Yeah, despite the fact that no new plant designs have been approved or built the US still has been doing quite a bit on the development side of things. We COULD really leap ahead if things were allowed to open up, with a whole new generation of smaller, more efficient and much safer plants. But…someone has to get the frantic hippies, anti-nuke Luddites and assorted riff raff the hell out of the way first. And there are literally decades of anti-nuke propaganda that are going to have to be overcome in the public’s collective minds. That’s going to be a VERY tall order. Look how, even on this message board, the same old tired anti-nuke propaganda STILL gets brought up and repeated…and how many 'dopers are at best ambivalent about nuclear energy, despite the fact that it’s pretty much the only option if you are serious about lowering our dependence on coal fired power plants.
Let’s not go around building strawmen. There are some of us who are concerned about the danger of nuclear plants, and have actually bothered to provide evidence of this. And there is the matter of what to do with the waste. Also, there are other options to consider. Even if it’s used, nuclear power alone will likely not be sufficient.
Now, since you’ve brought up the fearsome anti-nuclear movement once again, could you please provide a cite for lawsuits being a major source of costs for the establishment of nuclear power plants?
What? You mean that one link you provided which purports to link the number of thyroid cases in the US to nuclear power plants? You think THAT is ‘evidence’?? Would you care to take a guess as to the number of health related problems (and deaths) associated with those within an equal distance to a large coal fired plant? Also, do you have corresponding evidence that thyroid cancer is equally on the rise in France (where they derive over 70% of their energy from nuclear)?
To me, this one data point is similar in feel to the anti-vax people attempting to link vaccinations with autism. To put it mildly, it’s rather unconvincing. However, even assuming you are 100% correct and nuclear power plants are linked to the rise in thyroid cancers, a quick google search turns up the total death rate due to thyroid cancer is around 1500 people per year in the US. Do you understand what an incredibly low rate that is, even if you could prove that every one of those deaths were due to nuclear power?
Why would I? Did I say that anti-nuclear lawsuits are a major source of of increasing costs? They certainly have their role, and if you doubt that and want a cite for it then you would also like a cite that water is wet. Personally, I think the major source of the increase in costs is a combination of factors, but mostly it’s due to the ever increasing regulations which have increased the costs of materials and drawn out and increased the length of time it takes to build a plant, essentially causing companies interested in building new plants or finishing plants under construction to simply opt out. No one wants to tie up billions of dollars in capital for years where no return is possible until all the the various hurdles are jumped and hoops leaped through. Add to that protesters would further delay construction, obstructionism from anti-nuclear movements who add more regulations, zoning changes, etc to the further drag out the process, and a public that is at best apathetic about nuclear energy in the first place (mostly due to decades of anti-nuclear propaganda), and it’s really not that big a mystery as to why no new plants have been built in the US in DECADES.
If you’d like me to dig up a cite that shows what I’m asserting (i.e. that it’s the ever increasing regulatory environment that have driven costs beyond the point where it’s even remotely feasible to build a nuclear plant in the US today) then I have one I’ve used in earlier threads. If you are set on getting on on your question, though, you’ll either have to go back to the person asserting that lawsuits are THE major cost.
Here’s the thing: Opponents of nuclear power love to point to evidence that nuclear has its risks and its costs. Which, of course, is true. But that’s not the relevant question. The relevant question is how nuclear compares to the alternatives. With current technology, the only alternative to nuclear is the coal-powered plants that we have now, and even without perfect knowledge of the risks of nuclear plants, we know enough to be absolutely certain that nuclear is safer than coal.
It is one piece of evidence. Not conclusive, to be sure, but it is relevant.
Fair point, if you mean that there are coal plant emissions that may blur the effects of radioactive output with respect to carcinogenicity. (I’m not a supporter of coal, by the way, but I assume that’s not what you meant.)
See, now that’s how you debate! I present an argument and some evidence, and you present a valid counterpoint and/or evidence.
