Economy Puts US Nuclear Reactors Back In Doubt 392
eldavojohn writes "Remember those 30 new nuclear reactors the US was slated to build? Those plans have been halted. A few years ago, it seemed like a really good idea to build a bunch of nuclear reactors. The environmental impacts of other energy production methods were becoming well known and the economy was tanking. Well, natural gas is now much cheaper, and as a result it looks like building a single nuclear reactor in Maryland is such a risky venture that Constellation can't reach an agreement with the federal government for the loans it needs to build that reactor. The government wants Constellation to sign an agreement with a local energy provider to ensure they'll recoup at least some of the money on the loan, but Constellation doesn't like the terms. So, the first of those thirty reactors has officially stalled, with no resolution in sight. It looks like it'd take an economic meltdown to trigger nuclear reactor production in the US."
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Re:It looks like it'd take an economic meltdown to (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously though, this delay could be a good thing. They were going to build the wrong sort of reactors and perpetuate all the problems of the 1950s atom bomb production plants.
Thorium reactors, pebble beds..? Not on the shortlist. I'm guessing Westinghouse has plenty of lobbyists.
Not westinghouse (Score:2, Insightful)
I seriously doubt that westinghouse has anything to do with Thorium based reactors not being on the short list despite their many benefits http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium#Key_benefits [wikipedia.org]).
I would say it has far more to do with the lack of ability to produce weapons with their byproducts. The US would prefer to get a little something extra out of the deal.
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Right, because with our trajectory of decommissioning atomic weapons and huge existing amount of fuel to extract weapons material from, hand wavy strategic concerns are at the top of the list.
And never mind that a purpose built reactor is a far better source of plutonium for weapons than one designed primarily to provide grid power.
Re:Not westinghouse (Score:5, Interesting)
Sadly no commercial power reactor in the US has ever produced nuclear grade material.
The DOD after demanding we go uranium (over the cheaper and more plentiful thorium) to make weapons found it would be difficult to securely and covertly build bombs with commercial reactor output.
Instead they found it far more effective to build dedicated "bomb reactors". We build a dozen or so plutonium piles which dutifully converted uranium into plutonium under the optimum conditions to boost weapons grade yield. Those reactors ran for roughly 3 decades.. Today we have roughly 20,000 dismantled plutonium pits (from obsolete weapons) plus a couple metric tons of bulk plutonium. Once produced and refined the plutonium lasts very very very long time. The US could arm not just itself but the entire world w/ nuclear weapons just from our dismantled pits. There is no need for uranium reactors to produce weapons.
Sadly we are stuck w/ a different kind of legacy. Because of the DOD insistence (for the option they never used) ALL our expertise, knowledge, operateing experience, processes, and ancillary businesses are 100% focused on uranium. Going to thorium would be like starting all over. No company is going to take that kind of multi billion dollar risk without govt support.
If we want to make the switch to thorium it would require a $50 - $100B commitment from US govt to build the research reactors, the testing, the build out to commercial grade plants, then build a dozen or so plants so we get economies of scale plus the training, and the support businesses (fuel processing, etc).
You can't build a single nuclear reactor. The overhead is too large. You need a minimum critical mass of reactors to get economies of scale. There is no way to switch to thorium using free market principles (at least not at current energy prices). The risk vs reward simply isn't there.
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Why? Did they buy Oak Ridge [wikipedia.org] or something?
Re:Not westinghouse (Score:4, Informative)
I seriously doubt that westinghouse has anything to do with Thorium based reactors not being on the short list despite their many benefits http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium#Key_benefits [wikipedia.org]). I would say it has far more to do with the lack of ability to produce weapons with their byproducts. The US would prefer to get a little something extra out of the deal.
Looking at the Wikipedia page, most the claimed benefits for thorium are no different from those of an appropriately designed modern uranium reactor ("no possibility of a meltdown, it generates power inexpensively, it does not produce weapons-grade by-products .. will burn up ... nuclear weapon stockpiles"), the one signficant different claim ("will burn up existing high-level waste") is not true.
It can correctly be said that the high level waste from a thorium reactor would be about half that of a uranium reactor, but given the small volume of the current waste stream this gives small actual advantage.
Thorium reactors are a perfectly viable technology, but it is relatively undeveloped, and thus has much longer lead times, and much greater up front costs for no significant advantage.
