Republicans push nuclear energy to lower costs

[unblock]

Source: Yahoo / AP

WASHINGTON – The U.S. should build 100 more nuclear plants rather than spend "billions in subsidies" for renewable energy if it is truly committed to lowering electric bills and having clean air, the Republicans say.

In the party's weekly radio and Internet address, Sen. Lamar Alexander said the United States should follow the example of France, which promoted nuclear power decades ago. Today, nuclear plants provide 80 percent of France's electricity, and the country has one of the lowest electric rates and carbon emissions in Europe, he said.

In contrast, renewable electricity provides roughly 1.5 percent of the nation's electricity, according to Republicans. Double it or triple it, and "we still don't have much," the Tennessee Republican said.

"There is a potentially a dangerous energy gap between the renewable electricity we want and the reliable electricity we must have," he said.

...

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_republicans_energy

---

so now all the sudden republicans think the french are to be emulated....


personally i'm a fan of nuclear energy. not that it's ideal but other forms of energy are flawed and dangerous as well. nor do i think it should be done at the exclusion of other alternatives.

but one still has to marvel at the endless hypocrisy of the republicans, the french are evil and stupid socialists, but seeing as they're in agreement with the republicans on this one issue, the republicans tout them as if they never had a bad word to say about them.

[Joanne98]

1. Nuclear energy doesn't lower costs. It's extremely expensive.

Of course the AP just quotes them like they're telling the truth or something.

[struggle4progress]

29. New nuclear plant benefits oversold, speaker claims

by Charles Slat , last modified April 24. 2009 11:01AM

... "The tax benefits, in particular, are uncontestable and the local job benefits as well," said Peter Bradford, who served on the NRC from 1977-82. But he said the resulting rise in electric costs could cause firms to flee the state and discourage others from settling in Michigan, ultimately eroding the state's overall tax base.

"No state ever created a net increase in jobs by raising electric rates to commercial and industrial customers more than necessary to maintain supply," he said. "A new nuclear plant in Michigan also will do nothing to further the success of hybrid automobiles."

Mr. Bradford also said no more than a few new nuclear plants now being considered probably would reach the construction stage due to limited federal loan guarantees available to underwrite them and continued reluctance from investors to finance them ...

A former Nuclear Regulatory commissioner who served during the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island, Mr. Bradford now is vice chairman of the Cambridge, Mass.-based Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit group that raises concerns about nuclear power and other global issues. Mr. Bradford advises and teaches on utility regulation, restructuring, nuclear power and energy policy in the United States and abroad ... http://www.monroenews.com/article/20090424/NEWS01/704249980/-1/NEWS

[caseymoz]

35. It does require subidies. It always has.

But that might be more a problem with reactor design, which based on military reactors that had infinite subsidies. Really, they have to start this generation with a completely different design from the bottom up. Such designs are out there, but of course there are no prototypes.

[rfranklin]

2. What are we going to do with 100 times more radioactive waste?

Bury it in the back yard?

[sythe200]

3. Well...

we could try doing what the French do and reprocess the spent nuclear waste to get the uranium and other useful isotopes out of the waste. The French have very little waste left over after 30 years of heavy dependence on nuclear energy and actually export uranium and other materials necessary for the fission process. The only reason that we don't do it too is because Carter issued an executive order banning fuel reprocessing and every other president since then let it stand. Do a google search for nuclear reprocessing and get a few facts about reprocessing fuel. We could be producing copious amounts of energy that is extremely clean as far as emissions are concerned and would produce minimal waste. An added benefit would be that bomb grade plutonium could be reprocessed for peaceful purposes. We really should be jumping on this idea. And for those of us who hate that Lamar Alexander said it, remember that even a broken clock is right twice a day.

[bushmeister0]

8. I'm not quite sure I buy all this pie in the sky. Sounds a little too good to be true.

If any of this is true, though, I say OK, but let the nuclear industry build their plants without any subsidies from the tax payer. It seems to me the only way anyone would bother to build a nuclear power plant is if they have the assurance that the tax payer will not only foot the bill, but will pay them back if anything goes wrong.

[chocolate ink]

15. nuclear power chain

France still ships a lot of its nuclear waste to Russia-problem solved..well sorta right.

