Obama Budget To Triple Nuclear Power Loan Guarantees 373
Hugh Pickens writes "When President Obama said in his State of the Union address on Wednesday that the country should build 'a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants,' it was one of the few times he got bipartisan applause. Now the NY Times reports that administration officials have confirmed their 2011 federal budget request next week will raise potential loan guarantees for nuclear projects to more than $54 billion, from $18.5 billion, and a new Energy Department panel will examine a vastly expanded list of options for nuclear waste, including a new kind of nuclear reactor that would use some of it. The Energy Department appears to be getting close to offering its first nuclear loan guarantee. Earlier this week, Southern Co. Chief Executive David Ratcliffe said the company expects to finalize an application for a loan guarantee 'within the next couple months,' while Scana Corp., which has also applied, is 'a couple months behind Southern' and is hopeful of receiving a conditional award 'sometime in the next months.'"
what about (Score:5, Insightful)
research funding for nuclear research such as thorium reactors or pebble bed reactors?
to increase safety and/or move onto other nuclear fuels
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:what about (Score:5, Insightful)
research funding for nuclear research such as thorium reactors or pebble bed reactors?
to increase safety and/or move onto other nuclear fuels
How about funding geothermal, solar, tidal, wind and other energy sources just as much? Give each one $54 Billion? Doesn't sound so good does it? How about not picking winners and losers at all? Instead let the market pick them.
Because as CATO, Forbes, and others say nuclear power is Hooked on Subsidies [cato.org]. The market would not support nuclear power without them.
Falcon
The problem is that none of those things can right now, today be used to replace Coal-fired Power Plants.
Coal-fired plants are principally where we get our power from because they can function economically for base load, 24 hour a day, 7 days a week continuous operation. None of the things you listed in your comment can replace Coal for that type of operation. With more R&D, that may not always be the case, but we can't continue pumping garbage into the air waiting for the magic bullet "someday" (I'm thinking of Geothermal, I'm not convinced Wind or ground based Solar will ever be reliable enough for baseload with all the research and money in the World). Nuclear can replace coal right now.
At the end of the day, who gets what subsidy doesn't matter. At some point, everything we currently depend upon for our way of life is subsidized to some degree or another.
People are making fun of the Administrations (not saying you personally, but some of the public in general) push for high-speed rail. They point out that AMTRAK couldn't exist without tax-payer dollars to fill in its funding gaps. What none of them realize is that the exact same thing can be said of the roads they drive on. People think that gasoline taxes pay for road maintenance, in reality those taxes barely make a dent in the total cost of maintaining our highway system (and even at that, it is in terrible shape for many parts of the Nation).
The problem I have with studies that proclaim "Nuclear couldn't exist without subsidies" is that they never make clear exactly what they are counting as a subsidy.
Loan Guarantees, for example, are NOT a subsidy as far as I'm concerned, not unless the utility actually defaults on the loan and the Government has to make it up. We've (speaking of the Government) been giving loan subsidies for dozens of years for Nuclear Power Plant construction and not once has the Government ever had to make good on the promise (meaning actually spend any money because a utility defaulted).
People try to make hay with the eventual cost of disposing of ever how much waste ultimately will need disposing of (I'm allowing for the fact that no matter how efficient secondary recovery efforts become for spent fuel, there will always be some small part that we do indeed have to worry about disposing of). The problem with that is that it ignores that fact that since the very first Nuclear Plant came online, utilities have been paying a tax per unit of electricity generated that specifically goes into a fund to pay for the ultimate disposal of nuclear waste.
With these facts in mind, I think the positives (no Coal pollution -- Heavy metals being spewed into the air, people dieing to mine the coal, pollution from the coal mining itself, etc.) far outweigh the negatives.
I for one would like to welcome our new Nuclear Power overlords. :)
And yet the public... (Score:5, Insightful)
The public's support for that particular snippet of the state of the union was rather low, as CNN reported--so kindly point out to your non-tech friends that nuclear is the best alternative right now and we can't go entirely renewable for a long time.
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I like the prospect of nuclear energy being clean and everything, but at least we in Germany have, in the 35 years we have been running nuclear power plants, not figured out a place where to put the waste. So how can we put this burden on future generations? There is no plan on how to go on with this. Although there are a few projects and ideas, like old salt mines, none have proven viable so far.
Nuclear waste just radiates for way too long. I personally hope for transmutation, but as it looks now, nuclear
Re:And yet the public... (Score:5, Informative)
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That pretty much depends on how you want to measure radioactivity. Over the whole life span until the compounds reach stable isotopes? Then I seriously don't know. But looking into it, I found that in the area surrounding charcoal and nuclean power plants, the exposure is about 3 times higher at coal plants. But how would radioactivity ever get out of a nuclear power plant in normal operation? So this can not really be taken as a pro nuclear point.
Do you have some hard numbers on how this compares? (Keep in
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But how would radioactivity ever get out of a nuclear power plant in normal operation? So this can not really be taken as a pro nuclear point.
Surely that is exactly the point. Would you rather radioactive pollution was put into boxes for storage and reprocessing or spread over the surrounding area?
