US Nuclear Power Industry Poised For a Comeback 853
ThousandStars sends us to The Wall Street Journal for a report that momentum for nuclear energy is waxing in the US. "For the first time in decades, popular opinion is on the industry's side. A majority of Americans thinks nuclear power, which emits virtually no carbon dioxide, is a safe and effective way to battle climate change, according to recent polls. At the same time, legislators are showing renewed interest in nuclear as they hunt for ways to slash greenhouse-gas emissions. The industry is seizing this chance to move out of the shadow of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl and show that it has solved the three big problems that have long dogged it: cost, safety and waste."
Grrr... (Score:5, Insightful)
I really hate the comparisons of Three Mile Island to Chernobyl. Three Mile Island was an example of a failure at a nuclear facility that was solved correctly. Chernobyl was an example of a failure that was caused by extraordinary stupidity and handled as badly as you could handle such an incident.
Re:Grrr... (Score:1, Insightful)
Exactly. Mod parent up.
Chernobyl was a big problem. Three Mile Island was not, except in 2nd order ways such as loss of revenue and public opinion. TMI hurt no one. Of course that didn't stop the lawsuits...
It isn't that nuclear power is wonderful and 100% safe... it's that it's *relatively* wonderful and safe compared to coal.
Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, sure (Score:2, Insightful)
About time (Score:2, Insightful)
It's about time they get the, money grabbing, global warming train. This is much better plan than hybrids, wind mills and CFLs.
Re:Grrr... (Score:2, Insightful)
The incident at TMI was easily solved. Nuclear power has been a silent provider of your cities power for decades, and now it is poised to surge. China has been ordering new plants by the dozen, and India is working with technology to get around the uranium trade difficulties. Once the plant in Maryland is finished (Calvert Cliffs), and becomes operational, other power utilities will be lining up to build more. Projected energy needs rise very quickly and nuclear can be an American solution.
No need to burn dirty coal, or foreign oil. Uranium deposits in Virginia show great prospect if the law allows mining. Now if only we could get the Government or perhaps wealthy investors to back the $8B/each to build them, the ball might get rolling soon. (Keep in mind a 1GW plant can easily make $1-2Million per DAY).
1968 controls technology (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's tragic that a plant from that era has come to symbolize nuclear power for the entire nation when the technology has advanced so considerably. If we applied that line of reasoning to automobiles, we'd close all the freeways because the Corvair was unsafe.
Re:Grrr... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nuclear Technology has come a looooong way in 40 years. That's something to stress to the anti-nukes.
The waste is another sticking point to the anti-nukes now.
Good Luck With The Red Tape.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I hope the folks planning to establish new nuclear facilities hire a damn good group of lawyers. They are probably going to need it.
Let's hope so (Score:5, Insightful)
The simple truth is that nuclear power is good technology that solves a variety of sticky problems. Anti-nuclear propaganda films irrationally scared the public in to rejecting a highly beneficial and useful method of power generation. With the passage of years, the public has come to the realization that the sky isn't falling and that a modern, safe nuclear power system is good economics and good social policy. We should celebrate this return to sanity: it's reason triumphing over irrational fear.
Re:Grrr... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah. In terms of safety, Chernobyl is like taking a Yugo, removing the swaybar, clipping the emergency brake cable, severing the brake hydraulic lines, removing shock absorbers, installing racing slicks, and going for a joyride in the snow. (Disclaimer - Yugos might not have some of those items in the first place, but hopefully you get the idea.)
TMI would be like taking an old Dodge Aries out for a drive.
Modern nuclear plants would be like driving an AWD vehicle with ABS and stability control.
Re:Grrr... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it's at least partly driven by purposeful misuse of it in that way by people who either do or should know better--- whether because they want to make nuclear power seem scary, or just because they or their publishers want to sell books and push documentaries. One of the first major books [wikipedia.org] on the subject uses the sensational title Three Mile Island: Thirty Minutes to Meltdown (1982), and its paperback cover [images-amazon.com] has the even more sensational tagline, "The Untold Story--- Why It Happened And How It Can Happen Again". And even that looks like a sober scholarly analysis compared to subsequent books [amazon.com] with subtitles like A Nuclear Omen for the Age of Terror.
