance of weathering the turbulent times to come.
Things are not as rosy across the country.
I considered grid-tied, but here in NM, we are not paid for any excess energy produced. Instead, we get a credit on next month's bill, and no carry-over allowed. Can you spell disincentive?
Further, the Board of Directors of our local county cooperative is dead-set against renewables. Most of our board members share the same family name (Chavez), and at voting time, their extended families roll out to vote the incumbents back in. We've tried for years to get more progressive members on the board, but no luck.
It will be a long, hard slog, one county at a time.
One of the biggest problems against renewable energy is the expectation that infinite power is available 24/7.
We need a paradigm shift to accept, and work around, that energy on demand will not always be available. Most of the rest of the world survive extremely well with time-limited access to 24/7 power. Americans can adapt, too.
We live off PV, and we quickly learned to change our habits and our expectations. Was it a big shift? Yes. Was it hard? No. Are we better off? You betcha, in ways beyond our pre-conceptions and wildest dreams.
The Indian Nation may be our savior here. They are looking closely at harvesting wind on some of the more useless land of the already useless land given them by the Feds. One large project is to put windmills on their land in the Dakotas. Projections show that this field alone would provide enough power to meet US peak demand 24/7. Yes, it is windy in the Dakotas. The only issue to solve is the last-mile problem, which is being hampered by competing white man energy producers.
The news about the Dakotas makes me very happy. It is good for the Native Americans, who really deserve some practical reparations, and good for the earth and all of us. I hope it goes forward. May the wind be at their backs, so to speak.
Is there some way that solar and wind power can be stored in some form to be used as necessary? I am sure that is a realistic goal, if there is some work and money allocated to development.
Joe
I don't think we want to push for the use of batteries to wholesale storage of energy. Nasty, nasty things, batteries. I have seen it estimated that a storage battery to carry the lower 48 through a cold winter's day and night would occupy about 1 cubic mile. To be honest, this makes nukes look attractive.
There are many forms of storing energy accumulated by PVs, but they are not particularly efficient. Pumping water uphill into reservoirs seems like a good idea, but the problem here is that water is becoming an increasingly valuable commodity. Heating water and pumping it deep underground into rock storage appears to be one of the more efficient solutions, but this is still not a winner.
probably the safest, most efficient, and the most flexible in terms of recovering the stored energy is magnetic frictionless vaccuum fly-wheel storage. these are already well developed drum type flywheels that float magnetically in a vaccuum. they are great for leveling wind and in general for storing solar. Plus it would give the utilities something to do after implementing distributed generation.
Joe, I think you brought to our discussion a very good point. It does seem irrational to me too. Why would we as a nation do the irrational and not the rational thing?
I think of the saying “follow the money”. If we follow the money than we might just have the answer for this irrational behavior regarding nuclear power. It would be nice if there is some real investigative reporting done, but with the corporate media the way it is now, the question is will there be journalists who will follow the money trail?
If there is a journalist who is willing and who has the skills to do the investigation we might just be able to take that knowledge of what is going on (the truth) and be able to use the knowledge to bring this nation’s energy choices down a much more productive path. There are much better choices than nuclear energy.
I believe in the power of people to be able to make a difference on issues that are important to us. I believe a safe and sane energy policy is very important to Americans. Let us not be discouraged by the direction that President Obama wants to take us on this energy path, but fight him as Greens and Progressives who want this country to embrace renewable and substainable energy sources and walk down a path that we think is better for the future of America than nuclear, coal and oil.
The chances that the Senate resolution will pass are pretty slim, in the House even less. It's mostly just pre-election posturing, maybe even an effort to get the whole issue behind us as quickly as possible. It's obvious that neither the Senate or House leadership has done any serious study of the matter.On a radio talk show the Speaker didn't even dispute a caller's insistence that Vt. Yankee was just a Chernobyl waiting to happen. At any rate, Vermont is the only State given the opportunity to vote on re-licensing. Congress gave that authority to the NRC. No one is sure of the significance of the tritium leaks, actual human exposure is so minimal at this point as to be incalculable. Schumlin claims that the power could be replaced " at similar or even lower cost" but no actual plan for this is on the horizon.In my view the costs of decommissioning are way over-inflated in the legislative mind.