Re:And yet the public... (Score:5, Insightful)
That is where breeder reactors come into play. If you burn the nasty stuff as fuel again you: 1) get a lot more energy from the material you already have at your disposal. 2) reduce the radioactivity of the byproducts. The more you burn your waste as full, the longer the average halflife of the waste becomes.
Longer halflife == safer to handle, contray to popular belief.
Re:And yet the public... (Score:5, Informative)
That is where breeder reactors come into play. If you burn the nasty stuff as fuel again you: 1) get a lot more energy from the material you already have at your disposal. 2) reduce the radioactivity of the byproducts. The more you burn your waste as full, the longer the average halflife of the waste becomes.
Longer halflife == safer to handle, contray to popular belief.
Actually you have point 2 backwards, the longer you "burn" the fuel/waste the shorter the average half-life becomes, the more intense and hazardous the radiation from it become, but it returns to safe levels much more quickly.
The Canadian CANDU [wikipedia.org] design is a very elegant design has a good safety record, can use natural uranium, spent LWR fuel rods [wikipedia.org], plutonium such as MOX [wikipedia.org] made from decommissioned nuclear weapons and even thorium [wikipedia.org].
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Care to explain that? A longer half-life means the material is radioactive LONGER.
Re:And yet the public... (Score:5, Informative)
For a simple analogy, think of a battery. If you use more electricity from it, it will run out faster. Conversely, if you barely use any, it will last for a long time.
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Most people would consider it to be a curve, because EVERYTHING is radioactive for a long time. We label things "radioactive" that are radioactive for a time, relative to everything else, that is extremely short, even if it is 10000 years.
In the case of nuclear byproducts, yes, something that is deadly for 50 years with minimal exposure and then is essentially as inert as the background is better in many ways than something that is toxic with sufficiently high exposure for thousands of years, because we ca
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Two items:
1) The fact that it is not commonly done does not mean it is not the correct solution.
2) I don't know how France does it, but not only do they recycle their own waste, but other countries send their waste to them for recycling. And the US has purchased and used recycled materials for use in plants. So the system to do this is in place.
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First you say that background radiation is 3 times higher at coal plants than nuclear and then you say that nuclear has a harder time containing the radioactivity. Personally i would rather see nuclear where there is a slim chance of leakage than coal where it is guaranteed to be pumped into the atmosphere. That combined with the fact that half life is related to radioactivity, so that the materials that are radioactive for 100,000 are much less dangerous than the materials that are radioactive for 100 ye
Re:And yet the public... (Score:4, Informative)
You put the waste into a fast-breeder reactor.
And after that, you have to enrich the output from the fast-breeder reactor in a reprocessing plant before it is usable again in a regular nuclear power plant. Unfortunately, these reprocessing plants dump large amounts of low-radioactive waste in the environment both via water and air. As a result the childhood leukaemia cases around La Hague [google.com] and Sellafield [google.com] are much higher than in other places in Europe.
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You do not necessarily need to reprocess fuel in large plants if you use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_Fast_Reactor [wikipedia.org] for example.
So there are alternatives, and pretty safe ones.
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You do not necessarily need to reprocess fuel in large plants if you use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_Fast_Reactor [wikipedia.org] for example.
So there are alternatives, and pretty safe ones.
Given that apparently no such reactor has been actually used for power production, at best it might be a safe alternative. In case you forgot, they also claimed that reprocessing plants were safe (and for many years denied that the leukaemia cases had anything to do with the plants).
TFA also says that there were concerns about the safety and quality of research done (in the "history" section near the end. Regardless of the veracity of these claims, the conflicts of interests that are described there seem pr
Re:And yet the public... (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, scientists are not yet sure that leukemia clusters are caused by radiation exposure:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/raw-sewage-may-be-to-blame-for-sellafield-leukaemia-cases-1344410.html [independent.co.uk] And we can build safer reprocessing plants now.
And frankly, a slight increase in leukemia cases near some reprocessing plants is a smaller price to pay than leukemia increases from coal ash. We don't have 'perfect' technologies which can solve energy problems.
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Just researching La Hague, looks like a non-issue. They found an increase, but it was not statistically significant.
http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0952-4746/21/3/603 [iop.org]
Re:And yet the public... (Score:5, Insightful)
yes, I understand the deep desire of Germans to kill off the planet with CO2 rather than accepting that a) you need too much energy for renewables in the short and medium term to get rid of coal (new plants are coming on-line, which should be considered anathema to anyone wishing to minimise actual damage to humans) and that b) you will never get enough energy through renewables unless solar platforms in orbit start working -- they will, but I would not count on them this century.
The future is solar/wind/hydro and nuclear. Invent/create/perfect breeders to process the waste. Eventually fusion will be there (about when solar platforms will be).
That is, if we survive the consequences of the anti-nuclear movement.
And you know, this notion that nuclear is only a small percentage of humanity's energy usage? It doesn't make sense. Because the future is electric cars, which will increase massively the need for electricity. And the future is also much better insulation, which accounts for 40% of energy used for heating.