Nuclear power is massively expensive and not efficient. First you have uranium mining which can poison and desolate the land mined and the people who mine uranium are susceptable to lung cancer and various other health problems. Then uranium has to be shipped to conversion plants and processed..all of course radioactive and more health problems. Power plants themselves are so expensive to build as to be ridiculous due in part to having to be built to such enormous safety standard and containment. It cost a billion dollars and 14 years to clean up in Three Mile Island Plant.

Given the problem of global warming/heat waves this makes nuclear plants doubly vunerable as they have to be shut down during heat waves..not exactly efficient as that is when you would need them the most. Plus given also water shortages these plants use massive massive amount of water daily.

I'm not going to even mention health hazards of these plants which are also numerous.

[Grinchie]

17. Nuclear is nothing more that the Oil Industry on steroids.

It is a dirty, centralized, expensive, dangerous and outdated technology.

People that promote nuclear energy don't have a clue about what happens to the fuel rod as they decay, corrade, and burst through the fuel rod assembly and pollute the reactor cooling water. They have not clue about the costs to decommission a nuclear power plant. They have no clue, that all it is is a rehash of the Steam engine, only using a deadly, toxic, invisible and tasteless source of fuel. They have no clue that the fuel wears out, and creates more waste that what they put in.

Where is the research on Electromagnetic generators with no moving parts? Where is the research and work performed by Stan Meyer? Why is it that the only methods of splitting water are based on science that was developed centuries ago taught in our education systems?

How is it that we can use incredibly powerful nuclear colliders to create new elements, and still not have a basic understanding on how to manipulate matter?

The Nuclear industry is a big money sink. Centralized, Prone to Human Aerror, Dangerous, poorly thought out, and a means of keeping energy controlled by the powers that be.

It's a waste of time, and until there is full disclosure from the last 50 years from the Military and all the money they've spent on energy systems, as well as NASA full disclosure, then Nuclear should be a non issue.

[bananas]

21. That's a lot of misinformation

The ban on reprocessing started with Ford as a response to India's nuclear weapon test.
Carter continued the ban for two reasons: 1) the proliferation risk; 2) reprocessing was more expensive than once-through.
The 2003 MIT report "The Future of Nuclear Energy" rejected reprocessing as being too expensive (as well as a proliferation risk), and in the 2007 National Academy of Sciences came to the same conclusion. Based on the 2007 NAS report, Congress defunded Bush's GNEP scam, and two weeks ago the DOE confirmed that GNEP is dead.
Obama's science advisor John Holdren participated in the 2003 MIT report.

[FreakinDJ]

24. What do you mean we don't do it

hhhmmmmm

Don't want to get myself in trouble setting off bells and whistels at the NSA here

[chascarrillo]

42. Why don't you get a few facts about where France is dumping its nuclear waste.

ENVIRONMENT: France's Nuclear Waste Heads to Russia
By Julio Godoy*

PARIS, Dec 17 (Tierramérica) - France sends thousands of tonnes of nuclear waste to Russia each year, but the details are shielded by a decree of "national security" in order to block debate on the issue, says the environmental watchdog group Greenpeace.

"This kind of traffic of nuclear waste between Western Europe and Russia has gone on for more than three decades already, and allows the big nuclear energy companies, like Electricité de France, to store their radioactive waste at extremely contaminated sites in Siberia," Greenpeace-France spokesman Grégory Gendre told Tierramérica.

On Dec. 1, some 20 activists from the environmental group tried unsuccessfully to block a 450-tonne shipment of depleted uranium from the port of Le Havre, 360 km northwest of Paris, on the Atlantic coast, to a radioactive material enrichment plant in Russia.

According to the study "La France nucléaire", published in 2002 by the World Information Service on Energy (WISE), each year the French nuclear station Eurodif, situated on the banks of the Rhone River, 700 km south of the French capital, produces 15,000 tonnes of depleted uranium.

Most of that waste is of no further use, and is simply stored at the nuclear plant. Today there are an estimated 200,000 tonnes of this nuclear material being warehoused there.

But 30 to 40 percent of Eurodif's depleted uranium - 4,500 to 6,000 tonnes annually - is sent to Russia, where it undergoes "enrichment" to turn it back into fuel for nuclear power plants. Just one-tenth of that uranium returns to France, and the rest remains in Russia, stored in inadequate conditions, say the environmental activists.