The Achilles heel of nuclear power has always been the high capital costs, which means a longer period before profitable returns, and thus greater risk. It is simple hard-headed investment decision making that has kept nuclear power plants form being built. With thorium this problem is magnified.
If we can't get an established technology like uranium reactor built, thorium has no chance at all.
Re:It looks like it'd take an economic meltdown to (Score:4, Insightful)
Not going to happen in the US. Licensing costs are too expensive to justify anything but the 1600 MWe behemoths using standard fuel cycles with proven technology.
I don't know how many lobbyists Westinghouse has, but I do have an idea of how many engineers they have working to satisfy the NRC's licensing requirements for their own designs. Likewise with Mitsubishi and General Electric.
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I don't know how many lobbyists Westinghouse has
Typical corporate situation where a zillion corps own parts of a zillion other corps. However they seem to have blown about a couple million per year. So I'd guess a high single digit number of lobbyist equivalents, but probably dozens each working part time? Congressmen would see maybe fifty faces, but only get a handful of person-years of work out of the group (insert joke about sounding like where I work...)
https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/lookup.php?type=c&lname=Westinghouse&goButt2.x=0& [opensecrets.org]
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Moar finkin by smarts peepul plox, guvunmunt. kthxbai.
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Jimmy Carter banned them by executive order.
Regan overturned the order but no one has tried to build one since then regardless.
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You'd actually be able to solve the energy problem if you built nuclear reactors that output most of their energy as hydrocarbons [freepatentsonline.com].
You could get some better economies of scale with larger reactors than we build now but it's hard to transmit and distribute electricity from anything much larger then what we build now.
Imagine that instead of building 1-2 GW reactors you built a 25-30 GW reactor that produce 1-2 GW of electricity for the grid and about 20,000 gallons of gasoline every hour.
LFTR would be an excel
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30 GW! /Doc Brown
That is 10 times the thermal power of the largest reactors in operation today. Quite an engineering challenge!
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Not really - if you are using the LFTR design it would be much easier due to the unpressurized design. Adding thermal capacity is basically just a matter of using bigger piping.
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The efficiency of this one is less than the efficiency of producing biofuel which is staggeringly low in the first place. Separating CO2 from the air requires a staggering amount of energy as you have to liquefy air first. We are looking at under 5% efficiency for the entire process end-to-end here if not even less - around 1%.
No thanks.
I'd rather invest into finding ways to transport, store and use electricity and/or "simple" hydrogen more efficiently.
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Where you pulling those numbers from?
In the application Grumman claimed efficiency between 25 and 37 percent without even using high-temperature electrolysis.
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What laws of thermodynamics are being violated?
Extracting carbon dioxide from air required a negligible amount of energy compared to electrolysis and that process is known to be anywhere from 25% to 70% efficient.
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Cost Is Always A Factor (Score:3, Insightful)
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Sovereign governments get to emit credit. If they cannot, in these days, what you have is a financier dictatorship. The usual phrase is a bankers dictatorship.
You are right on the approval process. You want to build a nuke,then you take out a loan. If it takes ten years to start getting revenue, then you are screwed. However, approval,and forced design changes, are a politiical thing, not a property of nukes. Indeed, other countries have been able to build quickly. And now we ar getting barge-based fa
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I think not:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba_4S [wikipedia.org]
Re:Cost Is Always A Factor (Score:5, Interesting)
Oil spills are visible to the naked eye and are of course not good either but the time that they are really causing any dangers is short compared to nuclear spills.
Seriously? An ex-roommate of mine became a geologist and researched the effects of arsenic leaching out of coal mine tailings. So... lets both agree a reactor fuel rod is harmless after X million years. Are you seriously trying to tell me that the arsenic in the mine tailings magically disappears in a similar interval of time?
Oil spills are a VERY special case because what came from living things can easily be eaten and broken down by living things. Arsenic and other heavy metals from coal mining don't disappear the same way.
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Re:Cost Is Always A Factor (Score:5, Insightful)
The subject is coal, because coal is the only usable, reasonably constant and reliable expandable baseload source of power other than nuclear. Natgas is too expensive to consider, hydro is unexpandable (tapped out).
Just a distractor to the real argument... Nuke waste is "bad for a long time". So freaking what. Every other industrial era waste is also bad, and its bad FOREVER not just a couple half lives. I'd feel much better about dumping nukewaste that we know will be harmless in a couple years, than dumping, say, heavy metals that we know will never, ever be harmless.