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you will never get enough energy through renewables unless solar platforms in orbit start working -- they will, but I would not count on them this century.
This is way out of date. The government's National Renewable Energy Lab concluded in 2004 that solar panels produce the energy needed to manufacture them in 2 years [nrel.gov]. Those panels can last 30 years so for 28 years they contribute more energy than it took to make them. Wind turbines [oilcrisis.com] can produce as much energy in a few months as it took to make them.
Of co
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Simply, you have to provide for the baseline needs. For that, you need large plants. Currently, your options are gaz, coal, large hydro, and nuclear.
Geothermal [coloradoenergynews.com] can provide [pdf warning} [clrlight.org] a baseload [pdf warning] [energy.gov]. Ah, I see you mention it later.
In the context of a rapidly developing World, it is highly desirable that nuclear be the choice for large-scale generation,
Aha, that's it. Like so many others you're looking for the next big thing when what will work, and is needed, is many small scale solutions. C
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No one has ever even contemplated replacing a Coal-fired plant with a renewable source of energy because renewable in no way, shape, or form have the dependability to be counted on to produce 24 hour a day, 7 day a week, 365 days a year Electricity. I'm not making this stuff up, it's simply a fact of life right now.
One, when did I say anything about closing down all coal-fired, Natural Gas-fired, or nuclear power plants right now? Two, it is a fact of life geothermal can provide a baseload of energy now, t
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We enjoy some of the lowest food prices in the World thanks to massive corn subsidies. No one is looking to remove them because everyone likes it that way.
I and others have railed on about all subsidies including farm subsidies. I and others would most definitely eliminate them.
So let's just leave the "subsidies are bad" arguments out of it right now.
I will not ignore the truth. You can sweep it under the rug but I will not.
As for geothermal, you can't show me a single example of a geothermal plant that
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Actually, the track record of nuclear is excellent. In the West, a single accident nearly 40 years ago (TMI) with no victims. In fact, if all the other energy-producing methods were held to the standards of nuclear, you could never afford anything else...
Wind and solar will always only provide for peak demand, through massive overcapacity, because even occasional blackouts are unacceptable. You need a base supply, and if you cannot get hydro, the only clean alternative is nuclear.
Biogas is not something I a
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Actually, the track record of nuclear is excellent. In the West, a single accident nearly 40 years ago (TMI) with no victims. In fact, if all the other energy-producing methods were held to the standards of nuclear, you could never afford anything else...
Only one accident in the US in 40 years? HAHA!!! Here's a list of nuclear accidents in the US [lutins.org]. Even France has had spills [breden.org.uk]. Wiki has another list of nuclear and radiation accidents [wikipedia.org].
Ask the Navajo [indymedia.org], Sioux, and all the others where uranium is mined if it's
These are not "accidents", these are incidents. (Score:3, Informative)
They are accidents. The first link even has the title "U.S. Nuclear Accidents", that's my my title. Twisting definitions don't change the facts.
If you think nuclear energy should be banned because of the excessive risk caused by such, I sure hope that you also want all cars banned. And swimming pools, and planes.
No I don't. Cars will not harm hundreds, thousands, or millions with one accident. One nuclear accident can. Planes don't harm many people all at once either. The attack on the WTC and Pentago
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you know,you can give the link, I can read German, albeit no very well.
The needs in electricity are going to increase dramatically. Although the efficiency of everything will increase, when all cars are plugged-in for the night's charge, a very important baseline will be required.
Production of CO2 is a problem for now, nuclear waste is a problem for later, and will be solved by breeders, which reduce dramatically the volume of waste. It is easy and safe to burrow the final products from these reactors, the
a very important baseline will be required. (Score:3, Informative)
Geothermal can be that baseload.
nuclear waste is a problem for later, and will be solved by breeders, which reduce dramatically the volume of waste. It is easy and safe to burrow the final products from these reactors, the only problem being NIMBY
NIMBYs have also stopped wind farms, especially offshore from Maine to Cape Hatteras. For instance before he died Ted Kennedy opposed [capewind.org] wind turbines in Cape Cod [grist.org]. Obama [nytimes.com] may be able to get one built.
As for the "real" price of nuclear, it is a bit like the US medical
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Because of regulations, which are much more stringent for the nuclear industry than anything else, no-one can come with the up-front investment.
If only that were true. But it is not. China, France, India, and Russia do not have the regulations the US does. And even in those countries the government not the market says what gets built.
If France found that gaz turbines or coal were cheaper, they would have switched a long time ago... They went nuclear because of the oil crisis
And nuclear weapons and other
Re:And yet the public... (Score:4, Insightful)
I can understand this comment, but there are many of us who consider ourselves environmentalists who are very pro-Nuclear. And we are pro-Nuclear because we care about the environment. Believe me, Greenpeace loudly shouting on behalf of "environmentalists" irritates people like me far more than it irritates the Nuclear industry (probably). If they want to protect whales from being hunted, I'm fine with that - I'll even support them. But they should shut the fuck up about things they know nothing about. Even their founder has long since disowned them.
