Nuclear is among the best options for safe, sustainable energy
Regarding the letter “Nuclear power is not safe or sustainable” by Barbara Jennings of the Midwest Coalition for Responsible Investments: It’s interesting to note in her letter, Ms. Jennings gives no reasons for not using nuclear power.
The fear generated concerning Nuclear power has its origin in 1977 when President Carter outlawed Nuclear recycling so other nations could not steal the plutonium to make nuclear weapons. This is a false premise with long term affects and myths.
Today industrial nations recycle their fuel.
France produces 80% of their electricity from nuclear power. Their nuclear waste for several years is stored in a single room and can be handled with gloves without fear of contamination.
Nuclear energy produces or emits “no greenhouse gases, no carbon emissions and no carbon sludge” to take to the dump. Burning 1 billion tons of coal each year produces 40% of our greenhouse emissions and 20% of the world’s carbon emissions. 30,000 deaths per year are from coal mining per the EPA.
Wind and solar power are “always” dependent on wind blowing and sun shining “all” the time to be productive. It is time to start asking: “What is the cost and physical requirements?” and “How much space is required?”.
Ms. Jennings and the Midwest Coalition for Responsible Investments is ignoring the facts in pursuing their social and political agenda using myths and fear.Why would any organization advocate program(s) designed to increase the very problems they allegedly want to cure? Why would you want to sustain this record?
The fact is Nuclear energy has proven to be the world’s best source of energy known to man today.
The organizations, individuals and news media that would use lies-half truths-fears, have their own income producing agenda to keep the truth from you.
Start doing your own reading and thinking on the issues.
Robert E. Prater
“Citizens for Truth”
St. Louis
Truthiness, I heard that a study was done of the conditions necessary for solar power to provide all the electricity needed for the whole country.
Apparently, we need to cover a space 95 miles by 95 miles square in a desert area like New Mexico with solar cells.
Hmm, 95×95 miles of clean, renewable energy versus the many, many billions for even one nuclear powerplant. And that doesn’t include savings from energy conservation which is a national security issue, not a personal choice!
So, what would the costs be for the US be to have nuclear power provide 80% of its power, eh? And I mean real costs, not just construction. We still have to store the nuclear waste of these plants, pay then costs of de-commissioning these plants. Trillions? More than the war in Iraq? More than the national debt?
If nuclear is such a great option, why aren’t the power companies all jumping on board to build these plants in a free market?
OOOPs, it seems that unless the government limits nuclear liability or subsidizes nuclear plants the generating companies won’t build them. God enough! How’s that for the truth?
And John McCain won’t support any climate change legislation without huge subsidies for the nuclear power industry. Ignorant, wholly ignorant!
http://dangerousintersection.org/2008/08/04/15-reasons-john-mccain-is-too-ignorant-to-be-president/
Timbo,
How about passing a loser pays law. This would stop the billions nuclear utilities (and other industries) have to spend to protect themselves from frivilous law suits. Just this one item alone could cut construction and operating costs enormously. If you have alaw suit that has merit, no one is stopping you from suing.
A few more uncomfortable facts for folks like Tim:
One of the downsides of the alternating current system is this fact: There needs to be a power plant or something similar every 100 miles or so in every direction to keep the power flowing through the wires. So, a single massive power plant wouldn’t be able to produce enough voltage to get the power to New York city…just as one example.
95 miles square doesn’t sound bad…unless you own property in the middle of it.
The reprocessing option is viable, particularly with the new methods that didn’t exist 30 years ago. It IS possible, using fast breeder reactors, to basically convert most of the ‘waste’ from a conventional reactor (which still contains 90% of the potential energy of the original fuel) to essentially inert products through several fuel cycles.
Hs, I’m curious, do you know then how many cycles it can be re-used for and then how much is left over when it is no longer viable, and the potential costs of disposing of it?
Jimmy, I’m not a true expert in this field. However, there was a recent article in Scientific American a month or two back about this. Unfortunately, I can’t locate the magazine right now. The gist of it is that the current system of light-water thermal reactors only use about 10% of the potential energy in the fuel. The waste is then both highly energetic AND has an impossibly long half-life, requiring safe storage for literally millions of years. Insane.
Using reprocessing and breeder reactors, this mountain of waste can be shrunk to a much smaller volume AND has a much shorter half-life, measurable in months or single digit years.
The scare, of course, is that in between the Uranium waste we have now, and the future ‘waste’ of short lived materials is plutonium…which really has only one use: making weapons. This IS a problem,but it is manageable.
Like just about everything in our lives, the government gets its mitts in and you never can figure out what things really cost. I would like to see the entire energy out from government funding / protection / decrees. I do know that the paperwork takes longer than the construction for a nuke. A hunk of uranium the size of a softball moves an aircraft carrier for decades. It takes years of productive use to recoup the energy req’d to make a solar panel.
djr: the biggest problem with building a nuke plant, and the reason none have been built since TMI is that virtually anyone can stop it. THAT is the problem: not too many rules particularly, but too few constraints on the complainers.
Some of that has changed for the better, even though it’s never actually be tried. For example: the current licensing system creates a single license for construction AND operation. In other words, after Shoreham (ever hear of it…a plant on Long Island that was built, fueled, and never operated because they couldn’t get an operating license), the NRC created this new process. You get a construction license, permission to operate is automatic unless you have construction deficiencies.
What I see is that the problem is not the rules, per se. As a member of the public, I think I do have the right to demand that something as complex and potentially dangerous as a nuclear power plant is built and operated to the best specifications possible….and that making sure it actually happens IS a government function. However, I, unlike many members of the “public”, accept as reality that there is always going to be risk involved. Risk can be mitigated, it cannot be eliminated. Accidents WILL happen. Human error WILL occur. When they do, the issue should not be to place blame, but to find the cause and correct it. Three Mile Island was caused by human error: an operator closed a valve for a test and failed to reopen it after the test was complete. The solution: a more rigorous system of checklists and better communication between the operator out in the plant and the operator in the control room.
Uh, anyone here notice Obama’s nod last night to ‘responsible’ nuclear energy development???
Mr. Hogan, the considerable improvements in nuclear plant technology (we’re talking 4 decades between now and when the design for the 3 Mile Island
was devised), along with the (IMO) greater dangers of continued dependence on fossil fuels—politically, economically, and yes environmentally, if you care for ‘clean’/non carbon emissions—demands a non-hysterical look at nuclear
energy generation.