But who knows? in Public Relations and Politics, facts are definitely an inconvenience, one doesn't have to strain much to overcome them anymore.
The Senate is going to vote no on Yankee today and Mr Shaplin is a well known crank always opposing anything he thinks is left in Vermont.
What is "Left" in Vermont? Standing by the position that Vt. Yankee is a Chernobyl waiting to happen? Spreading the notion that plants are "old" in some other sense than years, ignoring continual replacement of parts? That the power is going to be replaced by something other than coal or expensive and uncertain hydro contracts? That the 600 workers at Yankee don't count and are completely wrong to have confidence in their work? That decommissioning is going to cost many times more than any other plant on the face of the planet? Refusing to acknowledge many distinguished scientists very concerned about global warming see nuclear power as a good way to transition from fossil fuels to more sustainable forms of energy? Not bothering to make a sustained personal investigations into the controversy to satisfy oneself instead of taking it on the authority of VPIRG? I plead guilty to opposing "The Left" in Vermont. But I'm posting with my real name at least.
(**TROLL**)
Boy did I guess wrong, though there is always the possibility that the Senate will reverse itself and, at any rate, this will make the fight tougher in the house.
Yeah, it's NUKING FUTS.
>>A cooling tower collapsed in 2007 and again in 2008. In 2009, the plant had three separate leaks of radioactive tritium, which has been linked to cancer. An investigation later established that the plant's owners had lied about the extent of contamination to the local water supply, claiming the facility did not have underground pipes that could carry tritium when it did.
Am I reading a factual article or watching an episode of the Simpsons? Where is the picture of Montgomery Burns?
Please don't insult Mr. Burns by comparing him to the guys who run Vermont Yankee.
I went to school in Bennington, Vermont for a year in the 70’s. I liked Vermont. Closing Vermont Yankee would be a good thing and a step in the right dirction.
There are to many questions of what to do with the waste. I think that there are safer and cleaner energy sources. All the money the government gives for nuclear power could be better spent on renewable energy sources which would be a much better path for the United States to walk on.
Oregon shutdown a reactor a few years back that was located on the Columbia River.
This is not the first.
It won't be the last.
Good news in VT while the VT Senate refuses to allow a license extension for the Vermont Yankee Plant, an aging decrepit nuclear power plant, however Vermont's pro-nuke governor a republican- JIM Douglas has been cozying up to Barrack-Exelon-Obama. What I fear is despite Vermonters expression of no-nukes the Feds and the big money interests will jam more nuke plants down our throats. Already, there are VT politicians suggesting to build a new plant at the Vermont Yankee site, and unfortunately the state of Vermont will have no power or jurisdiction in that decision. The NRC-Nuclear Reactor Cheerleaders have complete jurisdiction over the authorization of new plants.
The article says that alot of folks on the left are waking up about nuclear energy. Since when was the 'left' a supporter of nukes?
Uranium Mining Begins Near Grand Canyon
http://www.unobserver.com/layout4.php?id=7318&blz=1
Thanks for the link another one of the major unavoidable costs of nuclear power.
I remember 3 Mile Island and the scary time of the leak. I live in Indiana, with no nuke plants close, but I am down wind of the many in Ohio. Then there is California and the plant built on trucked in fill, right by or on a fault. THAT will be headlines when it goes. I used to live in Chattanooga Tn. It is situated between 3 Plants. When the TVA wanted to save money, it got rid of the main part of the Staffs and left a skeleton crew of locals that would remind one of Homer Simpson! We would have repeated leaks and bad air and water alerts, (part of which were also from the Tannery emissions). When I left, after 2 years, my inside cats had leukemia.
This should straighten you out on tritium leaks
http://atomicinsights.blogspot.com/2010/02/sometimes-best-defense-is-good-offense.html
" If a person drank water contaminated to the.." (claimed vermont yankee)"... level of 75,000 picocuries per liter for an entire year, they would receive an internal radiation dose of about 16 mrem, which is far below the natural variations in the average annual dose of 360 mrem in the US."
"claimed vermont yankee".