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First, you don't get to claim that the entire environmental movement is anti-nuclear. We are sitting here making arguments that nuclear power is the environmentally friendly option (with the usual proviso that REALLY we could just stop using all electricity and starve ourselves to death and that wouldn't harm the environment much).
Second, your point doesn't eliminate the need for nuclear power, it just shows that, unless you make giant adjustable heat-sinks, it isn't a 100% solution. Neither is solar or w
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It's the same situation in the US. We have trouble with the waste, there are so many regulations on moving the waste or accepting that waste that power plants are just holding years worth of waste on site. And even if a central place is found to store the waste, we laugh because it is still extremely difficult to move the waste to that location. Here politicans talk about moving it all to Nevada, but how practical is it to ship tons of waste from the East coast to Nevada?
If the waste is really so highly rad
Re:And yet the public... (Score:5, Insightful)
We don't have more of a nuclear program for two reasons right now:
#1 - Every time someone starts trying to get the permits together to build a new reactor, the environmental wack-job crowd start staging protests and throwing lawyers at the situation.
#2 - Ever since Jimmy Carter's dunderheaded executive order (in which he said the US will not reprocess spent nuclear fuel back into usable fuel, because it would set an "example" to other nations not to reprocess anything that could be weapons grade... nincompoop), we haven't refined our spent fuel. As a result, we have a "nuclear waste problem", despite the fact that with proper recycling methods, greater than 95% of our stock of "nuclear waste" could be turned back into usable fuel.
Probably the only thing I agree with Obama on is that we need a serious conversion of our energy supply to use as much Nuclear as possible (solar/wind/geothermal too but they have severe limitations and can't meet our needs by themselves... solar, for instance, produces immense amounts of toxic waste and currently requires polysilicon substrates as a base for the panels, plus the most common silica sources are currently strip-mined). That being said, his bit about loans is only a half measure, if he was really serious he'd rescind Carter's dumbass executive order and get us down the path of recycling to deal with the "nuclear waste" issue.
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reater than 95% of our stock of "nuclear waste" could be turned back into usable fuel.
how? and at what cost ? sources ?
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Mox, refinement, secondary uses, etc. US reactors are inefficient.
Re:And yet the public... (Score:4, Informative)
That being said, his bit about loans is only a half measure, if he was really serious he'd rescind Carter's dumbass executive order and get us down the path of recycling to deal with the "nuclear waste" issue.
Minor correction, President Reagan lifted the ban in 1981.
Re:And yet the public... (Score:4, Interesting)
That being said, his bit about loans is only a half measure, if he was really serious he'd rescind Carter's dumbass executive order and get us down the path of recycling to deal with the "nuclear waste" issue.
Minor correction, President Reagan lifted the ban in 1981.
Apparently the ban is part of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act, so it couldn't have been overturned by an executive order. There's a very interesting discussion of it here [physicsforums.com]. According to this article [newscientist.com] from 2008, there is still a ban in place.
Presidential directives banning reprocessing (Score:3, Informative)
"Ever since Jimmy Carter's dunderheaded executive order (in which he said the US will not reprocess spent nuclear fuel back into usable fuel ... "
Credit where it's due: the initial President directive (a specific variety of Executive order) regarding suspension of reprocessing was issued by President Gerald Ford:
"In October 1976, fear of nuclear weapons proliferation (especially after India demonstrated nuclear weapons capabilities using reprocessing technology) led President Gerald Ford to issue a Presid
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There is similar public funding combined with private profit in the fossil fuel industries. For decades, the only energy segment that missed out on massive publicly
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And none of them lifted it, and they all made a mistake in not doing so.
That doesn't let Obama off the hook now. He's the one in the Oval Office, it's now his responsibility.
Ever consider that for some of us it's not about partisanship, but about what's best for the US?
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And none of them lifted it, and they all made a mistake in not doing so.
That doesn't let Obama off the hook now. He's the one in the Oval Office, it's now his responsibility.
Ever consider that for some of us it's not about partisanship, but about what's best for the US?
Right. The Republican's don't do it even though their base supports it, and even though they had years and years of time with more than sufficient majorities in Congress to do so, yet the President whose base is most opposed to it is somehow supposed to do it? Think you might be underestimating the difficulty of doing this?
Besides, the Democrats in Congress right now can't find their ass with both hands, and have basically crumbled since the Mass. election. I don't expect them to be able to accomplish
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so kindly point out to your non-tech friends that nuclear is the best alternative right now and we can't go entirely renewable for a long time.
Can't, or won't? For every reason you can come up with for why we can't, I bet I can come up with a reason why we can. I'll wager what credibility I have on it.
Re:And yet the public... (Score:5, Funny)
I'll wager what credibility I have on it.
You do realize your nick is drinkypoo, right?
Re:And yet the public... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:And yet the public... (Score:5, Funny)
"Creating a government-administered public health insurance option to compete with private health insurance plans" has the exact same level of support [kff.org]. (pdf, p. 11) So needless to say, neither of these things will ever happen.
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So needless to say, neither of these things will ever happen.
