US To Build Nuclear Power Plants 622
An anonymous reader writes "President Barack Obama has announced more than $8bn in federal loan guarantees to begin building the first US nuclear power stations in 30 years. Two new plants are to be constructed in the state of Georgia by US electricity firm Southern Company."
That will help us in 2060 (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:some facts about nuclear energy. (Score:5, Insightful)
If by facts you mean falsehoods.
The facts:
1. If you only look at the construction of the plant. It makes perfect economic sense if you look out over 50 years, and can even be cheaper than coal.
2. Most of the waste we have could be used as fuel, but we're refusing to do so, partially because of the ban on new plants, partially because several of the methods create a lot of weapons-grade Plutonium. But we are making far more nuclear waste than necessary.
3. Repeal it. Anyway, coal plants have caused more health damage than nuclear, at least in the US.
4. That's not a fact. That's not even an opinion. You just said "fuel dependency."
Good. Its about time (Score:4, Insightful)
This is one step closer towards reducing the amount of our dollars that go to the middle east while also stimulating the US economy. This also moves us closer to our goal of having electric vehicles that really are green. Wind/solar are not as reliable as nuclear because you only have wind when the wind blows, and solar when the sun is shining.
Re:some facts about nuclear energy. (Score:5, Insightful)
As opposed to dumping waste in the atmosphere, like fossil fuel plants do, yes, it *is* "green". Or as opposed to flooding huge areas of land, like hydroelectric power plants do. Or as opposed to covering huge areas with windmills.
What makes nuclear power "green" is how small a footprint the plants have. In a few hectares of land you can produce as much power as covering the whole state with river dams or windmills.
What plant design? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been hearing about this for the past few days, but I have yet to see what kind of nuclear plant they're talking about building.
I'm really hoping we take a cue from France (yeah yeah, cheese eating surrender monkeys and all that... Fact is, they've been doing nuclear power a lot, and doing it much more recently than us), and standardize a reactor design or three to hopefully avoid some of that red tape.
Re:some facts about nuclear energy. (Score:4, Insightful)
Given the things you listed above - how come the French seem to make it work for them?
Does the U.S. have native coal and oil supplies that make these other sources more viable?
I'm just curious as to what the big difference is that allows one country to produce almost 75% [world-nuclear.org] of it's energy needs but elsewhere it's not possible?
Re:That's good (Score:4, Insightful)
Reprocess it.
Stuff you can't reprocess put at bottom of an oceanic trench. Subduction zones are MomNature's ultimate recycle bin.
--
BMO
Re:That's good (Score:3, Insightful)
I have an acre here in Arkansas, I don't mind storing it in my back yard. Its on a hill, and not really very usable for me anyhow. Where do I sign up?
Good start, but we need more (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not an Obama fan, but when he does something right he deserves credit for it, so good job Mr. President. I just hope this doesn't get bogged down in too much bureaucracy and lawsuits by "environmentalists." Note how "environmentalists" is in quotes because anyone rational who claims to care about air pollution, global warming, deforestation, etc. etc. should love the idea of new, very safe nuclear power plants. A back of the napkin calculation means a 1.1 Gigawatt reactor can put out the peak energy of 110 of the big 10 Megawatt wind turbine... and the wind turbine can't output at peak energy all the time. Take into account the fact that the land footprint for a nuclear power plant is tiny compared to wind or solar and you have a solution that is a very good thing for the environment.
As for nuclear waste, it's a political problem not a technological problem. Despite the fear-mongering you hear about "10,000 years of waste" the truly nasty stuff actually has a much shorter half-life, and the stuff that is radioactive for 10,000 years is dangerous... but not any more dangerous than the chemicals that get spewed from Coal-fired plants or the chemicals that are used in manufacturing photo-voltaic solar panels. One other thing.. if reprocessing were actually used in the US the amount of this nasty waste would be much much lower to boot. Once again, politics trumps technology in preventing solutions to problems from actually being implemented.
Real solutions to foreign energy dependence (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a pragmatic solution to the problems of global warming and foreign energy dependence. There's nothing magically evil about nuclear power. Environmentalists should applaud this move.
Re:some facts about nuclear energy. (Score:1, Insightful)
we need power _today_.
Easy, stop wasting energy. Governments are too relaxed about "standby modes" on devices and general consumption. I bet you can "find" 10 Nuclear plants within the general consumptions if you wanted.