Again you post sources with "impeccable" credentials: the very same people who are releasing tritium and stand to lose the most from people knowing that it is not safe.
here's another figure from you (and this one is also extremely weak):
"20,000 picocuries per liter" Thats the EPA's safe drinking water limit for tritium. I believe it is the same standard that the NRC goes by.
Here's another figure: "2.45 million picocuries per liter" That's the amount of tritium recently found in one of the wells near the Vermont Yankee plant by the Vermont Department of Health.
So let me guess who you believe, the folks running the Vermont Yankee plant or the folks at the NRC, the EPA, and the DoH? Actually, I don't trust any of them, our government "watchdog agencies" are all beaten little bitches who have been forced to publish statistics which favor business over the health of humans for decades.
The only time I ever see you pop your little head up is when you have something stupid and misleading to say about nuclear. Call a troll a troll.
A quick google search for +"Seth Dayal" +"Nuclear" yields this link: http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/search/article/873109. Seth's comment is:
"There is a golden opportunity for Canada's power companies and hopefully NB won't sell out before they can take advantage.
The Ontario quote was $2.4B each for two 1 Gw AECL nukes. $26B was all costs for 60 yrs - 1.5 cents a kwh.
AECL in 2004 finished 2 Candu's in China for $3B ($2.0B/Gw)in 3 years on time and on budget. Mass produced reactor builds should drop to $1B Gw. In hindsight the reburb idea was a bad one - the core should just have been replaced.
The only solution to a civilization ending peak oil/climate crisis is 10000 new nukes paid for by and ending fossil fuel use creating an huge market for AECL.
The US is crippled by inefficient private power companies, a biased Nuclear Rejection Commission and corrupt and litigious political and legal systems, quadrupling their nuclear costs and time frames.
By rimming the border with AECL reactors, Canada's public power companies like NB Power would make $trillions selling the US nuke power at premium rates."
This is a very informed commentary. It suggests a great deal of insider information and most likely indicates that he works for AECL, a Canadian manufacturer of nuclear reactors. I'd say he's probably not a troll, but is a shill instead.
And just like any shill, he has all the reason in the world to missinform, fudge data, lie, and exclude necessary information: what are you going to do with the waste?
Something there you dispute? . Can you write AECL and get them to send me a check - they are late this month. You Nuclear Deniers are so funny and even more challenged than your climate counterparts!!!
Why should we call them? Chill out, your check will come, you got the last one on time, right?
I've noticed you have a lot of trouble reading. Likely your tourettes makes the words blur.
I've also noticed you generally quote greenwash without any basis in fact.
Is there some figure from Rod's work that you dispute? The annual US dose allowable? The amount of socalled contaminated water you need to drink what? From your past spew you also seem to need help with arithmetic. Is that it?
Rod is an actual nuclear engineer.
I'd further note"
"A picocurie is to a curie as a penny is to 10 BILLION DOLLARS, and a curie is not even a very large unit of measure. A curie of tritium weighs just 0.1 milligrams."
They use to sell watch fobs with a curie of tritium in them. I'm sure Greenpeace Activists have a lot them and are running around salting their claims.
These very low tritium levels are on the plant site not outside its boundaries.
Unfortunately, I don't have tourette's syndrome, so I guess we can't say any shit I spout at you is attributable to that. Say I don't dispute Rod's figures, he is talking about 75,000 picocurie. The latests findings from the Department of Health froma nearby well (as I said) is 2.45 million picocuries, incredibly higher than the "safe" allowable amount.