You can't compare the two. Government run healthcare is almost unanimously opposed by conservatives. Nuclear energy is generally supported by conservatives and has a fair level of support among liberals. It's much more likely that nuclear energy will happen because there's plenty of room for negotiation and agreement among supporters at both ends of the spectrum.
Loan guarantees? (Score:2, Insightful)
Why do nuclear energy corporations get loan guarantees? Is the energy not as cheap as proponents say? Is it not profitable enough for private ventures to fund it?
The nuclear power industries worldwide already get very preferential treatment by not having to insure powerplants or paying for their waste disposal, but that apparently isn't enough.
Re:Loan guarantees? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is apparently not cheaper than coal, which is the fuel we fall back to every time a nuclear, or renewable project doesn't happen (which are also apparently not cheaper than coal.) If you're ok with coal then you should oppose all subsidies including "loan guarantee" subsidies.
If you're not ok with coal, though, and your goal is to move US energy infrastructure away from an economic minimax position to another position with non-economic benefits, then you have to pay for the move somehow.
Re:Loan guarantees? (Score:5, Informative)
This is incorrect. Nuclear is actually cheaper than coal. The problem is that NO ONE will loan billions upon billions to build said nuclear power plant and mortgage that power plant on a *Fixed* 4% amortization for 50 years.
Secondly, banks cannot really foreclose on a nuclear power plant. Where do they sell it? Flea-market?
This is exactly the point of the loan guarantees. And I'm certain you all realize "loan guarantee" is not the same as a "subsidy"?
let Lenny Leonard run it (Score:2)
The bank will just let Lenny Leonard run it
No, no it isn't. (Score:3, Informative)
When all costs are included, nuclear is not financially cheaper than coal. Those costs include regulatory, security, and yes, financial -- both loans and insurance. Coal plants are similar to nuclear plants in that they have long lifetimes, and tough to sell. Yet IOUs and IPPs manage to get loans to build coal and natural gas power plants, even massive ones, all the time. Banks are tight on lending to nuclear because of all of the additional risks (ranging from NIMBY to regulatory to terrorism), and to
Re:Loan guarantees? (Score:4, Funny)
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If you're not ok with coal, though, and your goal is to move US energy infrastructure away from an economic minimax position to another position with non-economic benefits, then you have to pay for the move somehow.
Subsidies are the opposite of the answer. Force decommissioning of past-date coal plants, and while you're at it, force them to control their emissions and fix their carbon output. Let the consumers pay for the fix in their energy costs. Why should anyone with their own personal-use alt-power plant have to pay for anyone ele's power problems? Subsidies are how we get into these messes in the first place.
Re:Loan guarantees? (Score:4, Insightful)
--Greg
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I wouldn't say 80 reactors over 20 years is tiny; but it certainly isn't huge compared to the existing and expanding coal infrastructure. The have about 40GW of Nuclear under construction at this time.
Re:Loan guarantees? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is easy to determine whether nuclear power on a watt for watt basis is cheaper to produce than a similar coal plant, but the total cost must take into account factors such as total pollution, cost and risk of mining unrenewable resources, as well as the geopolitical problems in relaying on such resources.
If you take only the CO2 output as a single factor, the cost of nuclear energy is far lower than any coal plant could ever be. So yes, it is more expensive to produce the energy, but it is far lower in total cost overall when all factors are taken into account.
Oil power plants are even worse. They rely on importation of resources from the Middle East, a region far from stable due to the influence of extremist religions and backwards cultures of nomadic races. Nuclear power will break us free of that (to some extent, we still have longstanding obligations to Israel which ought to be rethought, IMO) and will make us instead beholden to Australia and its uranium mines. But I feel much more comfortable dealing with the Aussies as a culture which is similar to our own and a people much like us.
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...the Middle East, a region far from stable due to the influence of extremist religions and backwards cultures of nomadic races.
Don't forget the destabalising influence of self-interested foreigners...
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Somewhat ironically, they probably need the loan guarantees _because_ of the federal government. With all the waffling over things like waste disposal and even simply allowing nuclear power, a power plant is far from guaranteed to go smoothly. Smoothness is generally what lenders care about because any bumps in the road are a liability. (What if the government changes its mind about a plant halfway through construction?, What if it gets shut down halfway through its expected life?)
Anyway, that's not to
Re:Loan guarantees? (Score:5, Informative)
Because a nuclear plant has high initial costs. You need an investment of billions of dollars and then you need to wait years for construction before the thing can power itself on and start generating energy. That doesn't mean that nuclear is nonviable - it's very cheap once the plant is built - but it does provide a very high barrier to entry that, without loans, only the rich oil companies (who really don't care for competition) are capable of crossing.
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it's very cheap once the plant is built
A windmill is practically free when it's build. So, your comparison needs some work.
Re:Loan guarantees? (Score:4, Informative)
My point is that nuclear is cheap in the long run. It's still fairly cheap in the long run if you add the costs of the plant. I'll cite a source [nei.org]. It's environmentally friendly too (scroll down to the External Costs section). [world-nuclear.org]
Re:Loan guarantees? (Score:4, Insightful)
While that is true, a nuclear power plant provides an energy density many orders of magnitude higher. I for one would prefer to see a single nuclear plant on the horizon than 8000 turbines in every direction.