Fortunately there are good books [wikipedia.org] on the subject. But I suspect they don't sell as well.
Re:Grrr... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not really. The facts are on the side of the pro-nuclear groups. We can SOLVE the nuclear waste issue by building more nuclear plants...
If we build a modern generation of feeder-breeder reactors that are something close the 97-99 times more efficient than the old breed and can consume previously generated nuclear waste as fuel.
Re:Good. (Score:4, Insightful)
The difference between chernobyl's RBMK design and and our operating relics is already rather significant. Also, we have organizations in the US, such as the United States Navy, which are at the forefront of safe reactor design and operation.
Re:CO2 accounting (Score:4, Insightful)
One must take into account the amount of CO2 emitted during nuclear fuel production. Has anybody done the math?
You don't need to "do the math". Apply some common sense. Common sense tells you that it doesn't take thousands of megawatts to dig ore out of the ground and refine it. Have you ever seen the trainloads of coal that arrive at your local coal power plant on a routine basis? Do you think it takes anywhere near that amount of energy to dig ore out of the ground and process it?
Re:With Yucca Mountain closed? (Score:4, Insightful)
Nope, it will increase the need to build more feeder-breeder reactors to use up the 99% fuel content remaining in that so called "nuclear waste".
Re:With Yucca Mountain closed? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why not just drill a large hole into a subduction zone and drop it off in there.
Let the earth recycle it.
Then again I also never understood why if nuclear waste is still putting off energy, why not just use the waste as an energy source? Storing the waste in pools that have to be constantly chilled just seems so backasswards.
Re:Grrr... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but the waste will be far less radioactive than the waste produced by older-style reactors. And radioactive waste is significantly easier to corral than the CO2 being barfed into the atmosphere by coal-burning plants.
Re:With Yucca Mountain closed? (Score:3, Insightful)
Hardly at all. Modern Pebble Bed reactors recycle their own waste until there is almost no radiation left and only a lump of lead where the uranium should be. There's almost no waste at all in a modern reactor, and the whole thing can be shielded so well that it's virtually impossible to have a melt down from one even if things do go wrong.
In fact, places like Yucca Mountain and Hanford, if Pebble Bed reactors take off- could become MINES.
Re:Environment?? (Score:5, Insightful)
They haven't solved the environmental issues. They might have better safety, but what about the fact that they use massive amounts of water, and heat it up about a degree before returning it to the river that the plant is inevitably next to? How about the waste? They still haven't solved that one; all our old waste is still sitting on site at current plants.
Palo Verde. 3 units, no river.
The waste is sitting there because politicians refuse to deal with the issue; not because it is unsolvable. Personally, I think we should rethink breeder reactors.
Re:Good. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:With Yucca Mountain closed? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Environment?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Modern Pebble Bed Reactors recycle their water, just like they recycle their uranium.
Re:Yeah, sure (Score:2, Insightful)
Unfortunately, no matter how safe, clean, or whatnot of the design, you still need to get over that first hurdle of convincing the people to allow the first one to be built in the area. Then there might be less resistance to the next.
Re:Best stop-gap availible (Score:4, Insightful)
I think most energy experts consider it the "bridging" option. If coal is unacceptable, geothermal too difficult in many areas, hydroelectric already all but maxed out in much of North America (and not exactly without substantial environmental repercussions of its own), and wind, tidal and solar technologies still some ways until maturation, then we're left with nuclear power. Maybe by the end of the century other technologies (in particular better capacitors which make alternative technologies much more sensible) will see reactors phased out, but at the end of the day, nuclear power is the only way we can generate large amounts of electricity with a minimum of environmental and climate impact. If we wait around for the alternative technologies to mature, we're probably going to spend another twenty or thirty years puking CO2, enriching states that would just as soon send suicide bombers to knock out Western office towers and train stations, and generally making the ultimate transition away from fossil fuels all the more difficult.
The environmentalists are just going to have to suck it up, and that's all there is to it. The world is going to need a lot more nuclear reactors over the next half century, and if every industrialized state out there is going to throw money out the window in the hopes of restarting the economy, then it would make sense that using those dollars to kick start nuclear power is just about the best thing one could do.
Re:Shameless sig whoring (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh they don't like wind generators either. Apparently they kill some incompetent, slow bird once in a while.
