But if we loosened the regulations to make it cheaper, would it still be as safe as it is today?
Two things, its not so much the reg’s as the endless lawsuits that delay and delay and delay construction.
Time is money, Big money.
I dont care HOW profitable a business is, if you have to invest billions and delays can cost you years and years, and at the last minute your project can be canned without any compensation for the money already spend, virtually nobody is gonna touch it with a ten foot pole.
My impression is the lawsuits overall did virtually nothing to change the design, construction or operation of reactors, so how would they make things any safer?
On thing that would help much to cheapen reactors AND probably make them safer is to standardize designs much more. American reactors were bad in going the opposite direction.
Once a design has been reviewed and checked out the wazzoo, built and run awhile to detect any flaws or kinks. The design reviews should reasonably be able to be be cut way back.
And all of the criticisms that are leveled against nuclear power plants apply to at least as great a degree to coal plants, too. Even if it’s only radioactivity you’re worried about, coal plants are still worse than nuclear plants: There are trace amounts of radioactive materials in coal, but coal plants burn through a lot of it, and it adds up, and I’m not aware of any efforts to sequester the resulting fallout. Plus, of course, there’s all the carbon dioxide emissions, which we now know are one of the most serious environmental threats we could face. So if we have a choice, as we currently do, between coal and nuclear, we should absolutely choose nuclear.
Now, if we had a choice between nuclear and solar or wind, that might be a different story. And eventually, we probably will have that choice. But that time does not seem to be now: Solar does not yet seem to be ready for large-scale power production, and wind can be practically scaled up, but it’s still not reliable enough to form the backbone of our power grid. We should absolutely be building windmills to supplement the power grid, and putting more research into both wind and solar and associated technologies, but they’re not yet a complete solution.
Coal plants could be made a lot cleaner by adding scrubbers. The coal companies fought endlessly in court not to do it. Clinton had a slate of them being taken to court. When Bush came in he stopped the suits. The coal companies have demonstrated the health of the area is not as important as profits. Of course, many of you believe the nuclear industry will be different. I am a skeptic. Corporations do not have the public interest in mind unless they are forced to in court.
Or in other words, the same things that were said three months ago in this very thread. As I said then, almost all the issues with nuclear are either caused by self-fulling road blocks put up by anti-nuclear groups, or over active fear of terrorists.
It all comes down to fear of the new and unknown. The fact that more people are harmed by coal and more radiation is released by coal per kilowatt of electricity produced isn’t a factor for the same reason people disregard the highers risks of driving a car when they talk about the risks of flying. Coal has been around for ever, and you can even burn it yourself (we had a coal burning stove growing up in Idaho). Nuclear is scary, and that’s all there is to it.
On preview: Almost anything can be made safer, and nuclear should be heavily regulated to insure safe compliance. The difference is we have the technology to safely and economically deal with all the nuclear waste, but sequestering CO2 is still decades off. Also, with coal, we are currently doing massive harm even with properly functioning plants. With nuclear, you are worried about potential issues which are against the best interests of the owners, extremely unlikely, and not as bad as most people currently believe.
Jonathan
We have the technology to safely and economically deal with nuclear waste??? I don’t think so. It is a huge and unanswerable question.
It’s an already answered question. The problems with nuclear waste disposal are political, not technological.
Well, a couple of things. First off, I’m not saying we should deregulate the nuclear industry. I was saying that nuclear is pretty clearly more heavily regulated than solar, wind, geo-thermal and even coal fired…which pretty much is going to naturally add additional costs onto things, yes? If we look at nuclear in light of both the regulations AND in light of the amount of blockage various eco groups put in it’s way it gives us a bit more balanced view than gonzo’s cartoon viewpoint. Especially when we consider the realistic application of wide scale solar/wind TODAY…and the actual costs of trying to deploy such a system on the scales we would realistically need to replace our current coal fired technology.
When looked at in that light, suddenly nuclear does a bit better in the over all calculations. Realistically, if we really want to replace coal with something that has no CO2 emissions and a real world low impact then nuclear is pretty much it today. It’s the only technology that could be scaled up to meet a large percentage of our needs. The sooner the eco types realize this and get out of the way the better. Unfortunately my reading of Obama et al right now (granted it’s still early days) is that they are more focused on technologies that aren’t as scalable…and are trying to be less focused on an expansion of nuclear. At least that’s my reading of where he/they stand atm.
-XT
But, that’s exactly what should be done.
Right now, the US easily has enough off-peak capacity. By adding Solar and Wind, the On-peak demand for traditional power can be reduced, while still keeping the existing power infrastructure for nighttime and low-wind use. This is clearly a win, especially with the emphasis on smart-grid technology, which will allow better power sharing from around the country.