More: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=31466

[ProudDad]

57. I doubt it -- they're failing at reprocessing in France...

EDF operates France's 58 light water reactors which discharge 1200 tons of spent fuel on
average each year. Within this spent fuel there exists as much as 12 tons of plutonium. However,
EDF has no plans (and no capacity) to reuse all of this plutonium. In fact, EDF came late to a
commitment to reuse any of this plutonium.

http://www.citizen.org/documents/Burnie%20paper%20on%20French%20reprocessing.pdf

[bushmeister0]

4. Bury it in Lamar's backyard.

[FreakinDJ]

25. Fusion burns radioactive waste so completely there is no waste

Fusion, nuclear fission and solar energy (including biofuels) are the only energy sources capable of satisfying the Earth's need for power for the next century and beyond without the negative environmental impacts of fossil fuels. The simplest fusion fuels, the heavy isotopes of hydrogen (deuterium and tritium), are derived from water and the metal lithium, a relatively abundant resource. The fuels are virtually inexhaustible – one in every 6,500 atoms on Earth is a deuterium atom – and they are available worldwide. One gallon of seawater would provide the equivalent energy of 300 gallons of gasoline; fuel from 50 cups of water contains the energy equivalent of two tons of coal. A fusion power plant would produce no climate-changing gases, as well as considerably lower amounts and less environmentally harmful radioactive byproducts than current nuclear power plants. And there would be no danger of a runaway reaction or core meltdown in a fusion power plant.

https://lasers.llnl.gov/programs/ife/

The surrounding blanket can be a fissionable material (enriched Uranium or Plutonium) or a fertile material (capable of conversion to a fissionable material by neutron bombardment) such as depleted Uranium or spent nuclear fuel. This offers currently the only means of active disposal (versus storage) of spent nuclear fuel without reprocessing. Fission by-products produced by the operation of commercial Light Water nuclear Reactors LWRs are long lived and highly radioactive. However, they can be consumed using the excess neutrons in the fusion reaction along with the fissionable components in the blanket, essentially destroying them and producing a far safer waste product than the original with respect to nuclear proliferation: the waste would contain significantly reduced concentrations of long-lived, weapons-usable actinides per gigawatt-year of electric energy produced compared to the waste from a light water reactor. In addition, there would be about 20 times less waste per unit of electricity produced. This offers the potential to efficiently use the very large stockpiles of enriched fissile materials, depleted Uranium, and spent nuclear fuel (currently awaiting extremely long term storage in Yucca Mountain).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_Nuclear_Fusion

[caseymoz]

34. I believe the thinking is that there is a solution out there, we just have to find it.

Other forms of energy produce much more pollution. And none can be handled as easily as nuclear waste. You could "reprocess" it, that is, recycle it. The French do that as well.

[stopbush]

5. There's not enough nuclear fuel available to power 100 new plants.

Lack of fuel may limit U.S. nuclear power expansion
March 21, 2007

Limited supplies of fuel for nuclear power plants may thwart the renewed and growing interest in nuclear energy in the United States and other nations, says an MIT expert on the industry.

Over the past 20 years, safety concerns dampened all aspects of development of nuclear energy: No new reactors were ordered and there was investment neither in new uranium mines nor in building facilities to produce fuel for existing reactors. Instead, the industry lived off commercial and government inventories, which are now nearly gone. Worldwide, uranium production meets only about 65 percent of current reactor requirements.

That shortage of uranium and of processing facilities worldwide leaves a gap between the potential increase in demand for nuclear energy and the ability to supply fuel for it, said Thomas Neff, a research affiliate at MIT's Center for International Studies.

"Just as large numbers of new reactors are being planned, we are only starting to emerge from 20 years of underinvestment in the production capacity for the nuclear fuel to operate them. There has been a nuclear industry myopia; they didn't take a long-term view," Neff said. For example, only a few years ago uranium inventories were being sold at $10 per pound; the current price is $85 per pound.

Neff has been giving a series of talks at industry meetings and investment conferences around the world about the nature of the fuel supply problem and its implications for the so-called "nuclear renaissance," pointing out both the sharply rising cost of nuclear fuel and the lack of capacity to produce it.