Re:That's good (Score:4, Insightful)
If it's still radioactive enough to be dangerous. It's still radioactive enough to be used for electricity.
We just have retarded 'recycling laws'. Imagine if the US outlawed Aluminum recycling because at some point in the process you could use it as Thermite. That's how stupid our nuclear rules are.
Re:Good start, but we need more (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not an Obama fan, but when he does something right he deserves credit for it, so good job Mr. President. I just hope this doesn't get bogged down in too much bureaucracy and lawsuits by "environmentalists." Note how "environmentalists" is in quotes because anyone rational who claims to care about air pollution, global warming, deforestation, etc. etc. should love the idea of new, very safe nuclear power plants. A back of the napkin calculation means a 1.1 Gigawatt reactor can put out the peak energy of 110 of the big 10 Megawatt wind turbine... and the wind turbine can't output at peak energy all the time. Take into account the fact that the land footprint for a nuclear power plant is tiny compared to wind or solar and you have a solution that is a very good thing for the environment.
As for nuclear waste, it's a political problem not a technological problem. Despite the fear-mongering you hear about "10,000 years of waste" the truly nasty stuff actually has a much shorter half-life, and the stuff that is radioactive for 10,000 years is dangerous... but not any more dangerous than the chemicals that get spewed from Coal-fired plants or the chemicals that are used in manufacturing photo-voltaic solar panels. One other thing.. if reprocessing were actually used in the US the amount of this nasty waste would be much much lower to boot. Once again, politics trumps technology in preventing solutions to problems from actually being implemented.
I completely agree with you, on every point. However, 8 bn$ in loan guarantees is very little.
Small vs. Large problems (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
finally (Score:5, Insightful)
It's about time some common sense was applied to the issue.
Does anyone realize that you and I will each produce about a coke-can worth of nuclear waste in our lifetime (a TED speaker mentioned this, can't find the source atm)? I think that's pretty easy to store. At least compared to the thousands of tonnes of coal that would have to be burned in its place.
You say the air is polluted and we have to stop burning coal; but you helped keep that industry alive because you protested nuclear energy into the dark ages for the past thirty years. Our modern lives don't exist without electricity and generating it is no easy task. There are trade-offs. I think we would have been better off if nuclear energy development had continued: we'd have thirty years more experience building, developing, and maintaining it.
Good on this Obama guy for having a little common sense.
Re:some facts about nuclear energy. (Score:5, Insightful)
I would be stunned, stunned if every industry with the word "nuclear" in its name, even the nuclear weapons industry(including the crapfest that was the soviet unions nuclear program) has caused more cancers deaths, injuries and poisonings than the worldwide coal industry.
But coal isn't sexy.
Coal isn't scary.
If tomorrow we swapped every coal plant in the world for modern nuclear plants it would do vastly more good for the environment than every single accomplishment of every Greenpeace like organisation the world over combined has ever accomplished.
But no.
Atoms are scary.
Re:Good start, but we need more (Score:5, Insightful)
One man's trash is another man's treasure. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Nuclear waste isn't a problem, it's an opportunity. That nuclear waste, is in fact, valuable fuel in some types of reactor designs. Notably, the Integral Fast Reactor-style of design (and, I believe there are some other design concepts being researched along similar lines). I've heard estimates (though I don't really know if they are true or not, but I've no current knowledge to contradict it) that the current 'reserves' of nuclear waste could power reactors for something like 500 years or 1000 years without mining any 'new' uranium.
However, I think the Obama administration is making a bit of a mistake. It's my understanding that the reactor designs they are getting built are still based upon the once-through concept, which will need 'new' uranium to be mined and enriched, and produce more 'waste'. Seems to me we should really be pushing to the 'recycling' types of reactor designs, and maybe put a moratorium on importing any more uranium into the country. We should be trying to phase out the old style, once-through reactors.
$7/Watt for Now (Score:2, Insightful)
Nuclear waste (Score:4, Insightful)
All the anti-nuke people make claims of thousands of years of nuclear waste storage blah blah. Does anyone take into account the speed at which science accelerates? Isn't it likely that in 20-50 years we'll have tech that can just deal with the waste? Or hell, even 200 years if you want to take a pessimistic view of tech growth. Even if it was 1000 years I'd be pretty happy to have nuclear power than nasty coal that is actively poisoning things.