As far as solar power is concerned, its just a matter of time till some environmentalist will oppose it on the basis of toxic substances produced during manufacture.
Agrarian society here we come...
Re:Grrr... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure you could scrub all that stuff and just exhaust hot air, but then you have got to deal with it in piles.
Re:Support for Nuclear Power: Greed versus Intelle (Score:3, Insightful)
For decades, the typical American has exhibited an abysmal understanding of basic physics.
France and Japan will profit immensely when their companies build plants in the USA for the science-challenged Americans.
Stereotype much?
Different waste. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
"You can't recycle the fuel indefinitely, eventually you will have waste. And eventually it needs to be dealt with."
But that waste you eventually have to deal with is almost completely different stuff. Instead of being a highly radioactive mess for a hundred thousand years, it's a much less radioactive mess for a thousand years (and during that last 500 years, it's pretty 'cool' anyhow). I don't know about you, but I suspect we *probably* have the engineering know how and materials science to contain stuff safely for 500-1000 years. I don't think anyone really thinks we currently have the knowledge to solve the problem of containing waste safely for 100,000 years.
I'd much rather try to solve the problem of containing waste safely for 1000 years than 100 times that.
Re:Grrr... (Score:1, Insightful)
Modern nuclear plants would be like driving an AWD vehicle with ABS and stability control.
...while getting a blowjob and texting at the same time. One problem with nuclear power is that it is inevitably controlled by entities which are irresponsible (in the direct sense of the word), greedy and only interested in short term gains.
Re:Grrr... (Score:4, Insightful)
Car analogies.... is there anything they can't explain?
Nuclear power is green power (Score:5, Insightful)
Even without further technological advance, nuclear power will suffice for several millennia. It produces zero emissions (except a little hot water) and produces a tiny volume of solid waste that doesn't escape into the environment. It runs silently all day and all night. If you were handed a datasheet for a nuclear power plant with the source of power blacked out, you'd jump at the chance to build the thing.
Nuclear power produces long-lived, dangerous waste, doesn't it? Dangerous and long-lived are mutually exclusive when it comes to nuclear materials. That's just the way the science of radioactive decay works. After being taken out of the reactor, the waste that remains can be reprocessed into more fuel. But if it isn't, then you can leave it in a cooling pond for a few years, and after that point, it's safe enough to handle, store, and bury. There are far worse industrial outputs than cooled-down nuclear waste.
But it's still dangerous and we have no place to store the waste! What's wrong with a cave in the middle of the desert? There's no water table. The area is seismically stable, and there's no life where we want to store the waste. And by itself, nuclear waste will do nothing. It won't make your children glow in the middle of the night. It won't contaminate your crops. It won't do anything because it's inert.
What about the risk of nuclear meltdown? Won't that destroy cities? Well, what about steam boiler explosions? What about refinery disasters? What about train disasters? Do those keep your up at night? They all killed people regularly back in their early days. But we don't worry about them now because improved safety technology has reduced the risk to an acceptable level. The same principle applies to nuclear power: another disaster like Chernobyl could never happen to even a 1970s-era American reactor, much less the far-improved versions we have today. The risk of being injured by a nuclear meltdown today is on par with being injured by lightning.
Wait -- won't we run out of fuel? Don't we only have reserves for a hundred years? You don't understand how much energy is contained in nuclear fuel. You need so little of it that the fuel is dirt cheap. The price of uranium could increase a thousandfold without affecting a nuclear plant's bottom line. And because uranium is so cheap, there's been very little prospecting. The reason our proven reserves are relatively small is that nobody has been looking very hard, because uranium is dirt cheap. In fact, for the past few decades, the nuclear power industry has been running on decommissioned nuclear warheads. That's how little fuel you really need for nuclear power.
Sure, nuclear might be okay, but wind power! It's decentralized, and therefore better! And it appeals to my philosophical sensibilities because it's not a big evil industry!Wind power can't provide baseload power. Plus, it's limited by the number of sites with good winds. You can, on the other hand, build as many nuclear plants as necessary without severe geographic constraints. As for nuclear being centralized, big, and therefore evil: big isn't necessarily bad. Properly regulated, a huge nuclear plant can provide inexpensive power to millions far more efficiently than many small ones, or thousands of turbines, coal-fired power stations, and natural gas generators. Furthermore, there's no particular reason nuclear stations need to be private per se: consider the Tennessee Valley Authority model.