Currently, much of the uranium used by the United States is coming from mines in such countries as Australia, Canada, Namibia and, most recently, Kazakhstan. Small amounts are mined in the western United States, but the United States is largely reliant on overseas supplies. The United States also relies on Russia for half its fuel, under a "swords to ploughshares" deal that Neff originated in 1991. This deal is converting about 20,000 Russian nuclear weapons to fuel for U.S. nuclear power plants, but it ends in 2013, leaving a substantial supply gap for the United States.

Further, China, India and even Russia have plans for massive deployments of nuclear power and are trying to lock up supplies from countries on which the United States has traditionally relied. As a result, the United States could be the "last one to buy, and it could pay the highest prices, if it can get uranium at all," Neff said. "The take-home message is that if we're going to increase use of nuclear power, we need massive new investments in capacity to mine uranium and facilities to process it."

Mined uranium comes in several forms, or isotopes. For starting a nuclear chain reaction in a reactor, the only important isotope is uranium-235, which accounts for just seven out of 1,000 atoms in the mined product. To fuel a nuclear reactor, the concentration of uranium-235 has to be increased to 40 to 50 out of 1,000 atoms. This is done by separating isotopes in an enrichment plant to achieve the higher concentration.

As Neff points out, reactor operators could increase the amount of fuel made from a given amount of natural uranium by buying more enrichment services to recover more uranium-235 atoms. Current enrichment capacity is enough to recover only about four out of seven uranium-235 atoms. Limited uranium supplies could be stretched if industry could recover five or six of these atoms, but there is not enough processing capacity worldwide to do so.

A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on April 4, 2007 (download PDF).
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/fuel-supply.html

Also, see here: http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/climatenukes.pdf

There isn't enough uranium available to power all these plants. Nuke-friendly estimates put the world supply of uranium at 6.5-million tons. If nuke was to account for 70% of our power production, that supply would be exhausted as early as 2016, ie SEVEN YEARS FROM NOW. If we use that supply to power ONLY EXISTING PLANTS, that supply will exhaust in 48-50 years.

[FreakinDJ]

26. Endless supply for Nuclear Fusion

Fusion, nuclear fission and solar energy (including biofuels) are the only energy sources capable of satisfying the Earth's need for power for the next century and beyond without the negative environmental impacts of fossil fuels. The simplest fusion fuels, the heavy isotopes of hydrogen (deuterium and tritium), are derived from water and the metal lithium, a relatively abundant resource. The fuels are virtually inexhaustible – one in every 6,500 atoms on Earth is a deuterium atom – and they are available worldwide. One gallon of seawater would provide the equivalent energy of 300 gallons of gasoline; fuel from 50 cups of water contains the energy equivalent of two tons of coal. A fusion power plant would produce no climate-changing gases, as well as considerably lower amounts and less environmentally harmful radioactive byproducts than current nuclear power plants. And there would be no danger of a runaway reaction or core meltdown in a fusion power plant.

https://lasers.llnl.gov/programs/ife /

[stopbush]

27. Let us all know when the first fusion reactor comes on line, would you?

That's gotta happen in, what, the next 20 years or so.

[FreakinDJ]

32. Positive Gain before 2012

Which means "IF" we placed this on a priority track, the same as Pres. Kennedy did with sending a man to the moon, we could commercial use Nuclear Fusion by 2020 - 2025

You want to rid the world of dangerous nuclear waste
You want to stop pouring millions of tons of pollution into the atmosphere
You want to solve America's energy dependence
you want to solve the Mid-East grip on the world's energy supply>

Do you want America to be the "Technology Leader" and economically sound for the next 50 - 100 years

Too much upside to the equation not to place this technology on the front burner

[caseymoz]

39. As I say below, I just think they just went down a blind alley.

They tried to use lasers for the compression-- that is now demonstrated to be ineffective. Lasers were gee-whiz cool at the time, very thrilling, so much so that when it failed, scientists spent incredibly amounts of money trying to solve the problems, but they never re-examined the basic approach. Did anybody ever ask, why lasers would work?

[FreakinDJ]

41. Gee Wiz - you must have a PhD becuase you know more then

the rest of the world's Scientist

Son of a Bitch who would have thunk it - and you are here on DU to show us fucked up Democrats the light - Damm We're lucky - Gawl Dern

That or you plain FULL of SHIT

Put up or SHUT the FUCK UP - show us stupid Dimocrats some links to back up your fucking BULL SHIT

[caseymoz]

46. Hold back your fucking temper.

[FreakinDJ]

47. Sorry - a little over-reacting to "Dis-Information"

Check this link if you want to know

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=194586&mesg_id=194586

[caseymoz]

50. That is what you call a goal.

Now I do see the plan for how to harness it.