Re:That's good (Score:5, Insightful)
Credits:
SA Forums user: grover
Has anyone suggested simply eating it? It would unfortunately then collect and concentrate in sewage treatment plants and septic tanks, and so would defeat the purpose, but I'm curious...
12,000 metric tons of high-level waste (mostly spent reactor fuel rods) is produced worldwide each year. If that waste was let age for a few years like fine whiskey, split up into tiny 1.6mg portions encapsulated in glass, and then one fed to every person in the world...
a) Spent nuclear fuel rods, clad or declad, from commercial electricity generating reactors; average radioactivity being more than 2.5 million curies per cubic meter.
b) Semi-liquid sludge from nuclear bomb fabrication waste processing residue - average radioactivity being about 3500 curies per cubic meter.
All this waste contains five shorter lived and longer lived radionuclides of main concern. The shorter lived are strontium-90 whose half life, t1/2, is 28.5 years, and cesium-137 whose half life, t1/2, is 30 years. See Ref. 1 for the half-life values used in this study. The radioactivity of these shorter lived nuclides is approximately 95% of the total radioactivity of the nuclides of concern. Total hazardous life for these shorter lived nuclides is considered to be between 600 years and 1000 years depending upon one's point of view.
The longer lived isotopes are plutonium-239 whose t1/2 is 24,110 years, plutonium-240 whose t1/2 is 6,540 years, and curium-245 whose t1/2 is 8,500 years. Plutonium-238 whose t1/2is 88 years will have essentially disappeared after several thousand years, so in storage terms of the longer lived elements this isotope is not of concern as long as it will have been successfully contained for the next several thousand years. As for the life of these longer lived materials, the NRC considers 10,000 years as the storage time required; however, some people consider a lifetime as long as 100,000 years to 500,000 years as more appropriate.
Sr-90 is a beta emitter, and the radiation won't penetrate the glass capsule.
C-137 is a beta and gamma emitter, with 75% the energy released as beta, and the rest as 33keV and 662keV gamma.
1 cubic meter of waste: 2.5 million curies
% radiation in short-lived Sr-90/C-137 isotopes: appx 95%
% radiation capable of penetrating capsule: appx 13%
World population: 6.70 Billion
Average mass of a human: 70kg
Time for complete digestion: 24hr
1 Ci = 37GBq
1 rad = 0.01J/kg of absorbed radiation
1 rem = rule of thumb is 1 rad, but it's actually a lot more complicated
Q for gamma, external = 1
Q for alpha, external = 0
Q for beta, external = 0
1 Sv = Q x 100rem
1keV = 1.60217646 × 10-16 joules
Density of fuel rods: 11.0g/cc
Volume of fuel per capsule: 1.6mg/11.0g/cc= 0.145nm^2
"Dangerous" radiation emitted from 1m^2: 2.5MCi * .95 * .13 = 308kCi = 1.14*10^16Bq
"Dangerous" radiation emitted from 0.145nm^2: 1.14*10^16Bq/6.7G/3=567kBq/meal
% of gamma rays striking human body absorbed by human body: appx 15%
Radiation absorbed by the body: 85kBq
Energy absorbed: 85kBq X (33keV/Bq+662keV/Bq)/2 * 1.60217646*10^-16 J/keV * 24*60*60s= 41mJ.
Energy absorbed per kg: 41mJ/70kg/0.01J/kg = 0.6mrad
Radiation exposure: 0.6mrem per meal
Radiation exposure: 639mrem per year, or appx 255SWW.
Conclusion: we could quite literally eat all the nuclear waste generated worldwide and barely double our annual exposure to natural radiation. Not that I'd advocate this, but jesus christ, there's nothing wrong with burying it all in a hole in the ground!
Alternately, I could just go around the nation beating people with spent fuel rods until they gain some perspective in the matter.
Made in Japan. . ? (Score:3, Insightful)
He did not give details on how Southern planned to divide its 30 percent share between debt and equity but said his company was not looking for financial backing from Japan. Toshiba of Japan is majority owner of Westinghouse, whose AP1000 reactor has been selected for the Vogtle plant's expansion and is under review by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Okay. That's just pathetic.
You know the U.S. is a fading empire when they need to turn to Japan to build their own infrastructure. What's next? The automotive industry?
-FL
Re:Good start, but we need more (Score:3, Insightful)
I completely agree with you, on every point. However, 8 bn$ in loan guarantees is very little.
It's $8 billion more than a bunch of capitalists should require from the government to build something incredibly profitable.