If nuclear power is so great, why does it take two decades to build one, and why does the government have to subsidize the insurance?In terms of physical build time, it only takes a few years to erect a power plant. The delays come from hysterical opponents using every possible legal avenue to block new nuclear plants. The complaints have no basis in fact, but the courts have to hear them just the same. Often, legal delays are so severe that projects are abandoned altogether (which is, of course, what op
Re:Shameless sig whoring (Score:5, Insightful)
Or we could use the technology that we know works instead of investing in your ideas that have no existing economic infrastructure or history of successful deployment.
Seriously, build batteries? That's your bright idea? Why don't you stop and think about the environmental impact of building enough batteries to store millions of megawatt hours worth of electricty. Even if we invent a better battery chemistry that results in a massive increase of energy density there's no way that will scale in an environmentally friendly manner.
Re:Do the math (Score:5, Insightful)
It costs that much because of the Anti-Nuke crowds hysteria requiring accounting and maintenance practices which would make the gordian knot look like a half-winchester. This is similar to the logic that it costs less to give a mass murderer life then death. Ask the Chinese if it costs more to keep someone in a cage or execute them behind the courthouse.
Throw in enough adjudication and bureaucratic nonsense and just about any activity can be rendered economically unsound.
Environmentalist's Fallacy (Score:5, Insightful)
It goes something like this:
In reality, X produces far less overall pollution than Y.
I've seen this argument used to oppose:
All of these are great technologies. If we're ever to make any progress, we have to learn to think past the environmentalist's fallacy.
Scientists is too general a term (Score:3, Insightful)
Seven-in-ten scientists favor building more nuclear power plants to generate electricity, while 27% are opposed.
That's the thing though. From your data over a quarter of the people who are supposedly the best informed on the subject think it is a bad idea. That is NOWHERE near a scientific consensus. Scientists, as a general rule, are not dogmatic about policy and will change their mind if the evidence supports an opposing viewpoint. The fact that 1 out of 4 educated and ostensibly well informed people who are willing to change their mind when the facts dictate doing so means that the "facts" are not clear and there is no scientific consensus.
Of course just saying "scientists" is actually kind of meaningless because my wife is a scientist of a sort (medical) but knows little to nothing about nuclear power. WHICH alleged scientists were polled in this survey? Maybe they polled a bunch of computer scientists instead of nuclear engineers.
Re:FP (Score:2, Insightful)
I work for the largest producer of solar and wind energy in North America [fplgroup.com]. Despite that distinction they still rely most heavily on Natural Gas and Nuclear and are looking to build more Nuclear plants in the future. If you don't know anything about modern nuclear power facilities you might want to brush up. They are nowhere near as dangerous as the fear-mongers want you to believe and the waste as I understand it is now reused.
Re:Grrr... (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. I'd really like to know what these "tree hugging Luddites" propose that we do about our rather desperate situation in terms of electricity generation.
1. Burn coal? Nope.
2. Burn petroleum. Nope.
3. Nuclear power. Nope. NIMBY
4. Hydro power. Nope, think of the salmon!
5. Wind power. Nope. NIMBY
6. Solar power. NIMBY
etc...
They won't be happy until we're back in the days of using whale blubber lanterns to read at night...oh wait....
Re:Do the math (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Grrr... (Score:4, Insightful)
Modern reactor designs incorporate passive safety features that do not require the input of an operator or computer system to function, such as using natural circulation for the coolant system (thus no failing coolant pumps). Some designs are even physically self-stabilizing, by arranging the fuel assembly in such a way that the rate of reactions slows down if the fuel becomes too hot.
Re:FP (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, because we can't drill here in our yard (CA, AK) , we have to go to places that have petty dictators to get oil. NIMBYs are the problem, not the solution.
If you don't like the two wars, then let us drill here, drill now, And Create American Jobs. Otherwise you're part of the same problem I mentioned above.
If I were President, I'd tax the crap out of imported oil, and open up Anwar and California. I'd also start damming the rivers and building Nuke Plants to go along with Bio Fuels, Solar.