Ask and ye shall receive:
Is this conclusive? No, there have been other studies that have had different results. But it’s dishonest to pretend that anyone concerned about radiation exposure around NPPs is like a member of the flat-earth society.
No need to do this. Just be straightforward.
There are other types of cancer. Obviously.
Ah. “My post is my cite”, eh?
Well, wouldn’t the loan only go through once the project gets the green light?
Okay, yeah, that was SB and another poster making that claim.
Still, even aside from the cancer thing, we are faced with some uncomfortable choices. On the one hand, we have the dangers of global warming (and the attendant exigencies that further raise costs). On the other, we have to seal off large tracts of land for the storage of nuclear waste and then nervously watch for any spills following earthquakes (or during transport). Not a good situation to be in.
To reiterate, we already have to do this with coal. If we want to reduce the amount of land we have to seal off for waste storage, then we need to switch to nuclear.
Choosing coal over nuclear is like choosing “death by ooga-booga” in that old joke about the cannibals. You have all the same problems that you have with nuclear, except you have more of them.
Compare that to a ~400 cubic metres of waste annually for a nuclear power plant.
400 vs 90, 000, 000.
Unless someone is violating the laws of physics, we’re going to need a litttle more land to store the leaking, toxic coal waste than the leaking, toxic nuclear waste.
We can’t realistically speak to the costs of of storage because, as noted already, the standards for the nuclear boogeyman are much higher than for coal. However since these costs are already included in the price, it hardly matters.
No, they’re more like the anti-vax society.
They attribute thyroid cancer to nukes in the US, yet it somehow doesn’t cause thyroid cancer in Europe, it causes leukaemia instead. But it doesn’t cause leukaemia in the US.
It’s not inconclusive, it conclusively shows that nukes aren’t causing these cancers. Smoking doesn’t cause lung cancer in the US and bowel cancer in France.
The problem is that there are literally thousands of types of cancer, and random chance says that 50 of them will be significantly correlated with proximity
to nuclear power station, or to mosques or to cinemas or any other landmark. The fact that the correlation is true for one cancer in the US, and another in Europe, and a third in China proves pretty conclusively that there is no true correlation. It’s all due to the sample space.
I think Blake and Chronos have pretty much answered all the stuff I was going to talk about.
No, it might or might not be relevant…the link hasn’t been established and verified. At this time it’s just a curious data point that hasn’t been demonstrated to linked to anything.
No, I was talking about the direct effects of coal production vs nuclear wrt health effects and death rates in the US. And no, I didn’t think you were a supporter of coal either. However, coal is the primary energy source in the US by a large margin, and there is only one currently available alternative that can scale up to meet our needs…and that is nuclear. So, if you are going to make a comparison, that would be the place to start.
I’m unsure what you think these cites are showing here. Your first cite (that I was responding too) was purported unusually high rates of new thyroid cancers in the proximity of US nuclear power plants. It didn’t really give much detail on methodology or scope, or even the time duration they were looking at, but it talked about a rise in the numbers over, presumably, some kind of established baseline. But your other cites are talking about leukemia rates in France and the UK (and again I don’t see any of the details on methodology, time frame, etc). These are two very different things, some it’s going to be even tougher to link instances of people contracting thyroid cancer in proximity to nuclear plants (which seems to be a different physical range inclusion than the others, btw) in the US to instances of people contracting leukemia in France and the UK (where they are seemingly using, at the least, different criteria for who is included in the proximity).
None of this discounts totally what you are citing, but it really makes even a tentative link even more problematic. If one sample population A gets disease X from being in proximity of a nuclear reactor of radius R, then it’s a bit of a stretch if sample population B gets disease Y from being in proximity to of a nuclear reactor by radius Rx2.