Re:That's good (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course, most people are more concerned with getting a concentrated dose than they are about getting a perfectly distributed dose.
(I think nuclear is a great idea, and it might take until the coal starts to run out, but we will start using it)
Re:some facts about nuclear energy. (Score:2, Insightful)
It was actually the incident at Three Mile Island that began the movement against nuclear energy in the US.
Which caused a massive loss of life?
Re:some facts about nuclear energy. (Score:5, Insightful)
Apropos of this, I'd summarize one of his points (he has many, all quite insightful) as: if we all do a little, we only accomplish a little.
Standby mode is a complete canard, and fixing it won't even come close to addressing our energy problems. Combine all of your standby mode power, and it would be dwarfed by the power taken up by your A/C, or your computer (how many of us have a 200-300W computer left on all the time?), or your TV. It would take hundreds of devices in standby mode to make up for the power taken up by a comparatively low-power computer that's left on 24/7. Fixing standby mode devices is fixing a problem that's almost an order of magnitude smaller than the real one.
The problem is, telling people to address the real problems involves asking them to use less (use less A/C, turn off your computers, watch less TV, buy a smaller/lower power TV), which is a complete non-starter in today's environment.
Re:Real solutions to foreign energy dependence (Score:3, Insightful)
There's nothing magically evil about nuclear power. Environmentalists should applaud this move.
But they don't.. and thats why they can go fuck themselves.
Re:That's good (Score:3, Insightful)
1:Rems to cancer rate is not linear.
2:Most cancer has little or nothing to do with radiation.
In any case we're not proposing actually eating it.
We're talking about burying it in a hole.In the desert. Miles from anyone.
Re:some facts about nuclear energy. (Score:5, Insightful)
Waste storage is well handled. The eventual end point for the small amounts of HE waste is as a glass, which is stored in columns inside cylindrical steel cans. This glass can not "leak" (certainly not "will eventually leak"). They are stored underground in caverns and monitored. Even if one were to be submerged in water, the glass would not dissolve, although the storage sites are picked to avoid water tables anyway. Some of these cans are also set into concrete.
It's not like on "The Simpsons" or on CSI where nuclear waste is a bright green glowing liquid that is shoved into a rusty steel oil drum with a badly fitting cap and excess spilling down the sides where it was carelessly topped up.
We do not want coal fired plants. They release high amounts of radioactivity into the atmosphere, and don't just produce CO2 - there are other wastes to get rid of, including a ton of ash and nasty sulphurous compounds, and carbon capture is not a long term solution. It would be better to simply compress it and use it rather than pump it back into the ground. Perhaps when fridges and AC units start using liquid CO2 as their refrigerant we'll see more of that.
Re:some facts about nuclear energy. (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember researching an article for coal plants, they had 32,000 injuries and 100~ deaths per year from coal mining. But hey, out of sight, out of mind right? The boogey man that is "nuclear energy" must be stopped because it MIGHT hurt someone.
Re:That's good (Score:4, Insightful)
People freak out at anything that puts out a few rems but don't seem bothered by shipments of arsenic, cyanide or any on of the thousands of other things which are far far far far far more likely to kill you, maim you etc.
A nuclear plant 20 miles away is a reason to picket and scream and complain about how everyone is going to be killed in some nightmare scenario which people who actually know about the subject aren't worried about but a pesticide plant outside your town is no big deal.
It's like being terrified of meteorite strikes while playing in traffic.
Re:some facts about nuclear energy. (Score:2, Insightful)
and what do we do with the waste, runoff, and pollution from non-nuclear power generation? where's your outrage over the contamination of our environment from mining coal?
we're already behaving in a short-sighted fashion, and burdening the next generations.
Re:some facts about nuclear energy. (Score:3, Insightful)
I said it during the Cold War, and I'm happy to say it again: MORE NUKES! LESS KOOKS!
Yeah, I've heard a lot of reasons not to have nukes of any sort - bombs, reactors, you name it. The best reason I've ever heard, was Chernobyl. A perfectly good plant was destroyed by idiots stretching the envelope. And, yes, there will be more idiots in the future.
But, even Chernobyl doesn't convince me that nuclear plants are bad. It only convinces me that we need to weed out the idiots, and prevent them from making decisions about how a plant should be run. Don't allow morons to power up to max, then try to do an emergency shutdown, then try to crank it up to max power again, just to see if they can.
Fission, and eventually, fusion, are indeed the energy sources of tomorrow.