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I for one would prefer to see a single nuclear plant on the horizon
I guess you don't live near a nuclear power plant. The exhaust plume of a cooling tower is gigantic.
I for one would
I choose windpower.
Re:Loan guarantees? (Score:4, Informative)
As for wind, it's nice but wind farms are ugly and have environmental impacts of their own; such as bird strikes.
The real issue is how do we produce energy to run a modern economy? There is no one solution.
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As for wind, it's nice but wind farms are ugly and have environmental impacts of their own; such as bird strikes
bird strikes, is that ALL you can come up with ??? a well placed turbine has only a few hits per year (a lot less than a mile of highway).
ugly? well, let's tear down 99% of all buildings then.
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Wind mills need a bunch of maintenance after they are built, they still use a good deal of oil for lubrication, etc.
As does every other method of electrical generation.
Not to mention the sheer amount of land space they occupy for relatively little power is pathetic.
That depends on the amount of land space available. I live in Iowa and we have a LOT of space available. It also doesn't take up much of a corn field since you can farm almost directly under the towers. I have a 100 tower wind farm less th
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Windpower is a relatively new technology, so it deserves some time to catch up. Or would you like to retroactively add the cost of the initial nuclear power plants ? Even so, the number indicate NOTHING about the free insurance they receive.
http://timeforchange.org/cost-advantage-of-nuclear-energy-pros-cons [timeforchange.org]
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It's OK to admit your contention was wrong, no harm no foul. Most consider it a sign of maturity and a critical, logical mind.
Re:Loan guarantees? (Score:4, Interesting)
As for wind, it's nice but wind farms are ugly and have environmental impacts of their own; such as bird strikes.
Its my understanding that the bird strike issue NEVER existed and that it was completely fabricated by environmentalist. The simply fact is, the blades on the majority of windmills are large and turn at low RPMs. In fact, if they turn too fast, they'll destroy themselves. The old windmills used for centuries on farms and ranches are a much greater threat and yet I've never heard a peep about their use.
Remember, tip speed is everything to a windmill. That many sound ominous but let's think about that for a second. For a windmill to be efficient, it must be fairly large in size. That means large and lengthy blades. With large blades come extremely large forces. Most windmills target 30 (very large) - 100 (smaller "home" unit)RPM. At those speeds, you can actually watch the tip spinning. But because the blade is so long, the tip speed is still very high. Since the primary complaint from environmentalists is directed at commercial wind farms, for this discussion we can generally ignore the ones running faster 60 RPM or so.
The reality is, most (all that I've seen; two) studies on the subject indicate that windmills are a natural scarecrow and tend to keep birds at a distance. Furthermore, because of their relatively low RPMs, its relatively easy for even the most hapless of birds to stay clear of the rotating blades. In fact, its these rotating blades, combined with the generated noise, which does wonders to drive them away.
At the end of the day, unless you want to be eating grass and nuts out of your fecal/grass adobe hut, just ignore the crackpots and those who would ignorantly repeat their crack-pottery.
Example, this windmill is completely out of control because of a failed braking system. [youtube.com]
Here's a properly functioning wind mill farm - likely operating near peak. [youtube.com] Notice an airplane could almost fly between the blades, let alone a tiny bird.
Re:Loan guarantees? (Score:5, Informative)
Its my understanding that the bird strike issue NEVER existed and that it was completely fabricated by environmentalist.
No, there were legitimate issues with older windmill designs. They used scaffolding-style towers which encouraged birds to nest, and had much smaller blades with commensurately higher RPMs. Also, they didn't used to do any kind of research into bird migration paths to see if they were putting the farm right in the middle of one.
These issue all came together in Altamont Pass, which you may have heard of since it's pretty much the deadliest windfarm for birds ever (though often the person bringing it up often neglects to mention that fact). Though lets be clear: this deadliest of wind farms killed fewer birds in a year than the office building that would accompany any such power plant, though the deaths were concentrated in raptors so the effect was probably a little greater than an office building.
Now these issues have all been resolved. They now use single-pole towers with rounded tops that make nesting impossible. As you note, the economics themselves dictate using the largest blades possible. And now as a basic step in preparing to build a farm they check ornithological records to see if migrations are a problem.
So yes, there were actual issues that were subsequently resolved.
On a different note, the impression I always got was that the magnitude of the issue was played up by NIMBYs and anti-environmentalists who were finding their previous arguments of "but they're ugly" and "but I'm invested in the status quo" to be unpersuasive. They used the bird thing to try to drag environmentalists along with them, and it worked to an extent, but not for very long.
At the end of the day, unless you want to be eating grass and nuts out of your fecal/grass adobe hut, just ignore the crackpots and those who would ignorantly repeat their crack-pottery.
Well there are crackpots who want us to end up there, and there are crackpots who would have us end up there regardless as an unintentional consequence of trying to avoid it.
And yes, I do tend to ignore them, at least when I can't inform them. For example on the bird issue -- so far I've met very few environmentalists who continue to be anti-wind once they're informed that bird deaths were played up by focusing on one worst-case scenario and that everything has been fixed.