The plant in Oregon (Trojan) was built on a huge fault line right along the Columbia river. There were ballot initiatives to close it, but PGE outspent the close Trojan groups 58 to 1. The Oregonian, by far our biggest paper, and the rest of the recipients of so muchadvertising0 all advised we had to keep Trojan open to keep from blackouts. Trojan had been closed for most of its life due to problems anyway. PGE closed the plant a month after winning the election. Why go to all the trouble to win the election? Because if the people voted to close it, PGE had to pick up some of the decommissioning. Since they beat the ballot measure and closed it for their own 'safety reasons', the public was stuck with the full tab of the closure. The Oregonian also argued later we should pay PGE for its lost profits from not having the plant, profits that were completely artificial and due to huge subsidies and externalized costs. Enron took over soon, and collected hundreds of millions of taxes from ratepayers that they didn't forward on to the IRS. Amazing what you can get away with. Lots of liberals here weren't too concerned with the issue, and put more time and money into fighting a gaybashing law that passed anyway, and was patently unconstitutional and thrown out by our Supreme Court for that reason. A lot of these libs, couldn't- and still can't- even understand the threat of centralized power that gets more and more out of control. A pizza parlor has to pay for insurance and waste (trash service and sewage) but not a nuclear plant. Its waste and insurance are far too high by free market standards so we get more lemon socialism, pushed again by Placebobama. Do not be fooled by reprocessing; it creates far more contamination. RIght wingers point to France as being good on the issue, when the rest of Europe is moving to wind and solar. Japan and Germany are leading the world in manufacture and innovation, like in the auto industry before. Renewables don't need fuel, they provide far more jobs, and are already much cheaper the nuclear even though the nuke industry has taken up over 90% of the Department of Energy's budget wit subsidies, and again, much of their subsidy is not even on the books, like that long term waste problem, insurance risk, (Price Anderson Act), and more. Still, I keep hearing how smart and good Obysmal is. Character is action, and his character really is a big 0. Amory Lovins is very good on all this. The most accurate and comprehensive critique of the industry I've seen in the mass media is the Simpsons' episode called 'Homer's Enemy', with Frank Grimes as the voice of reason nobody listens to. NBC did a documentary on nukes but didn't mention they are owned by General Electric, perhaps the biggest corporation in the world, which of course makes lots of nuclear weapons too. Also forgotten by idiots like Fareed Zakaria is that nuclear plants take an average of fifteen years of operation before they have made up for the enormous carbon footprint it takes to build one. Tell me again what's so great about Oblivima?
The "reality check" for both sides is just starting.
whatever that's supposed to mean. Nice use of irrelevance, its so releveant to everything else you say.
The vote will not go to the House. The Senate will have a chance to reverse themselves after the election in November. So the Democrats will be running against the President with the full support of folks who have nothing but bad names for Obama against a bunch of 'tea-party" republicans in the worse recession since who knows when in the face of drastic budget cuts, exhausted medical insurance, unemployment and property tax relief funds, without a clear plan to replace 20% of its electrical supply. call me when the dust settles.
The fault for the lack of a clear (federal) plan to replace that 20% of electricity supplied by nuclear lies flatly in Obama's lap. Instead he outlined a plan to go nuclear that will face signifigant resistance and further alienates the people who elected him. Meanwhile, people who actually care are doing things in their own areas to ensure their own energy security, by installing solar.
Yeah, I'll call you when the dust settles. so I can laugh in your nuke-loving face. By the way in another post, I saw you trumpet the "many" scientists who think that nuclear is the way to go, funny how many of those many are employed in the Nuke industry or work for NGOs who recieve their funding from nuke-related associations. I guess could be said for me in solar, only my power doesn't kill people.
No matter the reasons, nuclear energy is and never will be safe enough to provide power to the people, much less nuclear powered submarines.
Plutonium
Pu-238 - 87.74 years
Pu-239 - 24065 years
Pu-240 - 6537 years
Pu-241 - 14.4 years
Pu-242 - 3.76E5 years
Pu-243 - 4.956 hours
Pu-244 - 8.26E7 years
Uranium
U-232 - 72 years
U-233 - 1.59E5 years
U-234 - 2.445E5 years
U-235 - 7.03E8 years
U-236 - 2.34E7 years
U-237 - 6.75 days
U-238 - 4.47E9 years
U-240 - 14.1 hours
While tritium has several different experimentally-determined values of its half-life, NIST recommends 4,500±8 days (approximately 12.33 years).
The worldwide average background dose for a human being is about 2.4 millisievert (mSv) per year.[1] This exposure is mostly from cosmic radiation and natural radionuclide in the environment. This is far greater than human-caused background radiation exposure, which in the year 2000 amounted to an average of about 5 μSv per year from historical nuclear weapons testing, nuclear power accidents and nuclear industry operation combined,[2] and is greater than the average exposure from medical tests, which ranges from 0.04 to 1 mSv per year. Older coal-fired power plants without effective fly ash capture are one of the largest sources of human-caused background radiation exposure.