If that runs contrary to the greenies' agenda, well, tough titty. Al Gore should have invented fission, instead of the intarwebz, then he could make money on Obama's new nuclear policy.
Re:some facts about nuclear energy. (Score:3, Insightful)
Some corrected facts about nuclear energy.
"1/Nuclear energy does not make economic sense. http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50308 [ipsnews.net] [ipsnews.net] (translation: it is expensive)"
But cheaper than oil, natural gas, Wind, and Solar. Only coal and Hydro are cheaper.
"2/Having to store waste for over 100000 years is not what someone with any common sense would call 'green'."
You don't you just reprocess the fuel rods like they do in France and Japan and have for years.
"3/limited liability. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act [wikipedia.org] [wikipedia.org]"
Yes that one does exist. Of course since you have nut balls claiming that wifi makes them sick....
"4/fuel-dependency"
Yes it is terrible if we move to a thorium cycle we only have a few centuries of fuel left. With breeders maybe no more than two or three centuries.
Re:some facts about nuclear energy. (Score:3, Insightful)
And what are you doing about the radon released by coal mining and burning? You know, released straight into the atmosphere instead of as a lump of metal?
Or do you only care about radioactivity if it's from uranium?
Re:some facts about nuclear energy. (Score:2, Insightful)
And no, none of my computers use over 150W. The only people who have 200+W computers are those with gigantic graphics cards, and they are also part of the problem if they leave those on 24/7. Get off AIM already.
Re:scrubbing co2 (Score:3, Insightful)
Why put levies on a riverbank, the people living nearby need water to drink, surely when there's a flood it will only make them more healthy!
Re:Good. Its about time (Score:4, Insightful)
That realization was never lacking. The problem all along has been $/KWH.
The onerous regulations and protests and Jane Fondas simply added to the $/KWH. Government loan guarantees lower the $/KWH back down by increasing the plants' bond ratings (which lowers their cost of financing).
It would've been better to just reduce the regulatory burden, rather than cripple the industry with regulations and then prop it back up with subsidies... but such is the democratic method of inculcating dependence on the State.
Re:some facts about nuclear energy. (Score:3, Insightful)
That's not a technical problem.
If you're going to include madness and political problems then no solution you can propose to any human problem with anything on earth is viable.
Re:some facts about nuclear energy. (Score:3, Insightful)
Generally I agree, but the image problem isn't just perception; it is reality. When there is a problem at a nuclear facility, it dwarfs those at any coal mine. Remember Chernobyl?
I honestly am not being mean when I say you really have no idea what you're talking about. Whenever there's a discussion about nuclear power plants, someone always brings up Chernobyl.
Anyone who brings up Chernobyl in the context of nuclear power plant safety quite honestly hasn't the slightest idea why Chernobyl happened or why it's physically impossible for it to happen in any nuclear power plant ever designed or built in any western nation, let alone a modern reactor design anywhere on Earth. Start with the fact that Chernobyl's design was backwards. If you don't understand what I mean by that, please read up on nuclear reactor design before commenting further on the topic of nuclear power plants.
Whether you realize it or not, your comment is the purest form of FUD.
Re:some facts about nuclear energy. (Score:4, Insightful)
Where is the harm in covering area with windmills?
Nothing, considering the land is hardly "covered" at all. It's certainly a very different kind of "covered" than what a coal or nuclear plant's footprint entails. Yes there are some things you can't do with the land that is occupied by a wind farm -- like build office buildings -- but you can do a lot of other things -- like farming or ranching.
This kind of bullet-point engineering is counterproductive, especially for the nuclear advocate because nuclear plants have a lot of bullet points against them. But on the actual merits, i.e. considering what each bullet means, nuclear looks quite good.
But not good enough to develop to the exclusion of wind, because wind is good and we can and should build more (and are building more). That's okay, because the real reason why wind isn't good enough to develop to the exclusion of nuclear is that it's simply not going to be able to take care of base load.
We need to be building nuclear plants and wind, and trying to play the two against each other is just a bad idea. Fortunately, between the extant development of wind and this new deal to build nuclear reactors, it looks like we might actually be headed down a sensible path.
I'm shocked, honestly.
