:dubious: Development of alternative energy sources? No, there is no need whatsoever to ask whether that is something government should be involved with in the first place. (The answer is yes, in case that part wasn’t clear enough to you.)
Current reactors are built in such a way that they cannot melt down. That is, the laws of physics prevent it from melting down even under extreme human neglect.
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/newsarticle.aspx?id=20196 Here is the cost estimates for Yucca. it started at 80 mill and now 96 billion is in sight. Yes .I think the nuke industry eats money like the military does. They have a history of looting the tax payers and the eventual users of the energy. I am not at peace with this crap. Sorry, if you are, but i am not.
And why is it so expensive? Because of the anti-nuclear hysterics. Who then blame the results of their own efforts on the industry.
It’s sort of an ironic catch 22…the anti-nuke folks do everything they can to drive up costs and delay construction, which leads to further cost over-runs, and then they sit back and say ‘Look! Look how much nuclear power costs! It’s too expensive!’. 
And then they look all hurt and confused (then angry and defiant) when you point this out to them…
-XT
By their nature, the reactors are closed to the outside world. What are you referring to?
The money gets disbursed (you have to do design, buy the land, start the facilities, pay the engineers, start construction, etc) and then the red tape starts. The bank isn’t on the hook if they melt down the plant in 15 years. Costs have gone up at a rate many times inflation despite the fact that we have better technology and safety available. There is no reason to suspect that safety is a consideration to the loans - it’s the cost increases due to beaurocratic bullshit and dedicated hysterical luddites.
You make it sound like 80 million was all that was ever planned. Like… we put in 80 million (chump change) and all our waste needs are taken care of for the next 10,000 years? The 96 billion number includes transport to the facility, fully building and maintaining the facility… for another 120 years. So, yeah, less than a billion a year. OH NOES SO EXPENSIVE CALL THE COPS.
“But…but…the government wasn’t subsidizing power plants in 1787!!!”
In his partial defense, I will say that the whole corn ethanol thing has become a complete special interest boondoggle, so I’m pretty ambivalent about heavy government guarantees of nuclear power investment.
Besides saying also “About F…ing time!!” I think I should ask this here:
Is there any consideration to the idea of using nuclear power plants similar in design to the ones in Nuclear ships and submarines?
I would think that the standard designs and readily available base of trained nuclear engineers would help us get a leg up on starting the change all over America.
On a related note: I know this would also ruffle the feathers of many free enterprise proponents, but I do think that we should not refuse giving a role to government intervention on this, one of the reasons why France manages to work so well with nuclear is that the french people are the biggest shareholders of the nuclear power plants.
As I have seen, if private industry is continuously running scared, and almost always developing power plants that are not standard, or giving communities useless nuclear plants when the private company that began building the power plant goes broke. It is no wonder then that public opinion is so against nuclear power in America (Yes, I know a big chuck of the problem and costs the companies suffer is coming from the people opposing the construction)
With Americans as part owners and standard nuclear plants, I think we can get with the program sooner rather than later.
Cite that the primary factor in the costs of a nuclear power plant are redundant safety measures?
I’ll ignore the anti-nuclear “hysteria” part, since that is debatable and contingent on one’s position on the safety of nuclear power.
IIRC, that is actually what the classic American commercial power plant is based on, which has caused some of their problems. Such a design is optimized for getting the maximum power out of the smallest volume; which is important for a ship but not a stationary land system.
You might want to look up the word externality.
Other power generation methods may be cheaper, but only because they shift costs like pollution off for other people to deal with. If getting rid of pollution is a laudable goal, it is government’s place to make it economical.
If the government can make the initial outlay of a modern reactor attractive then it provides for the common good. That’s exactly what the government is for.
No one is saying the costs are “redundant safety measures”, and believe it or not, most of us nuclear advocates are big fans of safe plants. The cost increases under discussion are primarily constant delays due to lawsuit injunctions and needing an army of lawyers to fight off everyone who has any sort of complaint. It drags the production on and on until it’s late and over budget and they’ve paid a small country’s worth of GDP in lawyer fees. That isn’t the only issue, but the main one under discussion.
Okay, so then do you have a cite for the assertion that lawsuits are the primary source of the costs? That, for example, a given plant costs X and, in terms of factors, lawsuits account for a plurality of X?
Safety isn’t the only concern, and costs for nuke plants aren’t high only because of Luddites. Take, for example, a nuke plant I’m pretty familiar with–Rancho Seco. The fucking thing was ludicrously buggy, it spent way more time offline than it did generating energy and was eventually decommissioned. Check out this fabulous little timeline of inefficiency. I’m cautiously pro-nuke, but adamantly anti-shitty assed badly built nuke. Show me better designs that will actually, y’know, produce at least enough energy to offset the original startup costs and I’m onboard. Hundreds of brand new Rancho Secos are NOT the way to go, however. Might as well fuel a plant by burning money.