But it is follow the money, as usual, and I would hope the the good folks in VT have the sense to shut the plant down but as with the depression we are in, it would not surprise me to learn that enough of those legislators would take the money and keep the plant, and possibly for just a $1000.00 each.
What is tell tale also, is once again o is doing to the people by endangering them/us, who voted for him, what he has time and again done and that is recant on his campaign promises.
Yup all wonderful fuel for Gen IV reactors and of course the current Candu loves to burn the stuff. The tiny amount left would fill a few casks that we could store in the middle of one of the infinite half life extremely toxic discarded solar cell dumps.
You make a good point though that coal burners produce a lot of radioactive waste and nuclear is the only real tech capable of replacing coal. If fact it is the only tech capable of getting rid of our current inventory of waste.
"wonderful fuel for Gen IV reactors and of course the current Candu loves to burn the stuff."
Could you back this up with some citations please? So far this statement is merely an unsupported assertion.
And verifiable sources this time.
Thanks
Real wind costs:
Latest Chinese build Texas wind farm - 56 sq miles of concrete, roads and steel, $1.5 billion. 125 Mw(avg), excluding storage, transmission, and millions annually for load balancing natural gas. $12B/Gw or 17 cents a kwh at a typical US Pirate Power company discount rate.
Because wind requires low efficiency fast spooling gas plant to load balance, it actually produces more GHG's than if high efficiency gas plants alone were used. It would be more economical to just build the gas and forget the wind.
http://www.wind-watch.org/documents/wp-content/uploads/lang-wind-power-co2-emissions.pdf
Real Solar costs:
We have Arcadia Fl 42 Gwh/annual the largest PV plant in the country, just opened , $150M,$32B/Gw or 50 cents a kwh at Florida Power's discount rate.
Rooftop solar arrays in the US have an average efficiency of 15% with perfect roof orientations and shading - somewhere around 10% overall.
At todays fire sale prices, due to the collapse of the massive Spanish solar PV market, a typical 5 kw array taking up 50 sq meters of south facing roof costs about $20K before massive subsidies available in some areas. There are 110 million roofs in the US.
5000*.1*110000000 gives 55 Gw for $2.2 trillion. The US average energy needs are 3500 Gw. 55/3500 is 1.5% of US energy needs. The efficiencies available with 100% conversion to mass produced nuclear power would carry that entire 3500/Gw load for the same $2.2 Trillion.
Senator Bernie Sanders is either working for Big Oil or more likely he has gone senile in coming up with his solar plan.
Here's an engineering study of alternatives available to repower Australia.
Solar PV with Pumped Hydro storage: $2,800 billion
Solar PV with NaS battery storage: $4,600 billion
Solar Thermal with storage: $4,400 billion
Nuclear Power: $120 billion
Just the cost of the Power Transmission TRUNK lines (500kv AC - not superexpensive superconducting ) to supply Australia with Wind & Solar Energy is $180 billion -- 50% MORE THAN THE ENTIRE NUCLEAR OPTION!!
CO2 emissions for all of Australia for 30 days:
Solar PV: 71 million tonnes
Coal: 219 million tonnes
Coal with CCS: 33 million tonnes
Nuclear: 3.3 million tonnes
Wind and solar have already received hundreds of billions in subsidies and continue to do so. Wind power is actually increasing in price and unless there is a huge breakthough in the cost of high efficiency solar it will remain more than twice as costly as wind.
After twenty years the wind and solar arrays fall apart and the trashed solar cells end up in deadly toxic waste dumps. So renewable not!!!
Real nuclear costs:
Westinghouse 4 NRC approved American designed AP-1000 units China 4 year construction time cost $1.2 B/Gw.
AECL's Quinshan Canadian regulatory agency approved 2 Candu 6's , 4 year contruction time, $2B /Gw
A recent Korean sale to the UAE with no industrial capacity whatsoever came in at $3.5/Gw including bribes and if a sixty year contract is signed it will cost less than 1.5 cents a kwh including maintenance and fuel.