Re:some facts about nuclear energy. (Score:1, Insightful)
Several hundred hours, or internet research. Good for you. I have a PhD in energy conversion and I've spent 9 years researching this full-time. You're clearly a partisan (or a terrible researcher) based on the sources you wish to cite. Why don't you look up the quarterly reports of some of those most successful PV companies and look at the actual sale prices (without direct subsidy) of their products. Compare them with your EIA/DOE/IEIA figures. Guess what? Businesses are ahead of the curve, by about 2.1x. Similarly, I'm saddened at your mainstream short-sighted view that think technology should only be adopted when it can compete economically with 200 years and 60 trillion dollars of infrastructure. We did not foster the industrial revolution by waiting until companies could make the economic case themselves.
So, pick any presently profitable solar company ( I know 20+) and compare their sales figures with your sources. You will find yourself to be approximately 3-5 years out of date.
Compare the sales figures with cost projections and you will find that we are approximately 2.1 times ahead of the cost curve for PV, with significantly economies of scale developing late 2007. It is getting cheaper faster than we expected. What does this suggest? Well to someone who has been following this trend since 1999, it seems to me that we are on track for cost competitive PV jin about 80% of global markets by 2013-2015. I think if you look through the peer reviewed literature (instead of dodgy internet sources) you will find most estimates of 2014-2018. You will also note that they papers published in 2008,2009 have been revising this down very quickly. EIA may be a reputable organization, but they are routinely 18 months behind on publishing their own results, let alone external findings... Companies have conquered the curve by tolerating lower margins, but mainly due to significantly reduced (80% poly-si costs). No one predicted such a ridiculous fall and its giving us cheap solar wicked fast.
Consider your own bias as you compare semi conductor fabrication to heat engine fabrication. Have you ever worked in the semi-conductor industry? Have you been paying any attention to what has happened during the last 20 years? Have you watched as fab techniques have improved yield, complexity by 100,000 times, while decreasing cost by 10,000 times? What do you think will happen when these principles are applied on a large scale for energy? For that matter, have you ever worked in a forge or steel mill? Do you understand the fundamental differences between the various unit operations involved in these types of manufacturing? Technology will conquer labor every time, such is the progress of the last 200 years. You've bet against this trend. The US bets against this trend (ironically while outsourcing manufacturing labor).
You're perspective is ignorant and unfortunately commonplace. It is why the US will lose at least 25% of its GDP to foreign corporations.
Re:some facts about nuclear energy. (Score:3, Insightful)
You have been FUDed!
The 100,000 year figure is complete and total bunk created as a scare tactic only. What they don't tell you in those figures is that after 500 years, the dangerous high level waste will have decayed to the point that it's harmless. The remainder will be valuable nuclear fuel ready to be refined and put in a reactor. Preferably, we reprocess it like other countries and never dispose of the valuable resource in the first place.
Of course, before we mined it and used it as nuclear fuel, it was in naturally radioactive geological formations where any child could just wander in and get irradiated (very mildly) and that's how radioactive it will be for most of that 100,000 years you wring your hands over. The world is safer from radiation today because we are collecting all that dangerous natural uranium and putting it behind locked doors.
Apparently it DOES make economic sense since TFA indicates that new reactors are being installed right now by people who will have very carefully analyzed the expected return on investment and obviously likes what they saw.
Re:some facts about nuclear energy. (Score:1, Insightful)
"companies can't get loans from banks" because the government has shown a great willingness to delay and bankrupt any nuclear building enterprise. The government is the ONLY reason for high cost and delays in the nuclear industry. No matter what they say, they can't be trusted.
Oh, geez (Score:3, Insightful)
Look, I'm all about moving from fossil fuels to nuclear (and solar & wind too), but seriously... reducing the regulatory burden? Are you nuts? Much is made of the fact that nuclear plants are very safe - and they are. The reason they're very safe is because they are quite sensibly regulated to within an inch of their lives. Without these regulations, there'd be nothing stopping the power companies from building Chernobyl-style plants all over the place, and every financial incentive TO do so - because as you say, all that safety stuff is expensive.
Doing more nuclear does make sense. So does drinking a little less of the libertarian kool-aid.
Re:That's good (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't have to take it on trust.
I don't think you understand how this works.
They don't want to believe that nuclear waste isn't ZOMG SCARY.
Your explanation is long and complicated.
Ergo by claiming that complexity itself is a sign of duplicity, they can dismiss your explanation and continue believing what they want to believe.
Trust and math really have nothing to do with it. They never had any intent of trying to understand what you're saying or verifying your facts or anything else that might suggest a desire to be educated.