Re:Loan guarantees? (Score:4, Informative)
Nuclear power is almost the same price as coal, under optimal conditions.
But, the cost of nuclear power all occurs up-front in the form of a multi-billion dollar construction project, and the return is gradual, over 40+ years of low cost operation.
If the construction project is delayed, canceled, or has cost overruns, the investors will lose their multi-billion dollar initial investment. A two year construction delay makes the difference between huge profits and a huge boondoggle.
And there are many things that can cause construction to be delayed, canceled, or overrun: Bad design, changing standards, inability to get approvals, pitchfork wielding mobs, etc.
The modern nuclear power industry claims they have worked out the many snags that troubled 70s-era projects. But the only way to find out is to build one and see.
Loans go south (Score:3, Informative)
I agree that the subsidies for current nuclear power are very high but every single one of these loans will face default so we are looking at a 100% subsidy for any new nuclear power. There is just no way that any utilities are going to keep paying for the power since in will be so much more expensive than anything e
Re:Loan guarantees? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why does coal get a free pass on pollution? Isn't energy generation profitable enough for private ventures to contain all the mercury, thorium, lead, uranium and other heavy metals from escaping and polluting? Why aren't coal power plants financially responsible for all the mercury warnings in majority of the lakes?
Those are good questions. Several years ago, I wrote some stories for an environmental magazine trying to answer them.
It seemed to me that if I was breathing clean air, then a power company should have to restore their emissions to be clean enough that my air would stay just as clean.
Apparently that was technically impossible. The engineers can clean a coal plant's emissions as much as you want, but you can only get asymptotically clean. The more you clean, the more it costs, and it's increasingly expensive to get those last remaining pollutants. At a sufficiently low level of pollutants, the cost of removing pollutants equals or exceeds the value of electricity produced.
The coal companies used to run their emissions through these big bags which removed a lot of particles. They reduced the power output by 10%. There were different technologies but they were all expensive and reduced efficiency.
(This assumes that you remove the mercury, thorium, lead, etc. in the form of sludge, and you find someone who doesn't mind if you bury it in a clay-capped hole in the ground, er, waste disposal site, and monitor it forever.)
But we need some electricity from somewhere. I believe that, in principle, we should be able to generate all the electricity we need from non-polluting non-nuclear sources, which ultimately means solar power. But when I read even the optimistic projections in Science magazine by people who are actually trying to do it, it doesn't look like we'll be able to do more than (I'd guess) 20% or 30% in the next 20 years.
Or perhaps you'd prefer hydropower, like the Three Gorges Dam.
I went without an air conditioner for several years. Then one summer during a heat wave, I gave up. My local Sierra Club, I noticed, had an air conditioner.
From the perspective of single-minded engineering and business efficiency, if you need electricity as soon as possible, coal power plants are great, as the Chinese government has decided. The less pollution control, the more efficient. From the perspective of lungs, they're not so great. The pollution in Beijing is so bad that some people can't live there. Even in the U.S., the pollution from traffic by the side of a busy road is so great that it increases the incidence of asthma and lung disease dramatically.
Too bad everybody laughed at Jimmy Carter. He saw this coming.
Old Skool (Score:4, Funny)
Nuclear reactors are old school since Steorn had their live working demo of Orbo, an overunity engine just this weekend.
Sodium Cooled Fast Breeder Reactors (Score:5, Informative)
Google it before you assume it is just like the nuclear reactors that have caused all the nuclear waste problems.
They are a "new" technology that has been proven for decades. They are smaller, safer, and tons more efficient than the currently used technology. They don't produce nuclear waste, they consume it. We could take all of what we currently consider "waste" and use it as fuel for hundreds of years. The current technology only uses less than 5% of the energy that is actually in the fuel. Fast Breeder Reactors use almost all of it. They keep recycling the fuel until there is almost no radioactivity left. They can also use plutonium as fuel so the can be used to actually reduce the weapons stockpiles.
I also think the thorium reactors might be cool too. However there are some concerns as to what extracting all that thorium out of seawater might do to the environment. Not that the oceans need the thorium, but the processing might not be so kind to everything living in the seawater. On the other hand, the processing could also be done in a way that cleans up the garbage patch at the same time.
Bottom line. Don't assume everything you think you know about nuclear power is everything there is to know.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
As far as I know, and a quick google search confirmed, there are no really large FBRs as functional energy plants around. The biggest ever to be build was a 1200MW (certainly commercial size), but that was shut down in 1997 by a leftish french government. But as far as I know, that did not really produce energy in its last 10 years.
Do you have some more successful examples?
Re: (Score:2)
So if it's so great and trouble free, then why isn't it being touted as The Great Solution?
