No, it’s easy to solve - on a engineering level at least. The problems are political.
The cost overruns and general unprofitability are due to the constant harassment of the anti-nukers, who generally appear to be anti-civilization in general. I have no desire to end up freezing and dying of starvation just to satisfy some people’s anti-nuclear, back-to-the-Stone-Age fetishes. As for the taxpayer and private corporations; at this point I just care about getting nuclear power plants built before the environmental and resource consequences of NOT having them brings us to ruin. I really don’t care much how.
A collection of errors. Three Mile Island didn’t kill or hurt anyone; not much of a risk. A Chernobyl is impossible most places; that required a specific, really awful plant design to happen, and even then the people involved had to work at it. We have perfectly good methods of disposing of the waste; the obstacles are political. The costs of nuclear compared to coal are higher because it’s treated differently. And again, we deal with all sorts of wastes that don’t decay at all.
As a environmentalist, I’m not against nuclear. I’m against incompetently-managed and expensive nuclear.
I’ve been following with great interest things like the fusor, the pebble-bed reactor and the traveling-wave reactor. I live in a province that gets half its power from fission, and much of the rest from hydro, wind, and solar. Cite.
Because of lot of the liberal agenda was created by Communist Russia. Communist Russia funded a lot of nutjob liberals to interfere with America’s ability to wage the Cold War. No cites, just my opinion.
I knew someone would get me for that, of course I mean Not [del]yellowcake[/del] In My Back Yard.
I still think it would be really hard for the left to be responsible for all the efforts to stop nuclear power in the USA. Not being the majority in many locations would tell you that opposition to nuclear power is more of a NIMBY thing and it is most likely caused by the bad press the nuclear industry gets, a good number of the bad reports are indeed the fault of the industry: accidents, cost overruns, and while lawsuits are part of the cost, I’m having trouble finding that they are the main reason for the cost.
I still think we should follow many of the examples offered by France.
And yet, other countries manage to build them cheaper than we do. Why do you suppose that might be? It’s a mystery…
I wonder why that is. Couldn’t be the constant shifting of regulations, the lawsuits, the delays, or anything like that…right? Naw…it’s Big Business™ trying to make a buck. Yeah…that’s it. Again though, it’s curious that other countries manage to build the things without the same level of problems, no? Have you never asked yourself why that might be?
How would they get approval?? Until recently no new building licenses were being issued. And, again, how is it that other countries manage to build the things if they are so cost inefficient? Do they just like to lose money or something?
Except for the inconvenient fact part that they couldn’t get a permit to begin construction. That sort of puts a damper on things.
Who’s ‘you people’, kimosabe? I thought ‘you people’ LIKED it when the government stepped in and paid for stuff in the public’s good…
Well, for those of us who have been paying attention, this is a bit of a silly statement, since NO companies have built the things in decades now. At least not in this country. And, you know, it’s kind of funny that if all these supposed companies did was cut corners and try and squeeze evil PROFIT™…well, considering that they have been remarkably safe, no? Well, I’m sure YOU don’t see that, but it would give anyone who’s position is less ossified something to contemplate, anyway.
Why yes, it does. Was there a point in there somewhere, or were you just asking a rhetorical question?
Gonzo is pretty much the poster child for what the OP was talking about. He’s an old school anti-nuke reactionary. Don’t confuse him with the facts, he knows what he knows, and to him the issue is black and white. The fact that no nuclear plants have been built in the US simply proves his point (to him). It’s blindingly obvious (to him) that nuclear power is uneconomical, and don’t confuse him with any nonsense suggesting that it’s the anti-nuclear people who have made it that way, or that they have put the entire industry into a Catch-22 no-win position that makes building the plants impossible. He doesn’t want to hear that. He doesn’t want to learn the facts or study the issues. Nuance? It’s not for the likes of him. Don’t attempt to confuse him by pointing out that these issues seem to be solely here in the US, and that other countries don’t seemingly have anywhere near the same issues. Don’t bother pointing out that coal is orders of magnitude worse in health problems, environmental impact and annual death rates, since it’s irrelevant…he KNOWS that we could just build a butt load of wind plants and put solar everywhere if only the evil power companies would get out of the way. The magic ponies will save us from global warming…we dunt need no stinkin’ nuclear, man!
Luckily I think that gonzo and his anti-nuclear sole mates are a waning voice in the US. They are getting old, they are out of touch and out of step, and I feel that we are perhaps about to turn a corner that will allow for a fresh look at the real costs and benefits, the actual risks, and be able to develop newer, more cost effective and safer designs that OTHER countries have developed and even implemented but that have been denied to us because of folks like The Gonz. If we can just get the aging hippies and hand wringing anti-nuclear types out of the way, maybe, just maybe we can start reducing that CO2 footprint that everyone is so worried about in a real, meaningful way.
Don’t you see? This is all just part of their Evil Plan™. Once they’ve lulled everyone into a false sense of security, their CEO, Duke Nukem, is going to push the Planned Obselescence button and drown us all in green goo.
That’s what the NRC says. But, this study says otherwise.