I'm just as sick about the two wars as the next guy, and don't like funding Jihadist governments. So, lets take a BIG BRIGHT LOOK at the SOLUTION we have available and go with it. You might not like everything about it, but sitting complaining about EVERY SOLUTION presented is NOT an option any longer.
Power comes from resources. (Score:5, Insightful)
If nukes are not economically feasible, why does France get ~80% of their power from them?
Because they made a policy decision to do so based on their particular economic situation and resources. I give them kudos for doing it but like any policy decision it has it's upside and downside. France has been trying to privatize their energy sector recently but the primary energy company EDF is still 70% owned by the French government. Were it private to the degree the US energy sector is, the liability costs would be more difficult to justify.
Countries have to use what they have. The US, Russia and China are INCREDIBLY rich in coal deposits. The US is to coal what Saudi Arabia is to oil. The US has about 27% of the known deposits. This makes energy derived from coal cheap in the US compared to France which has virtually no coal of its own. Hence US policy is going to favor coal more than French policy and nuclear in the US becomes less attractive thanks to the economies of scale coal has achieved in the US.
Re:Grrr... (Score:4, Insightful)
The biggest reason Nukes cost so much is that they take a long time to complete from initial capital investment to first production of electricity. If this takes a decade, then you just doubled your opportunity costs compared to something that can be completed in a year (assuming 8% interest). This wasn't always the way for nukes. We used to be able to build them in 2-3 years. That alone would decrease the cost of nuclear by almost half (since you are mostly paying for capital costs, not fuel costs). And it doesn't require new technology, and it will allow nuclear power to take over from coal much faster.
The biggest reason they have taken so long to build is that the safety regulations changed [i]while the plants were being built[/i], so it slowed down the construction to a stand-still. We shouldn't have this problem today. And, we can build plants even faster if we can get nuke-plant-assemblylines going, which would allow greater quality control measures (and therefore safety) and decrease the costs per power plant. This is how we can cleanly and cheaply and quickly and safely power the future.
Re:Shameless sig whoring (Score:5, Insightful)
There are actually quite a few successful deployments of power-storing technology -- ones that aren't even batteries. After all, batteries are really only useful for certain applications. Capacitors are nice, but not always appropriate. On the other hand, expending unused power on a reversible, bulk physical process -- like pumping water from a low-altitude body of water to a higher-altitude one -- and then generating power from the reverse process is fairly straightforward.
Re:Scientists is too general a term (Score:4, Insightful)
I only mentioned that survey because the article's claim was blatantly wrong. I've recently driven myself insane trying to explain to climate change "skeptics" that searching for a scientific consensus isn't the way to approach scientific topics because science isn't democratic. It's about evidence. Look into the advancements in technology over the last decades and examine the science yourself. Reprocessing dramatically reduces the volume of nuclear waste, while breeder reactors can generate new fuel. New reactor designs eliminate proliferation concerns by not generating plutonium. Pebble bed reactors eliminate the dependence on active safety systems by creating a nuclear pile out of spherical fuel "pebbles" that automatically react to higher temperatures by lowering their reaction rates. Uranium can be mined from seawater. Thorium can be used instead of uranium. Etc.
Try to understand why 88% of physicists think we should build modern nuclear power plants, rather than trying to count the scientists on each side. That's a topic that gets scientists bored very quickly. Focus on the science, it's much more interesting! But, since you seem fixated on counting heads, I'll answer your other question...
The link you're looking for [people-press.org] was on that page, off to the right: "About the survey." Here's an excerpt:
As you say, medical and biological scientists wouldn't know anything about nuclear power. And they polled 5x as many of those than physicists. But they specifically said that majorities in all specialties support nuclear power, while 88% of physicists and astronomers support it. They didn't poll any engineers because this was a survey aimed at scientists.
The dissenting opinion (Score:2, Insightful)
Safety
I fully understand that, like most accidents in the world, the majority of nuclear accidents were caused by human error. Unfortunately, humans aren't going to be cut out of the picture anytime soon. While extremely unlikely, the cost of failure at a nuclear facility is simply too high, and with every new reactor that is in operation the risk, however small, grows.