Basically nuke is coal except the waste is easily contained, concentrated, and becomes harmless in a long time.
Or, Coal is nuke except the waste is inherently uncontainable, spread all over the place (you're breathing it now) and its harmful forever.
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Either way we need to develop a technology for injecting waste into subduction zones. This is the Earth's ultimate recycling system. The mantle is full of radioactives anyway, so it's a perfect place to dispose of radioactive waste. In a jillion years when it comes out of a volcano someplace it will have been processed.
Or, Coal is nuke except the waste is inherently uncontainable, spread all over the place (you're breathing it now) and its harmful forever.
Indeed, more fissionable nuclear material is released into the atmosphere from the burning of coal than is actually used up in nuclear reactors... and the fissionable materials are a minuscul
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So stop building the stone-age reactors than we've been building since the 50s and step it up to ultra-modern mid-1960s technology [youtube.com] that produces 97% less waste.
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Still - you have a lot of waste when producing the fuel, don't forget that. The large amount of waste that nobody speaks of is created during the mining and enrichment processes. It may be low active but toxic anyway.
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Not true for LFTR. There is no fuel production - you just dump pure thorium powder directly into the reactor.
Thorium is a waste product produced my other forms of mining so there's no extra waste generated to use it. It just gets thrown away otherwise.
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Nuclear power doesn't HAVE to produce anywhere near as much toxic crap as it currently does. If you overcome the cold war era BS about "nuclear proliferation" and allow spent-fuel reprocessing and use the right reactor designs (including breeder reactors) the total amount of waste left after you have extracted all the usefully-extractable energy from the nuclear fuel is significantly smaller and remains radioactive for less time.
If you use fuels like Thorium that dont require pre-enrichment, you can get eve
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The ultimate "Hold my beer and watch this" moment.
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"Chernobyl happened because they turned all the safety systems off and ran the reactor in ways it wasnt designed to. And then acted all surprised when it blew up. Also, the reactor design was flawed from day one (because it had a positive void coefficient)"
Not just that, but in addition the reactor had no containment building and the core was full of flammable graphite.
There are at least 3-4 reactor design differences and 3-4 procedural differences between even "dinosaur" domestic PWR/BWR designs and the Ch
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Chernobyl is the worst possible example to illustrate the risk of Western style nuclear reactors.
Chernobyl is positive void coefficient reactor. Simply put as it gets hotter, the water turns to steam and that INCREASES the rate of fission (which leads to more heat -> more steam -> more fission).
Everyone knew Chernobyl was unsafe even the Soviets. They didn't build a containment dome because it costs money. The same country was intentionally starving its own people by the millions (the "famine" in U
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And it was also triggered by a human error.
Stupidity will always take care of any kind of existing or non-existing security measures.
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Yes, we are trying to embrace technological advancements, but they still haven't figured out cold fusion.
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The best thing about coal is that the ashes contain enough thorium to produce 12 times as much nuclear energy as you got from burning it.
Isn't it awesome that we get all the environmental benefits of burning coal and throw away 92% of the available energy in the process?
Sustainable energy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Umm...
Wasn't sustainable energy supposed to be the really expensive one? Wasn't nuclear supposed to save us while the real sustainable energy is being developed?
It's funny how the costs of nuclear energy are structurally underestimated, while sustainable energy (wind/solar) continuously has to fight the image of being expensive.
It says enough that all 28 business plans for nuclear reactors are halted, partially because a regulatory system for greenhouse gases (the "cap and trade" system) was not put into effect.
So... public perception in summary:
- sustainable energy: requires too much subsidies, too expensive
- nuclear energy: financially more interesting, needs no subsidies
Reality:
- sustainable energy: growing market, although expensive
- nuclear energy: market stagnation, too expensive
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All you have to do is look at who supports each respective technology more (i.e. Republicans or Democrats), and you'll have your answer as to why they each have the public perception that they do.
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A major cost of nuclear reactors is the bickering of the NIMBYs. Construction can take fifteen years (ten for bickering, five for construction). An investor could be investing in something else which makes money during that time so to convince him to invest in your plant you have to garantee massive returns in the future.
Wikipedia has a page on the economics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_new_nuclear_power_plants [wikipedia.org]
If it wasn't for those kids and their dog ... (Score:2)
IMHO your theory has no worth apart from providing a cardboard cutout figure to blame. If those hippies were really so powerful as you pretend the troops would never have been sent to Iraq because there has never been an anti-nuclear protest anywhere near as big as the anti-war ones.