What has the costly #2 reactor been doing since the accident 30 years ago? Not producing energy, that’s what. Operational for all of three months, hugely expensive cleanup after the meltdown and it’s been sitting there completely nonoperational since then. Now, there are plans to ship the 670-ton #2 generator to NC (more $$).
Besides the high level waste which, for all intents and purposes, doesn’t go away and potentially leads to nuclear weapons proliferation, accidents can and do happen and then what? The area in which the accident occurred is ruined for any type of human usage. Radioactive cleanup is enormously expensive and even then does not return the environment back to its pre-contamination state. Guess who pays for the cleanup.
I’m not afraid of nuclear energy. I just don’t think it’s clean. And I think we should be spending our efforts and money developing renewable resources that don’t come with the heavy environmental and financial costs of nuclear energy. According the US Dept. of Energy, we are only utilizing 40% of our hydropower potential and that undeveloped potential is equivalent to one-third of our total US electricity generation. What is our undeveloped potential in solar, wind, OTEC and geothermal sources? I don’t like coal, either, as I have an appreciation for Kentucky mountains. But I don’t know why so many people feel that coal or nuclear are the only alternatives to oil. They aren’t, nor are they the best alternatives.
Because reality rears it’s ugly head. Only nuclear can scale up to meet the energy demands in a roughly similar way to coal. Nothing else comes close, even in combination with other renewable technologies. Think it through…the US has one of the largest solar and wind power deployment in terms of total wind turbines and square footage of solar panels, but both technologies combine only make up a small percentage of our energy grid. Even doubling or tripling our current systems wouldn’t come close to matching the energy output of coal, and doubling or tripling wind and solar would be VERY costly and difficult. Hydro? Yeah, there is still some untapped energy there, but the environmental impact means that it’s going to be very difficult to get any new large scale hydro plants built. All the easy, low hanging fruit has been used already, and increasingly the environmental impact has become clear. Geothermal? Yeah, you could (perhaps) get a few more percentage points out of that, but it just doesn’t scale up to meet our needs in anything close to the levels that coal currently does, and it also has environmental impacts…and, again, most of the low hanging fruit have already been tapped.
The reality at this time is stay with coal and hope to figure out how to make it cleaner (which is going to cost a LOT, btw, as older plants would have to be scraped and newer ones refitted with whatever new tech comes out to accomplish this) or use nuclear. Nothing at this time is even in the ball park, scale wise, to meet our energy needs in the US. No combination of alternatives is even in the ball park at this time.
(BTW, I’m not saying we shouldn’t develop alternatives…I certainly think we SHOULD, and continue to explore the technologies. I’d love to see solar and wind get up to something like 5-10% of our total energy package. I’d be thrilled if we could ramp them up that high in the next 20-30 years. It’s just that there aren’t any magic, silver bullets that will let us get rid of the coal plants and replace them without looking at nuclear)
If you were to apply the same standards as are applied to nuclear, nothing is clean. It’s just that levelling a state or two worth of land to stick heavy metal containing solar panels all over them is somehow regarded as morally superior to putting up a few nuclear power plants.
And “high level waste” DOES go away. You know, half life. Besides, it’s harmless if stuck in a deep hole somewhere. Again; the difficulty with nuclear waste is purely political.
What makes you think that developing it is even practical? And what about the kind of environmental devastation you would have to inflict in the process? We aren’t talking about some tiny wind farm somewhere; you are talking about covering huge areas of the country ( and destroying whatever natural environment used to be there )with machinery and the roads to maintain them, and a huge fleet of oil-powered vehicles to do the job.
All of those cause more environmental damage than nuclear, or are simply incapable of meeting demand, or both; nuclear is the cleanest power source we have that can do the job.
And I don’t think it’s even politically possible; the same NIMBYism that prevents nuclear power plants will step in tenfold when it comes time to cover mile after mile after mile with solar panels and wind farms, to drown valley after valley for marginal dams.
Like it or not, they are at the moment. And we can’t wait fifty more years waiting for some new wonder technology.
Without having read any replies, my guess is that it is because despite The Left being just as greedy for material wealth as The Right, they are more considerate of mankind’s ability to fuck things up, bigtime; hence, they are far more hesitant to use something as potentially damaging as a nuclear reactor. The Right, meanwhile, just don’t give a shit, as long as it’s not built anywhere near them.
ps. And, by The Right and The Left, I don’t mean everyone whose voting instincts lean that way, I mean the power structures benefitting from both voter’s ideologies.
Yes, every form of energy production has it’s downsides and environmental impact, but none has the dubious distinction that nuclear has of creating waste that lasts millions of years.
There’s no need to level a state or two. There are many, many acres of currently uninhabited desert in the western half of the U.S. that is prime real estate for solar farms. The environmental impact of solar farms is negligible by comparison to nuclear power plants without the risk to biological contamination. It’s not simply morally superior, it’s a biological imperative.