Waste
As much as government and industry wish to whitewash this issue, it remains unresolved. The fact remains that the world has a growing stockpile of material which requires careful storage and monitoring for hundreds of thousands of years. Most of the material is currently at temporary facilities and will have to be handled and moved at minimum to a permanent facility. I find that in most discussions of Nuclear power, almost nobody wants to talk about the ongoing cost of maintaining and storing the byproducts and anybody who expects industry to pick up that tab indefinitely is out of their mind. None of this cost is calculated into the cost of price of electricity generated. No, it will be dumped on government in the form of cleanups and public debt. Anyone who doubts this simply has to look at amount of cleanup the government is currently responsible for from industry long since moved on. Who's paying to build the current long term site? Which brings us to the concept of a permanent facility. I know
unanswered questions
Finally, there remains one great unanswered question: Why do we need more nuclear power? I know why industry wants it. I know why government wants it. But why do we need it? I can see some limited small scale usage for medicine and perhaps deep space probes, but for our everyday needs Solar and wind ARE sufficient to take care of our energy needs, and when you consider that they are just at the beginning stages of their development they will only get better. Imagine how much better they would be if renewables actually had the same level of investment that the nuclear industry has been (and still is gifted with)? When you throw in geothermal, hydro, biomass, and some limited conventional generation it becomes very difficult to justify the risks and burdens of large scale nuclear deployment.
Radiation and pollution from coal (Score:3, Insightful)
Coal releases every year more radiation into the atmosphere than all the nuke power accidents combined. Lots of greenhouse gases too -and so it will not be a long term feasible solution if we are to solve the global warming problem.
Nuke and solar power will be long term solutions, and probably solar will be the best.
Re:Grrr... (Score:3, Insightful)
That's funny. According to you those "tree hugging Luddites" have been reduced to burning trees to read at night. Ironic too.
Re:FP (Score:5, Insightful)
If I were President, I'd tax the crap out of imported oil, and open up Anwar and California. You might not like everything about it, but sitting complaining about EVERY SOLUTION presented is NOT an option any longer.
ANWR is just a drop in the bucket. It's so not-a-solution to foreign oil that it makes no sense to damage that ecosystem just to immeasurably affect our situation. In fact I'd much rather save that drop until a single drop would affect our situation because we're gagging for any fuel at all, a 'who cares about environmental concerns if we can't deliver groceries' situation. Heaven forbid it comes to that. But even worse is burning up our own reserves, and then having to come begging to the foreign powers we were trying to be free from.
Treating ANWR as a "solution" for today's problems only makes such a situation more likely. We need not-oil to be the solution. All the not-oil solutions you proposed are fine, great even (cept hydro simply because nearly all the best locations are already tapped, so the opportunity here is much less). But more drilling isn't the answer, because we can't drill enough to free ourselves of foreign oil. The only way to end our addiction to foreign oil is to end our addiction to oil.
Coal is an economic fact - like it or not (Score:4, Insightful)
Coal releases every year more radiation into the atmosphere than all the nuke power accidents combined.
True but when you have a quarter of the worlds supply of coal, it's going to be an economic factor whether it hurts the climate or not. Global warming is a huge issue but there is NO economically feasible scenario whereby coal will not be a major part of the US energy supply for the next 30+ years. I don't like it, and I suspect you don't either but coal is here and we'll have to deal with it. There simply is nothing available, not even nuclear, that can scale large enough to take coal's place in the US economy in the next few decades.
Lots of greenhouse gases too -and so it will not be a long term feasible solution if we are to solve the global warming problem.
Not with present or near-term technology, I agree. Good area for research.
Nuke and solar power will be long term solutions, and probably solar will be the best.
The answer is a diversified energy supply (nuclear, solar, wind, hydro, and yes even fossil-fuels) with careful emissions controls on the dirtier technologies. Nuclear and solar are not magic cure-alls but they should have an important part to play in the mix and definitely should be a bigger part of our energy policy. I absolutely agree with you on that.
Re:Grrr... (Score:5, Insightful)
Still dangerous (Score:5, Insightful)
Solar and wind are still underexploited resources in this country. Combine them with better use of the energy we currently make and we will be energy independent and cleaner.
Installation of residential solar generation is ideal. It places the generation at the place of its consumption. And the use of geothermal heat-exchange heating and cooling should be mandatory.
Re:Put the waste in your backyard (Score:3, Insightful)
So trade CO2 for nuclear waste? Are we not going backwards here just to solve the problem more quickly?