It's a good goal, but you only have steps A & D, but you still have to get to B, not to mention C. But it's a worthy goal, but you know you won't forget the ideas, so don't get yourself high over them before you get B, nor keep yourself from noticing that face is up against the wall of a blind alley.

I wrong about something, though. Cold fusion experiments are far cheaper than the laser technology.

I don't mean to be such naysayer, but you not only have to think outside the box, you have to keep your thoughts from boxing you in.

[FreakinDJ]

51. I've worked around the physicist developing the laser optics

And yes there is a ton of stuff I’d like to discuss openly but obviously you have to sign a lot of papers to work there.

The trick as we say in harnessing pure fusion is harnessing the photons being emitted from the reaction. And we are a lot closer then the article is letting us know.

I listened to Dr Moses speak the other night and I know he is being very realistic in his statement if he made the LIFE Reactor a “National Priority” we could have plants on line in 10 -15 years.

In addition to the obvious benefits of clean carbon free energy and permanent nuclear waste disposal, I think it would send a clear message to oil producing countries "you better sell it while you still have a market left for it". Because I also believe as soon as the American Economy shows any signs of recovery they will raise the prices of crude preventing our recovery. In short – without this technology or at least the threat of developing this technology we stay in recession.

[caseymoz]

55. We are in such a bind with oil, that we don't have a chance without replacing it.

I mean, no matter what bullshit the oil companies feed us we don't have the reserves to even support half of our oil dependent agriculture. And essentially, that means that we are not near self-sufficient in food!

[FreakinDJ]

56. If Pres. Obama declared Nuclear Fusion a National Priority

the oil rich dictatorships in this world would think twice before using the strangle hold on oil they currently enjoy. Many of those same countries lack the foresight to prepare themselves for the eventuality of a world no longer dependent on oil output.

But yes, just the policy change would have a huge effect

And yes I don't think Obama's Green Tech policies go far enough in demanding the implementation of New Green Technologies

[FreakinDJ]

43. Read it and weep Einstien - NIF already proved ignition

Fusion energy has long been considered a promising, clean, nearly inexhaustible source of energy. Power production by fusion micro-explosions of inertial confinement fusion (ICF) targets has been a long-term research goal since the invention of the first laser in 1960. The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is poised to take the next important step in the journey by beginning experiments researching ICF ignition. Ignition on NIF will be the culmination of over 30 years of ICF research on high-powered laser systems such as the Nova laser at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and the OMEGA laser at the University of Rochester, as well as smaller systems around the world. NIF is a 192-beam Nd-glass laser facility at LLNL that is more than 90% complete. The first cluster of 48 beams is operational in the laser bay, the second cluster is now being commissioned, and the beam path to the target chamber is being installed. The Project will be completed in 2009, and ignition experiments will start in 2010. When completed, NIF will produce up to 1.8 MJ of 0.35-μm light in highly shaped pulses required for ignition. It will have beam stability and control to higher precision than any other laser fusion facility. Experiments using one of the beams of NIF have demonstrated that NIF can meet its beam performance goals. The National Ignition Campaign (NIC) has been established to manage the ignition effort on NIF. NIC has all of the research and development required to execute the ignition plan and to develop NIF into a fully operational facility. NIF will explore the ignition space, including direct drive, 2ω ignition, and fast ignition, to optimize target efficiency for developing fusion as an energy source. In addition to efficient target performance, fusion energy requires significant advances in high-repetition-rate lasers and fusion reactor technology. The Mercury laser at LLNL is a high-repetition-rate Nd-glass laser for fusion energy driver development. Mercury uses state-of-the-art technology such as ceramic laser slabs and light diode pumping for improved efficiency and thermal management. Progress in NIF, NIC, Mercury, and the path forward for fusion energy will be presented.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V2P-4S0R6GP-2&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=cf1614a148b1e53db6344dc851d0f597

[caseymoz]

48. Why should I weep when I read this?

Now, I would follow your link, but it requires me to pay. Sorry.