[quote]
And “high level waste” DOES go away. You know, half life. Besides, it’s harmless if stuck in a deep hole somewhere. Again; the difficulty with nuclear waste is purely political. Half-life, huh? Let’s review:
Long-lived fission products include
[ul]
[li]Technetium-99 (half-life 220,000 years)[/li][li]Iodine-129 (half-life 15.7 million years)[/li][li]Neptunium-237 (half-life two million years) [/li][li]Plutonium-239 (half-life 24,000 years)[/li][/ul]
So, Homo sapiens has been around for 195,000 years and yet radioactive materials present in nuclear waste last longer. Considerably longer than mankind has even existed. I’m afraid you can’t simply wave away the concern over high-level radioactive waste (btw, what’s with the scare quotes?) with half-life. Considering the extent to which Homo sapiens, in 195,000 years, has expanded in population, habitation of the planet and interaction with it, you can reasonably assume that anything we bury deep in the ground has a likelihood of coming in contact with again at some point in the future. How can we be sure that 10,000 years, or 100,000 years or even one million years, into the future the deep hole we dumped toxic waste into doesn’t come into contact with a tectonic hotspot, an expanding or new aquifer, or any other type of natural process that could potentially release these toxins into the environment. Why should we care? We won’t be here anyway. Do we not have a responsibility to our descendants to not irreparably and with utter disregard trash the only hospitable planet we know of?
Of course, my attitude must be purely political. It must be a liberal thing to value the future health of our species and planet. :rolleyes:
Well, the vehicles will probably have to be biofuel-powered eventually. But no, you don’t have to cover the whole of the country with wind farms to contribute significantly to our energy needs. Technology has come far in wind power and today’s turbines generate much more energy much more efficiently. Further, several countries have successfully developed, and continue to develop, off-shore wind farms as wind generation is considerably greater at sea. The impact on the environment is relatively minor, but the tricky part is matching supply with demand. Further, wind farms can be located in conjunction with crops and livestock grazing land as neither is impacted by the turbines.
Nuclear is the least clean, as demonstrated by the necessity of burying it’s waste in deep out-of-the-way locations. Neither wind, nor solar, nor hydro, is known by any reasonable person to cause *more *environmental damage in the long term than nuclear. Whether we can meet demand remains to be seen. I prefer a multi-pronged approach to energy production and believe that our country offers vast physical resources to develop several different types of energy production concurrently. It is sheer folly to continue to put all of our eggs in one basket (regardless of what basket that is) the way we have done with petroleum in the past.
With nuclear power, not only is there NIMBYism with regard to where to put the plants, you have NIMBYism with regard to where to bury the waste. Well, unless you can make it financially worthwhile for state politicians to accept nuclear waste in its backyard. Then there’s transporting it. Who wants nuclear waste traveling down their highways or through railroad yards? One tanker spill in a densely populated metro area and you’ve got major catastrophe. Let’s try to think of an industrial accident related to wind, solar, or hydro power that can match that. Hmm…
I’m not sure why you think wind, solar, hydro and geothermal are newfangled wonder technologies. Windmills and waterwheels have been around since the 7th century. In the 19th century, solar energy was first used to power an engine and geothermal energy was used in a heating system. If anything is newfangled, it would have to be nuclear fission which has only been in use as a source of power generation for the less than 100 years.
Unless you consider the deaths of billions of people from the fact that civilization can’t be supported by gossamer hippie bullshit to be “environmental damage,” but given the usual hippie attitude towards the value of human life, I bet you don’t.
IANAPhysicist, but my basic understanding (someone please correct me if I’m wrong) is that the really dangerous byproducts of fission (highly radioactive and dangerous) have relatively shorter half-lives (hundreds to maybe a few thousand years?). Whereas the byproducts with very long-half lives are not very dangerous and are only slightly radioactive. By definition, if something has a really long half-life then it’s breaking down slowly and it’s not highly radioactive. Therefore, “high level” waste != half life of hundreds of thousands or millions of years.
So then the major long-term storage concerns for nuclear waste should be as guaranteed as possible to contain the waste for the more highly radioactive elements, but lobbying to stop the development of storage sites because they might leak in 15.7 million years (for Iodine-129) should not be as much of a concern.
The really big breakthrough in nuclear waste processing would be a system that could quickly and efficiently remove (and best of all, cheaply) the really hot stuff (cesium-137 and strontium-90 are two often mentioned) from the waste stream. Separate those out, store them separately, and you’ll have substantial decay within the average human lifetime. The long-lived stuff can either be recycled in a different kind of reactor or buried in the ground.
In any case, something has to be done. Because there isn’t a solution, there are big buckets of waste sitting on site throughout the country at nuclear power plants. I don’t see how that is better from an environmental or safety point of view.
Definitely. There should be a much higher priority on reprocessing nuclear waste, and developing sites like Yucca.
It’s ridiculous that some people are (IMHO) overly worried about the potential problems from having nuclear waste stored in a stable site like Yucca, but then they ignore the much larger problems associated with having no safe long-term storage sites. What’s worse, the possibility of a leak of low level radiation from a single site in the distant future, or the much higher possibility of accidents/leaks/terrorism/whatever at hundreds of individual sites that are not appropriate for long-term storage?
In My Back Yard.