What I really like are these suckers. Now that’s a pretty cool idea that has a darned good chance of working out even with the NIMBY crowd. Huge nuke plants are just goddamned scary–standing right next to cooling towers is a great way to get paranoid about what’s going on inside, and a nuke plant you can see from a hundred miles away on a clear day is a constant reminder of what else could possibly travel a hundred miles. Whether it’s a rational fear or not is immaterial, because scared people are fairly impervious to logic. A little bitty plant is no more imposing than your local electric company transformer station should be an easy sell, especially to isolated areas that incur high costs for power due to lossage through the grid and high maintenance costs. Get a few hundred of those suckers scattered around the country and I think you’d see a big reduction in anti-nuke sentiment.
We have. We’ve just come to a different conclusion and feel this is a responsible role of government (promotion of energy policy).
One would hope (though the hope would be in vain) that the staunchest proponents of the “Free Market” would be first to agree that government intervention to make prices reflect True Prices is good for the Free Market concept! Free-market proponents have no problem if an entrepreneur charges tariffs on a private road to compensate for degradation caused by industrial use; why not similar tariffs on the degradation of rivers? Or the atmosphere?
Carbon tax would be most logical, but anti-carbon subsidies may be more acceptable politically.
And let me join the chorus agreeing nuclear is safer than coal energy. Coal miner is one of the most dangerous professions, etc. etc.
I’ve heard right-wing opposition to nuclear power based on fear of terrorists, either stealing material from a plant to make a bomb, or targeting the plant with a more conventional attack. Which fear is, I think about as rational as the fears on the left of Chernobyl-style disasters.
Someone upthread mentioned wind power. I’m a big fan of that, too. Wind power is most certainly part of the solution, and I’d love to see it used more. The thing is, it’s only part. Wind can’t completely replace coal. Unless and until we see some huge technological leaps forward in a variety of different technologies, any plan to wean ourselves off of coal will necessarily involve nuclear.
And weaning ourselves off of coal is a worthy goal indeed. People are afraid of radiological disasters and nuclear waste, but they don’t realize that coal is actually a bigger risk for those than nuclear is. Yeah, yeah, nuclear power produces waste that must be stored away… But coal power also produces waste that must be stored away. The only difference is, with the nuclear waste, it’s actually possible to do so. Or then there’s the fear of a disaster. When people think of a radiological disaster in the US, most folks think of Three Mile Island. But Three Mile Island was far from the worst radiological disaster we’ve ever had. The coal ash spill last year was orders of magnitude worse, even before you consider all of the non-radiation consequences. If we’re afraid of disasters like that, then we need to stop using coal.
The usual RW fears I hear concerning nuclear power stem from the financing aspects. Basically, you are talking about a large investment to plan, design, implement and run a nuclear power plant in the US. Billions of dollars need to be invested, and due to the nature of building nuke plants in the US (as well as just building them in general) you are talking about that money being tied up for years before you start to see a real ROI…with the way things have been in the US you could be talking about a LOT of years (well, actually, forever right now, since I don’t think any new plants have been built in the US in a decade or so).
With that kind of capital the government almost has to get involved. No one else has the deep pockets to invest in such a chancy proposal, at least not initially and until you can prove that the door isn’t going to be slammed back in the faces of any corporation who starts to build a new plant only to have the loonies descend on them and tie them in red tape indefinitely. And, of course, any time you are talking about the government stepping in and footing the bill there is an almost reflexive aversion to that from some folks on the right.
I’m all for small government and having private companies do for themselves instead of relying on the government tit to prop them up, but there are simply some projects that are too big and too important (and too risky) to leave solely in the hands of the market or private industry. And nuclear power is one of those, IMHO…it’s too big, too risky (at this time) and too important.
-XT
Not true.
There might be a few in the world like that, but I don’t think so. The vast majority in the world are capable of blowing up or melting down.
The are kept from doing that in several ways. Very good design and materials. Backups for the backups. Lots of monitoring/instrumentation. Very specific procedures for doing everything. And on top of all of that (heh), a large containment structure. Note that Chernobyl had pretty much none of those things.
There ARE designs where the actual laws of physics keep the reactor from blowing up or melting down no matter what the operators do or dont do or what breaks or quits working, but I am not even sure a design like that has been built yet. I can tell you the large majority of reactors operating today are not what were at one time referred to as PIUS reactor designs (process inherent ultimately safe).
Looks like there have been some innovations in the United States despite the fact that new generators are not being built here.
Small Reactors Generate Big Hopes