Speaking of nuclear jobs being outsourced overseas: US-backed loans to expand nuclear power: a boon for overseas jobs?
That’s a shitty way to thank the American people taking on all the risk, while they get the profits.
Just because one out of four reactors in Japan is in either serious trouble, or an absolute disaster right now, that doesn’t mean nuclear power plants are unsafe. Even if all the Japanese reactors melted down, and poisoned half the world, other nuclear power plants are safe. People are so illogical. They think because a half dozen power plants blow up and burn and crap like that, that it means they aren’t safe. Stupid people.
Yes, but what if you could replace your old head with the Head of Vecna?
Nothing is completely safe, it is a matter of trade off. Looking at Japan shows that simply living by the ocean in an earthquake zone is quite dangerous, far more dangerous than any nuke plant. Do you want to phase out cities next to oceans in California?
Comparison FAIL
Clearing the junk off them is a million laughs, especially in the middle of winter. Solar actually turns out to be at least as dangerous as nuclear on those grounds, and I haven’t even gotten into the chemicals that go into making photovoltaic elements.
It’s so true. Solar panel failures have led to mass evacuations and panic before. You just read it on the internet, so it has to be true.
And you know how many people die each year from windmills? It makes nuclear power look like a walk in the park.
[QUOTE=FXMastermind]
It’s so true. Solar panel failures have led to mass evacuations and panic before. You just read it on the internet, so it has to be true.
[/QUOTE]
Probably because in the US we get less than 5% of our power from solar, which is just a niche power generation source (translation: we don’t rely on it so if it goes out it doesn’t really hurt much). Keep trying on the sarcasm thing though…it’s not working, but it IS funny.
How many people die a year from nuclear? And how many people die per year from coal, which is a significant energy source…unlike wind power which, you know, isn’t? And since you are obviously a good eco sort, how many birds are killed a year due to wind power? How many due to nuclear? How many due to coal?
-XT
1.9 million jobs, now. a few thousand nuclear jobs in… let me check… sometime between never, and never.
How much more obvious could the choice be?
[QUOTE=levdrakon]
1.9 million jobs, now. a few thousand nuclear jobs in… let me check… sometime between never, and never.
[/QUOTE]
Um…from what I can tell, the comparison fails because you are comparing apples to oranges. You seem to be comparing permanent jobs at nuclear plants to the construction jobs at alternative energy plants. The thing is, if you were to build nuclear power plants they would require as many or more people to construct them as alternative energy jobs to construct those plants…just as they will require the same (or probably less) permanent jobs once they are on stream. If they require MORE people then that probably says something about how economical they will be to operate, no?
Unless I’m missing something here.
-XT
It probably doesn’t matter, but:
I fully endorse this rant.
Would you happen to know what percent of our energy use is transportation? Would you happen to know how much of our transportation energy comes from nuclear? Feel free to include nuclear submarines, I’m feeling generous.
How much ELECTRICITY comes from nuclear? 10%? 20%? How long to quintuple that, at least, by building nuclear power plants, starting whenever you honestly think we will start building them.
How long to ramp the shit out of solar, wind, etc so it equals far more than the 10-20% nuke does now? Seriously! You can throw up a new solar and wind farm today. Right now (except for NAMBLIES or whatever). You get far more jobs/megawatt, and these technologies require constant maintenance, etc. Permanent jobs, starting now. No, not starting now. We’re already building these projects, right now, despite the NAMBLIES.
Try that, nuclear.
The pro nuke expert on CNN just now just said “The nuclear problem in japan hasn’t impacted human life”, and then went on to compare nuclear plants to car accidents.
And he was being serious. These people, they are actually insane.
[QUOTE=levdrakon]
Would you happen to know what percent of our energy use is transportation? Would you happen to know how much of our transportation energy comes from nuclear? Feel free to include nuclear submarines, I’m feeling generous.
[/QUOTE]
Zero as far as I know. What’s your point? AFAIK we weren’t talking about transportation, unless you are changing the discussion.
IIRC, it’s something between 20-30%…closer to 20 than 30 though. How long to make it 50%? 60%? Depends on a lot of factors. Will we actually be able to build the things? How many road blocks will be put in the way? Would we be able to build newer designs, or the old style behemoth ones? If we actually could build the things, and if there was only a reasonable level of resistance, and if the capital could be raised and assurances given that starting one would actually mean it would reasonably be expected that it would eventually be finished and allowed to operate with a minimal level of hindrance, I’d say 10-20 years if we pushed it. Probably closer to 20 than 10. Maybe closer to 30 than 20 depending on the levels of resistance.