Why did you give that quote? It doesn't say anywhere, anywhere, that they've had a success. It does say, in the second sentence, that they have trying this approach since 1960! In no place in this passage including in the sentence you've inexplicably highlighted does it say, that they've done this particular experiment yet and had a success. All they are saying throughout is: "wow, we have big bad, totally awesome lasers here." Which is exactly what I said they've been thinking. Read it, where do they talk about the experiment they've done? Where do talk about the yield they've produced?

They accomplished ignition a long, long time ago. That isn't the problem. Plasma leakage, which vastly reduces yield, has been the problem. That's caused by turbulence, and for decades, they tried to make the "magnetic bottle" work. It leaked. Now, there are signs that they might have solved the turbulent problem, or at leased reduced it, here, here and most hopefully, here, but if this was the barrier, couldn't they have done this using smaller, less expensive lasers? I will add, though, that if they're this close to starting, they should go through the experiments.

Now, this has just been making the reaction work. They haven't started with the problem of how to harness the energy. With all those nifty lasers in there, where are they going to fit to fit the motor? Are they planning to boil water with it? I realize we're talking one step at a time, but the first step has taken fifty years with this approach.

They have made a huge number of discoveries trying to solve this problem, though. So the theoretical and engineering yield can't be denied. However, there are opportunity costs. We could probably make many discoveries with a different approach, and put the rest of the money into a huge collider, which, in fact, we've been beaten to by the Europeans while we mine for laser-fusion.

I don't think you read even the heading of my post. Do know what "I think" or "I just think" means? I'm not a closet Republican, a scientist, nor a genius. It's an opinion, and it's the best opinion on this subject that I have. Take the argument or leave it.

Oh, that link, about Cold Fusion? Here it is: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090323110450.htm

[ProudDad]

58. Ah the proverbial free lunch

Is that Cold, warm, hot or boiling Fusion???

Time for the tin hats, everybody...

[caseymoz]

37. Actually, they reportedly just had a huge breakthrough for cold fusion.

They detected neutrons: meaning a nuclear reaction, which is the first evidence that cold fusion is fusion:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090323110450.htm

It merits further examination, even if it had an inauspicious start.

Even so, the materials they used sound more expensive than the GNP of India: gold wire, palladium and deuterium, the last being the rarest isotope in the universe. This can be scaled down, I hope.

IMHO, they could make fusion work, but they went down a blind alley. Lasers were brand new and very cool things at the time, but no doubt now, they were all wrong for the purpose.

[caseymoz]

44. Most of the problem there, though, is in having a processing industry.

Since nuclear power has languished in the US for 30 years, of course the processing industry has languished as well. (Processing industry means government owned or not). If you need it, the processing industry could ramp up, just as it does for oil.

Also, once the power plants are up, you don't need to refuel them a lot. Once they are there, you get a high energy capacity for many years. Which is why there isn't much demand for uranium even in France.

And of course, if the markets are anticipating an upsurge in the demand for uranium, speculators will drive the price sky high, and this has probably happened here. It doesn't necessarily mean a shortage. However, if speculators have done that, might their lobbyists now push Repubs to promote nuclear power? Probably, we should follow the money, and if they accuse Al Gore of profiteering, it's only fair.

The shortage of uranium in the US does give me pause, but first we don't need that much uranium. Second, well, we could cannibalize it, and plutonium, from nuclear ships and nuclear missiles (I admit plutonium is terrible stuff, and even developing it should be made a crime against humanity, but since we have it, let's expend it in nuclear power plants. Better than waiting through its 480,000 years till its safe). Most of those subs are reaching the end of their effective life. We could clean out the remaining Uranium 235 and use that. We probably have available more reserves fissionable nuclear material than decades of output in the mines of the rest of the world. I wouldn't doubt that.

We need a domestic swords to plowshares program if you ask me.

[Enrique]

6. follow the example of France?

isn't this message going to confuse their base?

[unblock]

12. my point exactly

[caseymoz]

40. Their base is already confused, and that's the only reason Repubs still have a base.

That's beside the point, though. It is ironic how the Republicans now embrace the wisdom of the French. I guess we could call freedom fries french fries again, but I wish they had this respect for the French before we moved into Iraq.