I don’t believe it’s dishonest to explain about probability curves. People worry about a lot of things…most of which they shouldn’t worry about, while those that should scare the hell out of them they take for granted. They fear flying because, well, planes crash. True enough. But probability wise, they are MUCH more likely to be killed driving their car to work. They fear having a bunch of thugs break into their house and kill them, steal the TV and rape the dog, while probability wise they are much more likely to fall off a step stool and break their neck…and have the dog rape them. All life is full of risk analysis and cost vs benefits studies. Is nuclear power risky? Yeah…everything is risky. But once you start quantifying the risk you rapidly find that it’s a hell of a lot risky than any power generation method currently in use that could actually scale up to meet our energy needs. It’s actually safer by a pretty wide margin. And if we could develop, test and deploy new reactor designs it would only get better.
Bit of rambling there (sorry, get like this when I’m drinking heavily), but the point I think I was trying to make is that, while it’s true that there are concerns about nuclear energy and safety, there are concerns about ANY large scale system. People who are just concerned are not a problem…concern is good. People who are irrationally afraid though…THEY are the ones who would constitute ‘anyone concerned about radiation exposure around NPPs is like a member of the flat-earth society.’…and I don’t think that this assessment is dishonest in the least. Painted with a broad brush? Perhaps. But not dishonest.
I was being straightforward there…to me this kind of connect the data points game reminds me a lot of the recent anti-vax modus operandi.
Yes there are. However, I assume that if you had data showing a correlation between proximity to NPP’s and some other type of cancer you would have shown them as well.
Sure, I like that one. Maybe I’ll go back to make it my tag line, since Aldy is no longer with us. I don’t really feel the need to demonstrate that water is wet. We all know that nuclear power plants have been subject to myriad lawsuits inflicted on them by the anti-nuclear people. Even if the nuclear power company wins, it takes time and costs money, of which the time is probably the more costly commodity. It also generates new regulations that cause more delays and design changes…all of which adds up. If you want the exact break down, I’m sure someone will dig it up for you, as I’ve seen it use in these threads in the past. If my sodden brain is working right, I seem to recall it was a fairly wide range in impact…something like 20%-40% of additional cost, and can add anywhere from18 months to 5 years on the time it takes to build (which entails adding even more costs). I wouldn’t take those numbers to the back though, as they might be the recipe for making mac and cheese or the combination to my porn site password for all I know at this point.
Because it doesn’t work that way. A project is given ‘the green light’ after a company submits it’s plan, the impact analysts, life cycle and…um…like 3 or 4 more important things that escape me now. After that it’s reviewed by both state and federal agencies, who issue the company a license to build to the approved design…and they are given ‘the green light’ to commence construction. They have, presumably, already raised the capital and grants they need to build the thing to the budget specified in their design plan. Then they start construction…only to find out that an unknown endangered squirrel resides in close proximity to the proposed plant, and thus must be studied to determine the environmental impact. In the mean time, another group is suing in order to halt construction completely, and arguing that the site selected isn’t the best one and they don’t want it there. Stop order on the construction pending squirrel and location determinations and the outcome of the preliminary trial. Assuming some of that obstruction is cleared out, the protesters are back, getting underfoot and slowing work (and in some cases actively damaging the work under weigh). While that’s happening, the smarter anti-nuke people are pushing through legislation that will change the regulations concerning pipe thickness, shielding and anti-squirrel protection (plus a nice squirrel ramp, so that the squirrels have the ability to get to the trees being blocked by reactor number 3). After the company re-orders or rebuilds all of the new ‘necessary’ equipment as per the regs, they there will be a new series of all of the above.
To make a long story short here, this all adds up…and the capital acquired for building the plant is just sitting there in a half finished plant doing nothing. It’s not being invested in other worthwhile projects, not being use to by a bottle of Wild Rose, smokes and hookers…it’s tied up with no return on that investment in sight until and unless the plant is ever actually allowed to finish AND to operate once it’s finished.
The best indications of all of this is to simply look at nuclear power plants being built in other countries and compare the costs. US plants cost a LOT more than, say, our French counter parts, while not being notably safer to operate.