If you would allow newer designs, open things up so that you didn’t have to jump through millions of hoops and STILL get large scale resistance, and provide some sort of capital, then it could be less. I think a pebble bed reactor costs less and can be built quicker, though they aren’t in wide spread use (and I think they produce less energy than the really big plants).
Decades, if ever. I don’t think you understand the scale. Just getting the manufacturing would be a bitch. Think about that plant in Spain. IIRC, it does 10-20 MW…and cost like 20-30 million Euros. And takes up several acres (10 IIRC). Scale that up to just 100-200 MW. Scale it up to 1000 MW (the size of a large nuclear or coal fired power plant). You see the problem? And you have to actually manufacture all the stuff you’d need…which we can’t do right now, not on those scales. Wind is the same. Big wind farms do, what? 200 MW? 300? You’d have to have turbines literally everywhere, and they cost like 1-2 million each.
Even getting the NAMBY guys out of the way (and the same could be said for nuclear btw…if you could get them out of the way it would change the equations for nuclear) the scale of the problem is just hard to grasp. That power plant in Spain? It provides energy for (IIRC) 10-30k houses. That SOUNDS like a lot, but scale it up to 1-3 million…then scale it up to 10-30 million. It just can’t be done, and that leaves aside the huge environmental impact solar or wind would have if you tried to deploy it on these scales…not to mention the fact that neither solar nor wind is set up for continuous operations (i.e. you need to have the sun out or the wind blowing or they don’t work)…which our grid is set up to need. You’d need to come up with some way to store energy and then give it out when the sun isn’t out or the wind isn’t blowing…which means you’d need to fundamentally change the way our grid currently works.
-XT
Our company (retail industry) implemented a pilot program for solar energy generation. For almost $600K investment we can supply 6% of a single store’s electricity requirements, for a savings of $15-$50k per store per year. Did this for four stores. Payback is 15 to 40 years assuming that there is zero operating and maintenance costs.
Had a bad storm this winter. Lots of damage to the panels. Savings in years 1-5 wiped out.
It is a 100% vanity project. Actually it is to get us some brownie points on our Corporate Responsiblity report. This is a European company. They are required to file this report every year.
Now we are considering a wind turbine. The NIMBY issues are huge. The payback is worse than the solar panels.
If we went all out on the renewables front, we would be bankrupt. Is anyone going to pay 2% more for our product (food) because we are using renewables. No way. There is one supermarket operator who has effectively capture the entire market for people who are willing to pay more for socially responsible supply chain in their food (and sustainable agriculture etc.) There is no evidence that more than 2-5% of the consumers are willing to pay a penny more for their ice cream to get it from a solar or wind powered freezer, rather than a coal or gas powered one.
Either we need a massive carbon tax to level the playing field, or we will have no significant progress on this front for a long time, most likely until it is too late.
We could hire Mexicans to ride stationary bicycles with generators attached to produce electricity. We could DO IT NOW and it would create MORE PERMANENT jobs than you could shake a stick at!
Doesnt mean its a good or practical idea though.
One million megajuans equals 1 megawatt BTW.
Was this one of the experts that gozomax heard saying that core radiation had been released?
No, it was the pro nuclear expert, who keeps saying “We don’t know what is being released”. Someday these experts will come up with a way to sample a cloud being released from a damaged power plant and discover what is in it.
Until then, well, we just don’t know. Nuclear science is still a lot of unknowns.
[QUOTE=FXMastermind]
No, it was the pro nuclear expert, who keeps saying “We don’t know what is being released”. Someday these experts will come up with a way to sample a cloud being released from a damaged power plant and discover what is in it.
[/QUOTE]
I’d guess that most of the experts know pretty well what’s being released (steam I’d say, along with stuff like hydrogen). And they know approximately how much radiation is being released too…and what it’s potential effects will be. Of course, some guy on CNN or some other news channel probably hasn’t got any more clue than the average person what it actually means. They just have access to a microphone or an internet web page to blather their uninformed non-sense on.
To put it another way, just because the experts do know what’s going on, that doesn’t translate into the folks reporting the news knowing or understanding what they are being told…and it even less translates into the public grasping what it means (since they are going through a layer of ignorance and suspicion) or believing it when they are told.
Yeah, 'cause nuclear science and energy is such a new thing, right? I mean, hell, we’ve only been using it for, what? 60 years now? Lots of ‘unknowns’ still, no doubt about it. 
-XT
Well none of the experts, as well as the Japanese power company and government seems to be able to say what is being released. You can’t blame the media for not knowing when nobody is saying anything.
I do wish just one reporter was willing to sacrifice his career by asking, on air, why the hell doesn’t anybody ‘know’? It’s the question any intelligent person would ask.