PUSH ON FOR NUCLEAR PLANTS
MARK CLAYTON, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR - With this week's application to build a new nuclear plant - the first such filing in nearly 30 years - the industry says the US is on the verge of a nuclear power renaissance. . . Over the next 15 months, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission expects a tidal wave of similar permit applications for up to 28 new reactors, costing up to $90 billion to build. . .
Even if the projects are successful and building proceeds at breakneck speed, the lead times are so long and costs so high that it's unclear that the US can build enough nuclear plants to make a dent in greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050. They're so financially risky, experts say, that the only reason building plans are under way is that the federal government has stepped in to guarantee investors against loan defaults. . .
The last time that the nuclear industry was on a building spree - in the 1980s - roughly half of the power plants proposed were never finished, in part because of fears caused by the accident at Three Mile Island. Those that were finished were delayed for years and cost far more than estimated. A number of power companies went bankrupt. In late 2003, NRG - the company that filed Monday's permit application – emerged from bankruptcy caused by overexpansion in the 1990s.
[From the Progressive Review August 20]
AP - The Tennessee Valley Authority shut down one of three units at the Browns Ferry nuclear plant Thursday because water drawn from a river to cool the reactor was too hot, a spokesman said. . . "We don't believe we've ever shut down a nuclear unit because of river temperature," said John Moulton, spokesman for the Knoxville, Tenn.-based utility. He said TVA would compensate for the loss of power by buying power elsewhere. The utility announced earlier Thursday that it was imposing a fuel surcharge on customers because of lower hydroelectric power production caused by drought conditions. . . Moulton said the average high temperature Thursday was 103 for five of the largest cities in TVA's coverage area: Huntsville and Knoxville, Chattanooga, Memphis and Nashville in Tennessee.
STUDY FINDS EARTHQUAKE FAULT LINE UNDER YUCCA MOUNTAIN
4 Comments:
I don't plan to try holding my breath until our "leadersheep" produce an educational program that lays out the energy-generation options in a clear way.
We have very few options right now. Nuclear power is about the best of them, and the alternative to doing the best we can however difficult and risky is to go under.
Fat chance the oil industry will let that cat out of the bag.
As to speed of buiding, I can recall reading, years ago, a suggestion by a nuke engineer that small nuke plants (like those that power ships) can be built much more cheaply and quickly than large ones. It's not my field, so I don't really remember the argument he made, but iirc it was in Sci Am and therefore at least credible even if perhaps not unimpeachable.
--Mairead
"We have very few options right now. Nuclear power is about the best of them, "
Beacuse of the persistant toxic waste of nuclear power, and the costs and hazards of managing those wastes, nuclear power as a clean and affordable form of energy is a lie. The US doesn't even have a good permanent storage site for existing spent fuel, where will we put more of it?
A big part of the mess this world is in today, is fueled by behaving as if the by-products of power generation activites will just vanish, they really don't, and we have fouled our world with this behavoir.
Our best option is conservation. Once real strides are made in conservation, then alternative power like wind and solar can make a real contribution. Home scale generation of power will need to be a large part of that picture, because moving power, costs power.
I agree with your point about conservation. The less we can manage to use, the more chance we have of bringing the situation into balance.
But I'd suggest that the problem of where to put nuke waste is being manipulated in the service of the oil and coal industries ...which are a good bit more powerful and entrenched than the pro-nuke and nuke-neutral forces combined, I think you'll have to agree.
There is no reason that we have to store nuke waste in some geologically fragile part of a populated area. So why does the government persist in trying that?
The abyssal deeps (e.g., Puerto Rico Trench - 8400m deep, 300km long - and its Bunce Fault) where plate activity is going on would be much better disposal locations.
The forces at work in such places are so vast that the word "vast" itself is inadequate, so adding clusters of spent fuel rods would be inconsequential.
And with optimal aiming, they would gradually be taken into the mantle itself and destroyed, insofar as anything ever gets destroyed.
--Mairead
How much would it cost to sink all this stuff in the deep ocean?
How much energy would be burned up in the process and how does that number compare to what is being produced by the plants?
Are there any good studies even now that prove nuclear energy is a net gain rather than a net loss once all factors are taken into account?
Why does anyone think it makes sense to use one of the most dangerous processes discovered by man, nuclear fission, to do nothing more than boil water?
How many nuclear cheerleaders even know that that is all a nuclear power plant does?
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