Going backwards? Nuclear waste is much more manageable than CO2, because of its high density and small amount of waste generated per unit of energy extracted. Carbon capture and sequestration is a joke compared to nuclear waste management. For more than thirty years, all nuclear power plants in my country have generated less than 10000 tons of spent fuel, while providing 50% of our electricity. I wouldn't dare thinking of the amount fo CO2 the production of the same amount of power from coal would have generated. It would be millions of tons, and that's a low estimate.
And with reprocessing of the spent fuel, the amount of nuclear waste would go down a lot more (excluding irradiated reactor parts, building materials, etc).
Re:FP (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't like the two wars, then let us drill here, drill now
The problem is you're just delaying the inevitable - Oil is a finite resource. Sure, you could drill up Alaska like swiss cheese, but what does it buy you? Another 20 years? We need to move to renewables.
Re:Scientists is too general a term (Score:3, Insightful)
No, it's not. "Many" is a perfectly fine adjective for "27% of scientists".
You're acting like they wrote "majority". They did not.
Re:FP (Score:2, Insightful)
As for oil and the drilling for it in CA and AK....It would last about 3 years after production started and then we'd be right back here, save for the loss of several hundred square miles of pristine habitat we had to sacrifice to get to the oil....
-Oz
Re:Grrr... (Score:3, Insightful)
But I admit it seems to me all the pro-nukers are right about what freezing nuclear development here did... held the US back. The United States no longer has the technology to pull off what the pro-nukers want, not without spending gobs of money importing the intellectual capital and technology. I believe that building breeder reactors is cost prohibitive because of this. Breeder reactors won't bring power independence, just more dependence on foreign technology. So even if the danger is marginalized, the cost is still quite amazing.
Obviously, I personally don't think nuclear power is going to be the power savior in which the pro-nukes seem to have this unwavering faith. Looks to me like going backwards.
I think the real power solution is going to be along the lines of legislation that requires all new structures to produce at least some of their own power. As time goes on, this requirement should get steeper. In 40 years, if 60% of the structures in the US were producing 20-30% of their own power, I think it would be be relief enough that we wouldn't need to panic and pour a few trillion into R&Ding and building and deploying 5 more reactors per state or whatever, breeder or not.
Re:Grrr... (Score:4, Insightful)
Would you like to live near a Nuclear power plant?
1: yes.
2: Depending on where you are and what you mean by "near", you already do.
Re:FP (Score:2, Insightful)
Another ding on nuclear power is that the private insurance market is not willing to insure them so it requires the government to provide liability insurance for them (at least in the US).
Re:Good. (Score:3, Insightful)
Indeed. OP should have said "so long since we have built a new commercial reactor in this country" since the Navy has been building them into its ships and submarines for decades now.
Re:Grrr... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Progress for nuclear power (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Grrr... (Score:1, Insightful)
Since when did people ever listen to facts... People believe what they want
Re:Grrr... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sorry, is it no longer politically correct to only mention an example of conservative stupidity without mentioning one of liberal stupidity?
Re:Grrr... (Score:2, Insightful)
I guess you could say I am on the left (I roll my eyes less often watching Olbermann than watching O'Rielly, and I can't think of Glenn Beck as anything other than some sort of hilarious prank). I never thought anything other than Bush banned federal funding except in the case of existing lines.
And I never really noticed 'the majority' of the left saying anything different than that.
Re:Good. (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately there are enough Senators in the United States Senate from coal producing states they can destroy any sane new energy policy simply to protect the big coal producers and the coal mining jobs in their states. This is already happening in the current cap and trade energy bill. We could rapidly decommission a bunch of dirty coal plants and replace them with natural gas. Its not perfect on the CO2 front but they are better than coal and easy to do. The U.S. and the world is now sitting on a glut of natural gas and prices are plummeting thanks to new drilling techniques tapping huge new reservoirs under shale that was previously difficult to drill.
The senators are saying the same thing the Bush administration said for eight years, and it appears Obama is saying now, having just pumped $3 billion more in to clean coal pilots. They say they are going to have clean coal and CO2 sequestration any day now and "clean" coal will solve all our problems. It just happens most of the clean coal pilots have failed miserably, if it ever does happen it will be expensive, a little dangerous and still put out large quantities of other pollutants. "Clean coal" is just political smoke screen to con the public in to thinking coal is "clean" because the TV said so when in fact its the dirtiest fuel there is.