Quotes received by Ontario from both Areva and AECL were $2.4B/Gw and that same 1.5 cents a kwh.
Both AECL and Westinghouse claim after the first dozen or so are built they can factory mass produced with 3 year lead times at less than $1B/Gw
The difference between Asian and American costs is a bit of labor and incredible private power finance rates, but primarily double the time frame delays caused by the NRC. Obama could fix all that with a federal agency similar to Bonneville armed with nationwide site licences for any coal plant in the US it wanted to convert to nuclear.
The current nuclear "aid' program are loan guarantees worth a few hundred million, the cost of which is paid for by the utility.
Not even a subsidy.
They are necessary because the NRC shafted investors before at Shoreham and Seabrook by approving reactors letting them get built then denying final license because a few militant protesters and for capriciously escalating the cost of nuclear plant.
See how the NRC puts the shaft to American nuclear without any real safety improvements here in a paper by well known respected nuclear power expert Bernard L. Cohen, DSc,Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of Pittsburgh
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter9.html
Gen IV reactors like the LFR and thorium LFTR's would supply all the worlds energy needs for the next several centuries burning old nuclear waste. They cannot meltdown, are safe from terrorists and have almost a zero GHG footprint. Gen IV reactors have worked for many years in the past before Big Coal/Oil got you to shut them down in the west, but many are working now in China, India and Russia, and several more are under construction for service within two years. These reactors powered the Soviet Alfa class sub for decades. India's new nuke waste burning 500 Mw GenIV power plant is coming into service next year at a cost of $1.5B/Gw.
Scientists tell us we are maybe less than ten years away from a civilization ending peak oil and climate crisis.
75% of Americans don't believe in man made global warming and are damn sick of costly renewables that uninformed Nuclear Deniers keep pushing. 75% of Americans, likely the same ones, also believe nuclear power is an acceptable power source.It will be very easy for Republican engineers with all the facts on their side to kick the Democrats and their attorneys collective butts out of Washington on this issue.
Reasoning progressives and almost all Cons and Deniers will go along with nuclear power.It is politically doable. Renewables are not.
Nuclear Deniers like to laugh at their Global warming counterparts as being too stupid to get out of the trayler park but if you stack the End of Civilization against whatever uninformed objection they might have to nuclear power, wouldn't it be smarter to just hold their nose and vote for the nukes.
Your sources sethdayal
http://www.wind-watch.org/documents/wp-content/uploads/lang-wind-power-co2-emissions.pdf
have questionable citations like this one:
"Figure 1 – The variability of wind power Typical 100 MW Windfarm for January"
Where is this 'typical' wind farm? If it does not exist-as nothing 'typical' really does, then we can toss the stats from this portion of the reference.
Also, none of the web references quoted in the article actually exist, is there any way of knowing whether they ever did?
False dilemma, Seth, and grossly misrepresentative stats.
"75% of Americans don't believe in man made global warming"
You have approximately inverted this, except that the figure has slightly shifted so that a narrower majority DO believe in man-made global warming.
Nuclear construction shut down for its costs in the 1980's, when power companies were considering suing Westinghouse and Bechtel for building "defective" plants: the quotes are because this was the term in at least part of the industry at the time.
Still, most of the costs were passed to the government, which had to waive most liability for the plants before they could be insured.
Still, most or all plants are suing the government for failing to keep up its side of waste storage, and are probably correct to do so: the government has failed its promises to them.
Of course, that does not help the rates payer, who thereby subsidizes the industry to store the waste once and then subsidizes the goverment to do so and then subsidizes the industry yet again by way of the government to compensate the industry for mutual failures.
Yesterday's electricity is gone, but yesterday's plutonium and uranium will almost certainly outlast the species.
As usual for industry stats, your Chinese wind farm includes all kinds of things that have very little to do with the generation of electricity, and a lot to do with maintaining the generation of electricity in as few hands as possible.
There's no need to have massive equipment like that. There's no need for most of that concrete. But the most obvious flaw is that there is no need for the dedicated land that makes up so much of that cost.
Wind power has been economically feasible but actually running a profit for decades, even on dedicated land, but just where the land was reasonably cheap, in the California desert, among other places.