She’s go’ht ‘uuuge tracts of lan’! You need it, laddie, since your castle is built on a swamp…
Sorry, was channeling Monty Python there. Anyway, storing nuclear waste doesn’t involve large tracts of land. Currently it involves a rather large hole in a granite mountain in the middle of No Where, Nevada. It’s not even close to the amount of land we currently use to dispose of the toxic waste from coal mining and operation. As for transporting the stuff, again, you have to look at probability, risk management and cost to benefits ratios. The containers they propose to transport these things in are about as indestructible as you could make them. I’ve seen tests where they put the things in burning oil for 16 hours, or drop them off of towers onto concrete pads. DOE has it’s own paramilitary forces who are trained and equipped just like special forces as a rapid reaction team. Their communications are state of the art. While it’s not impossible for terrorists to take one of these trucks, or for there to be such a harsh accident that one of them would lose containment (possible, but VERY low probability), the worst you are talking about is a purely local clean up and containment effort. Once it arrives it’s stored in the metal vaults (like canisters) that are, again, nearly impervious to any reasonable accident, and the storage facility itself is also redundantly reinforced.
Could something happen that would cause a loss of containment? Sure. The probability is so low that it’s really hard to quantify, but sure…something COULD happen. And if it did, there is no doubt we’d have a very nasty local clean up and containment exercise on our hands.
Anyway, lost track of what I was saying there, so going to have one more scotch before bed and call it a night. Hopefully I stayed on topic there for most of the above, though I vaguely recall something about squirrels that doesn’t exactly instill me with confidence…
Sorry I can’t site this, because the site needs a paid login.
But just recently the Straits Times, Singapore’s leading english daily carried an article that the govt was considering Nuclear power.
With the article came an “analysis” of the costs of generation for the various power sources available to Singapore.
Nuclear was way way cheaper than coal (I can’t remember, but somewhere round half I think), and aboput 20% that of natural gas. Now Singapore doesn’t have realistic access to solar or wind due to size.
I don’t know how the figures were arrived at though…
The Luddites are the people who hang onto a technology that has been around for a while, proved itself to be too damn expensive, inherently risky and unable to solve its problems. That of course in nuclear.
If we start to build a nuke plant, it wont be on line for practically a decade. It will cost a ton of money .
When Obama came in he pushed green energy. Gore has Repower America that pushes the green energy technology of the future. We believe that America can be at the forefront of the new green technologies. Many American jobs can be created if we lead the technology race. Putting our money in old tired technologies is a waste.
We all know about Chernobyl and Three mile island .But there have been partial meltdowns. The Russians have had several submarines meltdown. There have been 9 partial meltdowns in plants around the world. And then we have accumulated a shit load of radioactive waste. An 80 million dollar Yucca Mtn. storage turns into a 9 billion dollar boondoggle. Let KBR and Halliburton and other huge international corporations like that get their fingers into nukes and they would rob us blind. They always do. Cost over runs is how they do business. Cutting corners to increase profits is business as usual.
Well, the numbers for coal are easy to find. Approximately 60 million square miles of land are used for storage of the waste from coal, plus about 140 million square miles of ocean. I’m not sure what the exact numbers are for nuclear, but I guarantee it’s a lot less than that.
Simple: The Earth’s surface is about 30% land, 70% ocean. 30% * 4pi*(radius of the Earth)^2 = 60 million square miles. Likewise for the ocean figure, except using 70% instead of 30%.
It is not an argument. It is just a fact indicating how big and expensive a project you are backing and how long it would take. I would hope by then, we would have obsoleted the old nuke idea and come up with a better solution. If you hurry up will you make 10 years shorter?
OK, let’s say that, by some miracle (and it would take a miracle), we manage to make fusion work within the next 10 years (that being the only other technology even close to the horizon that could potentially replace coal). How long do you think it would take to build the fusion plants?
If we want to build more power plants, we need to start building them now, and if we’re going to start building them now, then that means we need to use technology that we have now. We can’t afford to wait for magical pixie dust, because we might not have magical pixie dust in the next ten years. In fact, we almost certainly won’t.