So your idea of a win is to keep burning almost as much coal as now? Do you expect demand to remain constant? What about when electric/plug in hybrid cars start making a big dent in auto sales? (Before anyone starts bringing up hydrogen, that also requires electricity to produce, hydrogen is a storage media only.) Do you think solar and wind together will be able to scale up beyond 10% of the needed power before than?
Jonathan
With coal you have waste too, but there isn’t so much of a question where it goes – we dump it right into the atmosphere. From a purely environmental standpoint, nuclear seems like a better option to me. (Obviously, it’d be great if we could get all our power from windmills and solar panels, but I just can’t see them ever producing enough on their own.)
Realistically, you’re just not going to shut existing functioning power plants. The US need to concentrate on what Amory Lovins calls “Negawatts,” effectively increasing our power generating capacity by wringing the huge inefficiencies out of people’s (and businesses" energy use. Next, start to add additional capacity by using alternative energy sources, while at the same time explore carbon capture and sequestration for coal-fired power plants.
I don’t think it’s politically viable to say “You see this perfectly functional coal-fired generator? We’re going to scrap it, and build a nice, clean Nuke instead. Won’t that be nice?”
How about the fifty year old, massively polluting, unsafe, inefficient coal plant that needs to be either replaced or upgraded at massive cost? Obviously we would not start off by taking the most efficient and newest plants off line, but nothing lasts for ever. I would be thrilled if we could go as far as replacing every coal plant as it ended its useful life with something carbon neutral. Right now, we are replacing them with more coal plants or other fossil fuel burning sources. Bottom line is that solar and wind will never be able to supply even half of our demands at an acceptable environmental and financial cost, so what does that leave?
Jonathan
First, we need to make more efficient use of our existing generating capacity. We could eliminate the need to build more power plants by decades, by just eliminating waste. That would give us plenty of time to bring alternative energy on-line. At that point, it’s possible that a viable Nuke solution would present itself. So, I wouldn’t be opposed to funding Nuke experimental and prototype generators, but to say we need to start building them today is premature.
What is wrong with current technology? What do you need to see before you consider it viable? It works safely all over the world, so what else needs to be done? It will never be perfected, we can always find ways to improve almost anything, so at what point would you say we are good enough to go ahead and build some?
All of these things are huge undertakings. I first read about the solar reflector/molten salt setup in the 90s and it is still a long ways from replacing a single coal plant. If we start the process to build nukes today, we could probably get them to start coming on line before 2020 (allowing for the inevitable lawsuits and legal hassles). Nothing else would be even close, since we have functional designs for nuclear right now and everything else is still trying out concepts. When should we start this? Should we wait until we have to ration power? Until sea levels start rising? Till coal starts running low?
Jonathan
I’m a proponent of distributed generation. I think the redundancy of such a system make it desirable over centralized generation. I’d prefer to see research done on storing energy, and then use a technology like solar shingles provide the bulk of the country’s power needs. I also believe that there should be a much greater emphasis on energy-efficient buildings. The power we waste lighting, heating, and cooling buildings is incredible. I’m not opposed to Nuke power per se, I just think it’s unnecessary, and the the dangers it presents in waste storage and terrorism (power plants as targets, waste as weapons) make it undesirable.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20030304/ai_n12679305 Lets recognize that there are lots of problems with nukes.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/18/europe/leak.php French nuke plant leaks . There are problems.
OK, that is not quite what you said before, but I will go with it. Distributed energy is a fine idea, but what energy source will it be? Solar shingles are a good idea, but even in the most energy efficient home in the sunniest places, at peak they will power your fridge and a few lights, but not much else. backyard wind terminals are just as limited, if not more. I would love if roof top solar panels were a standard feature, but they don’t address all areas or building types. Large scale solar and wind will actually be worse than nuclear as far as distribution goes, since you can build a power plant anywhere, which you can’t do with large solar or wind farms.
You know what I dream of? An exponential increase in battery technology (maybe crystal matrix, micro-capacitors, or something equally game changing), and practical, small scale fusion ability. That would let us really have a distributed network. But if we get the battery first, which I think likely, then that actually makes our distribution issue worse, not better. Think about this, if we have electric cars that can go 300 miles on a charge for the same cost as a gasoline burner all the energy we consume driving will need to come from the electric grid. For better or worse, we need to think about that now, before it happens. I don’t want electric cars to die on the vine because we don’t have the electrical capacity to charge them.
Jonathan
Well, except for the bits we don’t