Your figures for "US need" are likewise grossly misrepresentative, since they are based roughly on use. No one wants to live without electricity, but most electricity is wasted. Europeans already live on far less electricity than Americans, live longer and materially better. But movements already at work in the USA stand to do all this one better. It is cheaper to build housing of earth (some designs already passed in California quake zones) that cost little or nothing to heat or cool.
Need? Again, this is misleading.
I would be fascinated to know the budget for bribery for the Korean plant. Am I to suppose these are published somewhere?
..
My friends don't believe me, but I get tired of repeating myself.
Look, tossing a few numbers around as though their context meant nothing, leaving a few numbers out -- hey, I have to suspect that any public figure for bribes, in Korea or elsewhere, is largely invented, nothing personal. --- no, these do not make an argument, not that I can see.
If I do get your drift, you imagine that solar or wind is non-economical. There doesn't seem to be any other argument for nuclear energy that anyone, even the power companies themselves, are willing to profess in public, does there?
Sorry, but individuals can actually finance solar energy for their own homes themselves on a one-at-a-time basis, the most expensive basis on which it will ever exist. They do the same with windmills, without pouring more than a few feet of concrete, sometimes without that.
"Real costs" are made back within a few years.
Am I to believe that the government has deep enough pockets to float Westinghouse, Bechtel, GE, and the local power boys, and cannot lend a hand to homeowners who would like to go green for far, far less?
No, Seth, too much information is already public domain. There's no need to be so gullible.
So many of your "facts" are either: open to interpretation; likely to be wrong; probably made up; most definitely not inclusive of the full costs or facts; mathmatically and factually questionable; inadequately sourced; and mostly conjecture (I know, redundant, but it is appropriately so). Given that it would be a real waste of my time to go point by point refuting what you say.
For a short answer I will say nuclear would not have been able to take off on its own without transferring the costs of catastrophic break down and leakage from the company to the people, thereby reducing the plant owner's liability to the point where they could afford insurance (not a problem with your friend China).
Your citing of smoothly operational GenIV plants needs a little backing and hardly matters because that is not what they are building here now. And when they are built here we are still going to be shipping nuclear waste to them, right? Another cost you didn't include: the cost to environments and communities where the inevitable accidents (train wrecks, trucking accidents, ships sinking)are going to occur. But you don't really care. That's not included in your break down, so to speak.
The costs of mining uranium never include the harm to the local environment and people, the cancers and other diseases that come from being located near a mine. But they're mostly a lot of natives, so heck, what do you care?
You don't include a lot of real costs in your estimates and you take the lowest estimate to boot, which is from China, where labor is low, resistance is low (because they kill you for that) and safety standards are most certainly low. Give it a few years, the cost of that plant will go up signifigantly when they have their first accident, as will ours. Oh, wait, we already did: Three Mile Island; how'd that work out for them? Unfortunately, it will always be the people who live nearby that will pay those costs.
So, yeah, you could throw a lot of numbers around, some of them might even approach some level of truncated truth, most of them don't, and nothing you say can really be trusted because you only provided one source for your information and 17 cents/kwh seems high to me for wind, anyways. Here in CA it is competitive with our base rate (11 cents), last figure I saw was more like 8 or 9 cents (I could source that, but hey you only provided one source so I'll do you one better).
The way you figured out the amount of power generable in the US on rooftops is just wrong: a 5 kW solar system already includes in the computation of that output the 10% overall solar conversion efficiency (that's way low, by the way), which really shows that you don't actually know what you are talking about. At peak sun it will generate 5 kW. You generally then multiply it by the average insollation for your area in "sun hours/day" (which can be found many places such as: http://www.solar4power.com/solar-power-insolation-window.html). This gives you the amount of kWh your system will produce every day averaged out through the year. So the problem is really variable and something I would like to work out myself. One thing is sure: your number is a ludicrous because it is conceptually wrong.
Back to the drawing board, I take it you are not an engineer? Kind of makes me take everything you say with a rather large helping of salt. Guess that wasn't short. It wasn't my plan to waste so much of my time on your long faulty screed, but I would hate to think that people might actually be persuaded by your drivel.