The Cost of Caring For Elderly Nuclear Plants Expected To Rise 249
mdsolar writes with this story about the rising costs of keeping Europe's nuclear power plants safe and operational. Europe's aging nuclear fleet will undergo more prolonged outages over the next few years, reducing the reliability of power supply and costing plant operators many millions of dollars. Nuclear power provides about a third of the European Union's electricity generation, but the 28-nation bloc's 131 reactors are well past their prime, with an average age of 30 years. And the energy companies, already feeling the pinch from falling energy prices and weak demand, want to extend the life of their plants into the 2020s, to put off the drain of funding new builds. Closing the older nuclear plants is not an option for many EU countries, which are facing an energy capacity crunch as other types of plant are being closed or mothballed because they can't cover their operating costs, or to meet stricter environmental regulation.
Re:Falling energy prices and weak demand? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The true cost of nuclear power (Score:4, Informative)
Nope. Horribly misinformed you are. Not worth discussing with you until you are educated on what currently available technology can accomplish, let alone near-future tech requiring only a handful of years of dedicated research.
Because I usually have to spell this out - I do NOT want you to change your opinion. I only want you informed so you stop spouting entirely incorrect information. There can be no discussion without agreement upon the basic science being discussed.
Start with just these two examples (out of many) and then let's talk:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_fast_reactor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candu
Re:The true cost of nuclear power (Score:0, Informative)
Sensationalism bullshit. Highly concentrated and deadly waste can be consumed by a molten salt reactor reducing the half life to ~300 years. Deep Geological Depositories such as Yucca Mountain could store the waste for that 300 years.
Re:The true cost of nuclear power (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Article tries to condemn nuclear, fails (Score:3, Informative)
While nuclear isn't perfect, the paranoia about potential nuclear accidents means it isn't commercially viable.
In fact, coal processing has killed more humans from radioactivity than nuclear power in the United States and also in the world.
Also, hydro electric dams destroy and threaten to destroy a greater ecological area than nuclear power plants do.
The problem with nuclear power is simple ignorance. Most people don't understand it, and basically just think: Nuclear? as in the bombs? I don't want that in my back yard.
Coal is a far worse fuel. But it's deaths are spread out over the entire world and over decades, rather than all together in one lump sum. Moreover, when we have a coal accident, it kills the wildlife, while when we have a nuclear accident, it creates a wildlife preserve that the animals love: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05... [nytimes.com]