Government reg
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Part of the reason nuclear plants are so expensive is that any time the word "nuclear" is mentioned, a bunch of people go "ZOMG NUCLEAR!!! WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE LIKE THREE CHERNOBYL ISLAND!!1!!ONE!" And then they demand study after study after study after study after study, supposedly to make sure the native grasshopper population isn't inconvenienced or trying to prove that the reactor won't be damaged if a rock the size of Bobby Dodd stadium falls on it, but really just intended to ramp the legal costs up
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And since the majority of these people are probably anti-gun nuts, they would just be gatherers.
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Reality:
- sustainable energy: growing market, although expensive
- nuclear energy: market stagnation, too expensive
First of all the article is about competition with natural gas, the cheapest form of electricity generation currently available. The reason nuclear has issues compeeting is the same that renewables don't cut it, the fossil fuels are getting a free pass emitting pollutants and greenhosue gases which would be very expensive to sequester and dealt with properly.
Secondly when it comes to replacing fossil fuels it's not a question of nuclear OR renewables, we will need both. Even MITs somewhat optimistic forecas
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Even MITs somewhat optimistic forecast of nuclear growth will not displace the fossil fuels within several decades, and the situation is similar for energy conservation and the renewables. It is however quite possible to get rid of teh fossil fuels if you are willing to use ALL of these techniques in combination.
Yes, because it's always been much more efficient to build dozens of different products which all do essentially the same job, instead of coming up with one good design and then popping it out like an assembly-line.
Oh wait ...
Nuclear is burdened with regulations and lawsuits (Score:4, Interesting)
because every leaf you turn over will provide a new group to challenge the building of a nuclear plant. Wind is not a competitor to Nuclear, it cannot fulfill the same role. Nuclear is base load, Wind can do peak. Wind is starting to feel the regulation and lawsuit issues Nuclear has, not to the same extent. It will, there are enough loons to oppose anything.
Look up how many "studies" are needed to put up a new reactor, even on a site with them, then compare it to the willingness to look to look the other way when putting up any power generation associated with "green". Then go read the stories where people can't stand the noise of wind farms and ask yourself, how long before that study increases costs to the point people think twice, three times, or more. Then to top it off, you can have your windfarms, provided only the poor are afflicted with them, and pretty soon no coast will be safe because of sight pollution concerns.
Bypass them (Score:2)
Some rich bored guy should build a full up super-modern reactor (thorium, pebble bed, fast breeder, I have no clue), and put it near a city, where ever they feel like. Don't do any studies, don't ask anyone if its ok. Just put it there. The catch being that they don't put any fuel in it, and never have any intent of doing so. Its not really a nuclear reactor, so I don't see how it can violate any regulations. And it will just sit there with a website detailing its budget, schedule, and design as a less
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it will just sit there with a website detailing its budget, schedule, and design as a lesson to us all.
Meanwhile I watch with interest that China is building LOTS of old fashioned reactors: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China [wikipedia.org]
"The country is expected to build around 22 reactors in the five years ending 2010 and projected to build 132 units after and has the most aggressive nuclear power expansion program in the world."
I won't be surprised if they get rather experienced at building nuclear reactors, and build them for cheaper and cheaper. Hopefully without decreasing safety too much ;).
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The perception of the two that I have seen is this:
wind/solar power: saf
Nuclear would do fine too ... (Score:2)
Nuclear would do fine too if it go an utterly unsustainable "renewable energy" credit of 1.25 cent per kWh wholesale.
That is roughly 25% of wholesale power price. Many wind farms sell power in middle of a night at a loss (litterally pay people to take power) because if they don't they lose the 1.25 cent per kWh credit.
Let me know when wind/solar can produce 100 GW of power without a 25% subsidy.
Reality:
- sustainable energy: growing market only with an unsustainable 25% wholesale power subsidy.
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Price-Anderson to date has cost US taxpayers $0.00.
The US has never had a containment structure breech. In fact it has never had any reactor pressure vessel burst thus that is 2 barriers which would both have to be defeated to have a release like Chernobyl.
There are numerous factors that make an accident on the scope and scale of Chernobyl impossible in the US. This isn't to say some future US reactor couldn't have a core event but it would be more limited in scope.