[izquierdista]

7. "billions in subsidies"

And how much subsidy does a nuke plant require??? (Hint: LOTS)

It would require a lot less subsidy if the waste plant was solved before they built the plant, like siting it half a mile underground.

[stlsaxman]

9. We just rejected a sencond plant here in Missouri...

AmerenUE wanted the customer to pay for it to be built. We said "fuck off".

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/business/energy-environment/24nuclear.html

[Downwinder]

10. Cut down the warming by turning up the heat.

It's not going to work, we are already generating more BTUs than the planet can dissipate. We don't need more fires. We need less consumption and greater efficiency.

[pattmarty]

11. Yeah, all well and good, but you still are going to have to..........................

...........subsidize the nuclear industry as was done in 1957. Insurance companies WILL NOT insure against an accident and where do you put the "waste"? Nuclear is just too dangerous.

[sam sarrha]

13. always cheaper before the cost over runs..

[Iowa]

14. This is an area where I have almost no knowledge...

...so it helps to know that Republicans are pushing nuclear. Anything they favor, I can safely oppose, even without knowing a damn thing about it. And I can be assured of being right in the end 100% of the time.

[Grinchie]

16. Forget about Nuclear Waste, Where does one get the fuel?

What the Repugs don't seem to understand is that Uranium is not that abundant. It is estimated that there may be only a 100 years or so of supply if the consumption ramps up.

What get's my goat is that we hear nothing of HAARP, which has consumed Billions of dollars in research funds for the past 20 years, but for the most part, all we know is that it is based on Tesla Technology, and potentially can trigger huge releases of energy from the Ionosphere. Of course, it's a Military operation, which claims to be nothing more than research, but the ramification of manipulation the Ionosphere is raising alarms in the scientific community, because the total breadth of the project is highly compartmentalized.

It is not that far fetched to understand that when information is compartmentalized, problems that might occur may be overlooked and the scientists may initiate some damaging event.

The theory behind Tesla's work was that the Earth was a giant, spherical capacitor. The earth is bombarded with energy from the sun 24 hours a day, and the charge builds up in the ionosphere. The Atmosphere then acts as the dielectric or insulator that prevents this energy from being discharged all at once. As the energy builds up, eventually the dielectric (air) will breakdown, and release the energy in a bolt of lightning.

It is this function that regulates the Ionosphere, and releases excess energy into earth ground. Just imagine for one moment that this natural process were energized by man, to a point where the discharge is many times greater than the natural discharge, this could produce a devastating event, and there is some legend that the Tunguska event could have been a macro discharge. There are even stories on the web that try to link Tesla's experiment to tunguska, but that was a long, long time ago, and who knows. However, one has to look at the basic laws of electromagnetism and see that such an event most certainly occurs on a smaller scale, and anyone that has access to Radio Shack can see these phenomemena on a small, experimental scale. A small capacitor can store enough energy kill you.

When are we going to take our power back from the Military, who do not focus their questions on solving the problems of bettering humanity, and instead focus on making their weponry more efficient, at the expense of the citizens of the earth?

[chocolate ink]

18. uranium mining

Hey Grinchie..ha, what do republicans understand..not much it seems. Maybe it goes back to their seeming fear of any kind of book learning or reading of factual documents.

You're right about uranium being a non renewable source and I've read reports(somewhere, can't remember where right now)that uranium would be gone in as little as 6 years so the whole nuclear power push is just plain dumb in my mind.

[Vinca]

19. My husband recently saw an off-the-grid house that was fully functional.

The solar powered system only cost $16,000. Think of all the solar systems that could be installed for 1 nuclear plant.

[RaRa]

28. Don't know where that is but

my husband (out of curiosity) looked up our address and the estimate to go solar was $90K.

[Vinca]

30. It was in Vermont and the system was state of the art.

Maybe the cost was lower than usual because there is an installer within a few miles of this person's house. I'd shop around if I was you. Alternative energy is the fad du jour and there are probably plenty of scamsters out there.

[OswegoAtheist]

20. I've always lived in a nuclear-powered community

In fact, I can stick my head out the window and see the cooling tower down the lake shore. I'd agree in principle with the Repu...

sorry, I passed out from the shock of typing that sentence. I agree that nuclear should be an option, if (and only if) solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, one-billion-hamsters-in-tiny-wheels or hydroelectric aren't feasible options for power.