Every time I hear about some New Technology it's always advertised with all its advantages, and any disadvantage is swept under the rug. I've heard of sodium cooled breeder reactors for a decade. Has anyone built any of these reactors on a commercial scale anywhere in the world? If not, why not?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I think they are less popular because it is harder to make plutonium in them. However, I am not positive. I know that the current water cooled technology was chosen specifically because it is the best for creating weapons grade material. Now that the nuclear power plant builders know how to build the current style power plants, that is what they want to do because that is what they know. It's kind of like how Hollywood knows we want unique stories but they keep churning out the same old thing simply because
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Just remember... a coal-fired powerplant releases more radioactivity into the atmosphere than a nuclear plant. (except Chernobyl, I guess.)
We need more (Score:4, Interesting)
We need a new plant. Desperately. My hope is that this will help push more companies (like Entergy) to build rather than to shut down, cut there losses, and run away.
Zombie Reactors (Score:3, Interesting)
Your 'dead' characterization in interesting, if confusing. For other readers I'll point out that Vermont Yankee, the 'dead' reactor the parent is discussing, is operating today. By 'dead' I suppose the parent means zombie-like.
Vermont isn't likely to get a replacement reactor under any circumstances. The state is very hostile toward industry generally, and nuclear power in particular. Vermont's governor can't wipe his ass without the resident enviros investigating it.
The license extensions + uprates of t
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
What does France do with their waste? (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure, I could google it, but it's more of a talking point than a question. France has a large number of reactors, yet I've never heard of them having problems with their radioactive waste products (then again, I don't read the French press, either).
Sure, we could build reactors which reuse more of their own waste, but presuming we will have some waste - what are other countries doing about it?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Well according to Wikipedia they reprocess it, and the waste of several other countries too.
The not reusable stuff gets sent back to the originating countries, the domestic stuff will go to underground storage when it is completed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COGEMA_La_Hague_site [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#Fuel_cycle [wikipedia.org]
(Or if you believe some crazy solar energy maniacs, all the waste is shipped to the US and stored in South Carolina...)
Re:What does France do with their waste? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a great argument that clearly has a lot of value for getting things done, lets apply it to everything we do as a country:
I don't know what type of backyard you have that you're worried about someone building an entire nuclear waste storage facility in it but you must be one rich motherfucker. Unless of course by backyard you mean some sort of arbitrary distance and if that's the case what exactly is this arbitrary distance and does everyone who has a learned opinion on the storage and handling of nuclear materials have to move within this distance?
Nuclear waste? We know the solution for decades! (Score:3, Funny)
Fusion? (Score:4, Insightful)
If it's so safe... (Score:3, Insightful)
...then he should propose:
1. to store the waste in Chicago
2. to have the owners of the plant fully pay for waste storage costs
3. to have the owners of the plant assume full liability for damages from accidents
While #1 is a bit sarcastic, #2 and #3 are not.
We would at times like to believe that there are surmountable technological solutions to every problem. Sometimes there aren't.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
According to the nuclear energy institute, 0.1 cent per kwh goes into a waste disposal fund.
Since 1983 that fund has collected about $33 billion, and spent about $11 billion, with several tens of thousands of years left in managing that waste. For the vast majority of the waste's toxic life, there is no income to pay for its management. The US Goverment owns it here in the USA. Includes old cores and facilities that will be decommissioned.
Also, from Wikipedia and the Price-Anderson act:
The Act establishes a
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
One more point:
Having a $1M/day charge for not operating a highly toxic machine is actually an incentive to operate it when it might be hazardous to do so.
Not a good thing.
Smacks of easy money (Score:3, Insightful)
NEVER, EVER, in the US, forego oversight when it comes to things infratructural. It just doesn't work. There are too many people around that will see money and nothing else and who don't care who dies so long as it isn't them. It's a fine country, and an enormous economic catalyst, but some things can't be left to the market alone. This is one of them.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, naval vessels are something different, but I wasn't ruling nuclear out. But if we massively reduce our consumption and energy use, not only will this help the environment and climate change, it could reduce the need for nuclear in the first place. The US still produces a third of the oil it uses, after all, that should be more than enough if we scale back, improve efficiency and put in place a better transportation system such as rail.
Re: (Score:2)
Thats all nice when you have no life.
But I have a wife and a little girl and live in an area where it goes down to -20 for 3 months.
Its easy to say reduce your energy consumption, but the reality is quite different.
You can go very far with insulation. there are houses in existance that even don't need heating (see : passive housing) even at very low temperatures
Re:Subsidies? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, most US Navy vessels are not nuclear-powered. The carriers & submarines are, but almost none of the remaining fleet are. They experimented with nuclear cruisers in the 60s but retired those ships & didn't venture back into that area.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_navy#Other_nuclear-powered_vessels [wikipedia.org]
Re:Open Yucca Mountain! (Score:5, Informative)
It is mostly completed, perfectly safe repository (assuming they stay with the stupid and illogical position that the fuel shouldn't be reprocessed) and according the the president, "we're done with Yucca and we need to be about looking for alternatives".
Then he sets up a "commission" to figure it out and out of 15 members, only one has any academic background in nuclear energy and another has a physics background. The rest are political hacks. A particularly stupid appointment is Mark Ayers: president of the Building and Construction Trades Department at AFL-CIO.
It's all a load of crap.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a more environmentally friendly solution than ... wind power
What are your sources for this ?