Western reactors are all negative void c
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The market has already worked all this out. If sustainable energy were economically viable there'd be no room for nuclear power. The problems here are all regulatory. Nuclear energy would also be far less expensive if hippies got out of the way of things like Yukka Mountain.
old designs? (Score:2, Interesting)
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I doubt it. Any project can be made arbitrarily expensive by political maneuvering, and selling a township or even a state on "Hey, we've got a brand new type of nuclear fission reactor we'd like to try out in your area" suffers from serious NIMBY effects, and thus politicians will try to be seen opposing it.
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Yes of course, unproven reactor designs will certainly be cheaper!
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Mexican wave reactors would be way better.
Costs or Fees? (Score:2, Insightful)
Well? (Score:2)
Well, natural gas is now much cheaper, and as a result it looks like building a single nuclear reactor in Maryland is such a risky venture
Natural gas is only cheaper because we are using less of it. As soon as the economy rebounds the price will increase. This is the short sighted view that has gotten us into this mess over the last 30 years.
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Re:This is what the bailout should have gone to (Score:4, Funny)
But that'd be socialism, and that's bad! Glen Beck told me!
Re:This is what the bailout should have gone to (Score:5, Insightful)
And that's really the problem with central planning.
It's not that it's impossible for government to do the right thing - it's that when you give that much money and power to a bunch of politicians they make decisions based on politics rather than objective technical criteria.
Everyone thinks they could do a job of it if only they had absolute power but in reality the process you need to go through to get that kind of power forces you to become a politician.
I suggest a new rule for the instant mod-up to +5 (Score:2)
Only about 10% of the bailout money actually went to building things America needs rather than maintaining the illusion of prosperity in a number of states.
And your source for this stat is to be found --- where?
Imagine if the federal government had spent all $700B on infrastructure development
It takes time.
Since about 1900, the Black Canyon and nearby Boulder Canyon had been investigated for their potential to support a dam that would control floods, provide irrigation water and produce hydroelectric powe
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False. The economic collapse without that money in a much bigger way. Think 25% unemployment followed but another 10%+ the following year as house are lost in the millions.
Also, we got most of that money back.
Yes, thats sign the remaining loans over to a private company, what could go wrong.
First Plant? (Score:2)
I wasn't aware that the Calvert Cliffs plant was ever scheduled to be the first new design plant to be built in the US. At one time that label was applied to the South Texas Project, and I believe that the two new reactors at Vogtle are now in the lead. The Vogtle reactors use the Westinghouse AP1000 design, and the latest revision to that design is nearing presentation to the NRC for certification. (An earlier revision has already been certified.) The Calvert Cliffs reactor was an Areva EPR, which is s
Natural gas much cheaper - but for how much longer (Score:3, Interesting)
In the aftermath of gas drilling micro-disasters (the nature of gas drilling results in localized environmental damage, but when it happens it is a disaster for those nearby), I'm guessing increasing regulation is going to increase the costs of gas drilling.
There's a moratorium on shale gas drilling (specifically on well stimulation by hydrofracturing, but no one is going to drill a well they can't frack) in New York State after the rampant water contamination incidents all over Pennsylvania. For example, the groundwater in Dimock, PA became undrinkable within a year or so of the commencement of drilling. People can actually light their tap water on fire now.
Gas is not a long-term option, and in fact, it looks like the way it is being drilled now is going to have severe long-term environmental consequences (it already has in many drilling areas). Nuclear is a long-term investment.
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The Journal of the American Water Works Association had a significant article this month dealing with the effects of fracking on watersheds. Those of you who think natural gas is clean have no concept of what drillers use to get the natural gas from shale in places such as New York state.
In fact, the regulations themselves are not aligned to balance these considerations in any way. Drilling rights are completely disconnected from watershed concerns.
Something needs to happen here... Over the shorter term, w
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Such as?
Economic meltdown? (Score:2)
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Wind farms that only produce, on average, 10% of their rated capacity and are only viable with enormous subsidies would better fit that description.
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Translation: State-of-the-art wind power looks to be cheaper than nuclear power (after a lot of handwaving about subsidies) so long as you don't consider any nuclear technology invented after 1955.
The economy isn't going to slump forever (Score:2)
Eventually (one year? five years?) the world economy will pick back up, and energy supplies will tighten back up again. When that happens, having spare base load electric generation capacity will be very valuable.
I live near Washington DC, and I'm pissed that the local utilities can't see this coming. I've grown used to having the lights come on when I flip a switch, dammit.
