Central New York Nuclear Plants Struggle To Avoid Financial Meltdown 270
mdsolar writes "As recently as four years ago, nuclear power companies were planning to spend billions of dollars to build a new reactor in Oswego County, alongside three existing nuclear plants. Then the bottom fell out. Natural gas-burning power plants that benefit from a glut of cheap gas produced by hydrofracking cut wholesale electricity prices in half. Now the outlook for nuclear power plants is so bleak that Wall Street analysts say one or more Upstate nuclear plants could go out of business if conditions don't change. Two Upstate nukes in particular — the James A. FitzPatrick Nuclear Power Plant in Oswego County and the R.E. Ginna Nuclear Power Plant in nearby Wayne County — are high on the watch list of plants that industry experts say are at risk of closing for economic reasons."
Re:That popping sound (Score:5, Interesting)
Yup. I live in upstate New York.
I'd rather have a nuke plant a mile away than gas drilling operations commencing anywhere upstream on the Susquehanna, even if I pay more, because with gas I know I'll be paying longterm for the contamination. Nuclear's track record per unit of energy produced is stellar compared to the track record of constant failure and environmental contamination the gas drillers have established so far.
Re:That popping sound (Score:0, Interesting)
"nuclear power is cheapest and safest."
Not even close. Nuke power never includes the decommisioning costs and the US and most nations with Nukes still don't have a long term plan to deal with Spent Fuel Rods. Many reactors sites now have 30 years of spent fuel rods on site, Most of these spent fuel pools contains more material than all of the active Nuke Weapons in the world. ALL it takes is would mistake to make a 500 mile radius inhabitable for thousands of years. Most of the reactors are located near heavily populated regions or major water ways (for cooling). Even a lost of one Spent Fuel Pool would mean the displacement of 10 milllion or more people in most regions.
As fossil fuels become very expensive it will be impossible deal with decommission of Nuke Plant and we face a catastrophic crisis when we lose the ability to maintain them.
As far as global warming:
1. Most of the damage is occuring in India and China, as they build a New Coal fired Plant about once a month. The US economy is in terminal decline as most manufacturing occurs in Asia, and the US is insolvent from the enormous amount of private and public debt.
2. Global carbon emissions are going to peak soon as the cost of Oil becomes very expensive and shutdowns the global economy. The Global economy is built upon cheap oil. Without Cheap oil to move everything, the economy will crater and global carbon emissions will collapse with it. Even if we started to switch to electric based transportation today it going to take many decades to covert it all. By the time any progress has been made, fossil fuels will become too expensive to complete the transistion. We are already past the age of cheap oil and it now just a matter of time before the big crunch begins.
3. The real worry is a Major nuclear conflict as major industrial powers fight over the dwindling resources, and the US isn't helping by destabilizing the Middle East.