Much of this is a tribute to how broken the U.S. Senate is and how perfectly designed it is to protect powerful corporate special interests. An industry just needs to buy a handful of Senators and they can completely frustrate any rational new policy direction, pretty much exactly the same thing happening to health care reform.
Re:Grrr... (Score:3, Insightful)
So it isn't true that many scientists oppose nuclear power. A minority of scientists oppose nuclear power
I don't think you understand the word many. If it was a majority they'd say "majority" or "most". 27%, especially if it's of such a large group, is "many".
Re:Grrr... (Score:1, Insightful)
Yes it is. "Many" does not mean "most", even implicitly. 27% is a minority, but a significant number.
Re:FP (Score:3, Insightful)
Walrus, various seals and whales are all ocean mammals - and the proposed ANWAR sites are all inland.
As for the Birds and Caribu - I've seen studies that they tend to LIKE pipelines - it provides shelter.
Done right, the drilling won't be a problem.
Personally, I'm for nuclear power - it's harder to replace oil than it is coal.
Re:Mod parent down, spurious data... (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, in a modern nuclear plant (pebble-bed designs), when it "goes down" all it does is stop generating power, nothing more.
Your uninformed, hysterical type is the reason we still rely on coal or oil (or even natural gas) for electrical generation at all today.
Good call too for the moment (Score:3, Insightful)
It's all irrelevent unless taxes go up to pay for it. You'll see a few small token installations applying repurposed military technology but since civilian research has been dead for thirty years it would take complete idiots to build expensive Westinghouse junk which is really TMI painted green and won't start generating power until a decade after construction starts.
It's funny seeing people screaming for the most expensive white elephants in power generation NOW before the local nuke lobby gets overrun by local outsiders like Hyperion or imported methods like pebble bed and accelerated thorium. The nuke lobby is really just a welfare addict that has conned a lot of people - give up on them and instead promote ongoing research to solve the problems the nuke lobby refuse to attempt to solve and to develop nuclear technologies that can stand on their own merits. "It's better covering your kiddies in coal dust" is not good enough, everything is better than that so if nuclear is going to be a viable alternative energy they need to put work in (like Hyperion doing the work, but Westinghouse et al just slap a coat of green paint on TMI and call that good enough).
The nuclear lobby needs to be dragged screaming out of the 1970s or get put down.
Re:Do the math (Score:4, Insightful)
>Please point to a single working pebble bed reactor.
>Okay, how about this [wikipedia.org] one, based on the "failed" design you mentioned earlier... Details here. [wired.com]
You get your information from Wikipedia and Wired?
FYI: Under the best of circumstances those are less than reliable sources. And the Wikipedia article refers to a 2005 experimental reactor, and "plans" for a bigger startup in 2013.
And no need to put quotes around "failed", it failed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR-300 [wikipedia.org]
Re:Grrr... (Score:3, Insightful)
I am guessing here, but dumping radioactive waste into the oceans might be political and PR death. Regardless of if it is actually harmful or not, which it likely is (but I don't know only guessing).
Re:Mod parent down, spurious data... (Score:3, Insightful)
The argument is being addressed too discretely. It's not a case of either it's certain death or utterly flawless. The safety of nuclear reactors falls along a 2-d continuum in terms of consequences of failure and likelihood of failure. The question is do modern reactors fall far enough into the safe corner to warrant widespread deployment? Jet liners have the potential to kill hundreds of people if they go wrong, or are willfully misused - but they're ubiquitous, despite being subject to the same classes of pitfalls (human error, willful abuse, design flaws, etc).
As with cars - thousands die in traffic accidents every year but people regard the risk/benefit ratio to be worth the deaths. It's impossible to evaluate this kind of situation without appreciating that the risks/rewards lie on a continuum and that despite it being distasteful to admit some number of deaths are acceptable, since pretty much everything has some way of killing people if deployed widely enough.
If you compare the number of people likely to be killed by reactor malfunctions to the number of people saved by some consequence of the reactors existing does it compare favourably? I have no idea, but with a low enough failure rate it might be a slam dunk.