How quickly we forget (Score:3, Insightful)
The whole point of LEADERSHIP is not to invest in alternative energy when other energy sources are prohibitively expensive (how quickly we forget $150/bbl oil), but to shape the future so that when energy costs increase again the infrastructure is already in place.
I am disappointed that the US government believes that spending trillions of dollars to create inefficient, artificial jobs is more worthwhile than investing in the future of the country in terms of solid infrastructure. Those nuclear plants will not be cheaper to design and build in 20 years.
In the 1930's FDR went about building the interstate system, completing the Hoover Dam (which provided energy to California, Arizona and Nevada), the Tennessee Valley Authority which provided power to the South-East. This cheap power, as well as the roadways which permitted goods to be moved across the country cheaply, heralded new economic growth.
Today's government instead would have scrapped these types of projects in favor of repainting federal buildings in Washington, hiring analysts to make sure that homes didn't get foreclosed, while at the same time forking over more money to the banks.
While nuclear power may be expensive, peak oil is coming and there's no way to stop it. China continues to grow, and India will soon start demanding its share as well. There are not enough straws in the oil milk-shake, and putting more straws in only means that the shake will be finished a lot faster. When oil prices begin to rise again it will only be a matter of a few short months before we hit $150/bbl. In the meantime other "alternative energy" types (wind/solar) continue to be far, far less efficient than nuclear power.
But hey, we were warned.
Aren't fusion plants around the corner? (Score:2)
I'm not being facetious, I've watched a few documentaries where the scientists guessed we'd have viable fusion technology in 10 years or so. I'm not talking in cars, I'm talking power plant scale.
Wait, what? (Score:2, Funny)
Premise: Economy Puts US Nuclear Reactors Back In Doubt
Conclusion: It looks like it'd take an economic meltdown to trigger nuclear reactor production in the US
imminent meltdown? (Score:3, Insightful)
It looks like it'd take an economic meltdown to trigger nuclear reactor production in the US.
From where I sit (somewhere *outside the US of A*) that does not seem entirely unlikely in the reasonably forseeable future.
Seriously folks - how long, hard, and deeply to you need to fuxor your economy before *even the retarded aussie dollar* is starting to look good? (clue: you've done enough, you can stop now)
Or are you claiming that any economy that outdoes Zimbabwe is "in good shape".
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It's a long-term loan. The interest rate of a bank over long terms is crippling. Governments can do special low-interest rates if they want to.
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Everyone else manages to take a loan and roll it over. Sure there's a risk interest rates go up, but if you think that's the case then those bank rates aren't "crippling" they are just factoring that in.
If you need a government guarantee on your loan in order to afford it then whatever you are doing isn't viable. Whether it's building a nuclear reactor, buying a house, or going to college.
Re:Loan from government? (Score:4, Insightful)
Everyone else manages to take a loan and roll it over.
Not reactor operators. Their income is controlled 100% by the govt. Not remotely a free market. Probably appropriate for that kind of technology.
If you need a government guarantee on your loan in order to afford it then whatever you are doing isn't viable. Whether it's building a nuclear reactor, buying a house, or going to college.
Ah but only a nuke has its revenue controlled 100% by the govt, both by regulation, enviroloonie protest suits, and monopoly public utilities commission defining what they charge.
A bit unfair to make the bank liable for the NRC's and PUC's decisions.
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The article says that the ones that do in fact just sell to a monopoly public utility are going ahead, since they have guaranteed revenue and hence didn't even bother getting a guarantee on their loan. Which would appear to be the opposite of your statement.
And yes there's political risk, that's not a reason for a governmetn guarantee though, that's a reason to jack the rates up and not build the thing.
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While it is cheaper for the consumer in the long run to run nuclear, there is a huge up front cost associated. Most banks will not accept the risks without an expensive reward. Governments can finance these typ
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Pardon me in advance for daring to question the the prevailing hipster wisdom that wind and solar are going to save the world. But why should my tax dollars be going to put solar panels on YOUR roof (or wind turbines in your yard, for that matter), when you're almost certainly going to use 100% of the power generated and reap all the economic benefits for yourself? Are you going to pay back the difference it makes in your electric bill to the government until that loan is repaid? Nope.
If solar and wind are
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Small local generators make little sense, since we can simply supply the power generated in specialist facilities over the power grid. Replacing or upgrading local generators and keeping them running efficiently would be a very costly operation. By contrast, upgrading or even replacing a few large facilities and supplying power to the s
Not necessarily true (Score:2)
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Especially if you assume constant or dropping energy prices. Unlikely.
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They have had that in Victoria, Australia for about a year now [vic.gov.au]. I haven't checked the other states.
In Victoria, the scheme is useless. While the power companies must offer a standard feed-in tariff for excess power, they are entitled to have different packages or terms and conditions than their usual accounts. In practice, that means that they charge more for the power consumed to offset what they pay back to the household. You don't go solar to save money in this country.
You can see why there is a trend to
Re:Funny in summary (Score:4, Interesting)
What a completely bullshit, anti-nuke, trollish article.
So nuclear is in doubt because someone is asking for loans and subsidy the size of a small countries GDP, and with the banks ask for a guarantee, they baulk. This is really a story of a company demanding money and desire to run a sure thing into the ground. With these types of dollars, its hardly the least bit unreasonable to demand some protection of the loan. This seems to hint that they intended to do something insanely poor with the management of the project or the reactor.
Re:Funny in summary (Score:5, Insightful)
The problems with your theory:
#1 - Nuclear reactor production is put under more government scrutiny than any other energy production method. Not that it isn't justifiable in large degree, just that it increases the costs of running the reactor.
#2 - The US has no fuel recycling program. If we DID have a responsible fuel recycling program, we wouldn't have to worry about the whiny idiots going "but it produces nuclear waste", nor would we be having to dig up ore for fuel - reprocessed, recycled fuel can be extracted from "spent waste" over and over again, which would take care of 95% or greater of our current "nuclear waste" in storage.
#3 - Energy still isn't deregulated on the east coast. The government controls the pricing, therefore it makes sense that the people sticking their money out to build the reactor would want to have some guarantee in writing that the government isn't going to try to force them to operate at a loss.
The larger problem is that the idiot fringe currently in control of the Democrat Party - as evidenced by the current administration's reaction to basically everything energy-related - are a bunch of total morons who are so kooky that even the co-founder of Greenpeace [wired.com] recognized them for the wack-jobs that they are.
Of course, there are a number of other things that "could" be done on the energy conservation front. The US could outlaw residential air-conditioning/heating systems that don't incorporate a closed-loop ground heat pump, and require any legacy systems to be switched over at time of replacement. They could pass a national law protecting the right of all homeowners to implement "greywater" systems, rain cisterns, and solar collectors. They could focus in on outdated, inefficient "freeway flyer" bus routes and replace them all with electric train systems.
But then again, we live in a time when municipalities claim they are working for "safety" and put up red-light cameras and then shorten the yellow timing to get more tickets, despite every study out there showing that if you want to reduce accidents, lengthening the yellow time does much, much more than putting up a fucking camera. So I doubt the people would have any trust in their government that any of the other things I suggested earlier were done with the right motives...
Re:Funny in summary (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But then again, we live in a time when municipalities claim they are working for "safety" and put up red-light cameras and then shorten the yellow timing to get more tickets
Sometimes I wonder how the people making these decisions can sleep at night. How can someone justify reducing the yellow light time, thereby increasing the likelyhood of an accident, all in the name of more revenue? It boggles the mind.
Re:Funny in summary (Score:4, Insightful)
Just because some politicians and monopolists spin something as "deregulation" doesn't mean that they actually did any such thing.
True deregulation means that there is no artificial barriers to entry. Without that "deregulation" is simply a bailout of a protected monopoly.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Are you aware that Oak Ridge built and operated [wikipedia.org] one successfully for 5 years nearly half a century ago?
Does the fact that the project was a complete success not factor into your definition of "almost completely unproven"?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
One very small scale device that wasn't connected to any generation equipment and ran for only 5 years? That counts as "almost completely unproven" to me.
If that's your only criterion, the sodium fast breeder and RBMK reactors would have been declared complete successes decades ago.
Re: (Score:2)
With peak oil and no nuclear power to compensate, we might just see one. Algae as a biofuel might work, and solar might work if they improve the tech enough. Most of the other oft-touted other alternatives are a load of crap.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Most of the other oft-touted other alternatives are a load of crap.
Luckily dung-burning stoves are well-proven sources of energy
Re: (Score:2)
And this is why you shouldn't post while on Meth.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't forget all the negative subsidies that greatly add to the cost of getting one of these plants built.
Because nuclear reactor technology stopped advancing in 1950 and there's no reason we'd want to use anything more advanced that's been invented since then.