Oswego "and George W. Bush must be tried for war crimes" Atheist

[rustydog]

22. anti-terror conscious GOP never thought of planes

flying into nuclear reactors?

Or is national security not politically convenient now that elections are over?

Hundreds of nuclear reactors across America! They must be build by large water supply sources (America's RIVERS) for cooling purposes.

Hundreds of terror targets spread across america. I don't know, how many americans will die if solar panels are taken out? How many thousands could perish when wind turbines are knocked over?

[unblock]

31. the risk of theft or leak is real, but the risk of an airplane crash is not

cooling towers are made of thick, heavily hardened concrete, an airplane would just crumple to pieces if it rammed into one.

[rustydog]

33. And the two towers could never be levelled by airplanes

[unblock]

36. oh, please. the twin towers were hardly built of the stuff of cooling towers.

now, the empire state building, that's another story :)

[Psephos]

53. The towers absorbed the planes with barely a shudder.

As they were designed to do. The force delivered by a jetliner is far below the structural fail point - almost a joke compared to the force encountered almost daily by winds.

The towers fell because the buildings contained and concentrated the the resulting jet fuel fires at the impact floors, which softened the cantilever steel beams radiating out from the core that supported each floor. It only took one floor to superheat, fail and drop onto the one below it. The shock of the impact from the collapsing floor then ripped the lower floor's cantilevers off their columns, even though they were still sound, and the floors pancaked downward, like dominoes. The proximate cause was intense heat, not mechanical shock.

About the only similarity between the WTC and a nuclear plant cooling tower is that both are tall structures.

There is nothing to burn inside a hollow cooling tower, and no cantilever beams to fail. The wall of the towers is made of rebar-reinforced thick concrete under a compressive load. A hollow aluminum jet plane is mostly empty space and would crumple like a pop can on a cooling tower, and any resulting fire would rage harmlessly on its surface and then burn out. You are talking about a motorcycle colliding with a double semi truck.

Even if the laws of Newtonian physics were set aside, though, why would anyone fly a jet into a cooling tower? They're glorified smokestacks, and they contain nothing fissionable or critical - just steam. BFD.

[lucretia54]

23. The title of this thread should be "Republicans Push Nuclear Technology To Line Their Pockets"

As far as the French being emulated, the French are out to own us! The firm "Areva", which advertises daily a clever commercial of happy people dancing around and you don't even know til the end that it's about clean energy and a company named Areva.

Areva is 80% owned by the French government and they and the British company Amergen either own or have bids out to buy several of our 104 plants.

Once Congress passes the laws to get we the taxpayers to put out the billions for loan guarantees to have plants built, we then pay the exorbitant amounts to the French to build the plants...and there are so many other costs involved one could go on and on. Plenty of opportunities for backroom deals to be made...

No nuclear power plant built in the United States has ever come in on budget, in fact the future costs as yet are unknown because we have yet been able to come up with a solution to dealing with spent fuel, wastes, and decommissioning used plants.

And every step of the way, it is we the taxpayer who foots the bill.

[truthisfreedom]

38. republicans propose 100 new terror targets... How idiotic are these dinosaurs?

[caseymoz]

45. My chief concerns about nuclear energy is not the waste

First, just to get a nuclear plant online extremely costly, and only a long-range solution. The government either has to subsidize building them, or we have to take the approach that France does: they are built and run by the government, with a standardized design.

Second, what happens when these plants are de-commissioned. Then they are permanent health hazards. You could de-construct them, again at enormous costs, and with an enormous amount of "deferred waste." Or you let them stand as a permanent dead zone, and pour concrete and lead over them.

[prolesunited]

49. Can't have renewables

How do you charge for the sun's rays or the wind's force?

[jpak]

52. Teh GOP WANTS US TO BE JUST LIKE FRANCE!!!111

:rofl:

[Psephos]

54. Chinese are building 5 this year and 25 over next five years

http://www.engineerlive.com/Power-Engineer/Nuclear_Power/China_plans_to_build_25_nuclear_plants_in_the_next_five_years/16741/

The Chinese are shrewd pragmatists, and there is no possibility they haven't figured out how this gives them an advantage when the inevitable volatility returns to fossil fuels. They have run the numbers and they like them...especially with new-technology pebble-bed reactors.

That will negatively affect US competitiveness against a China using cheaper and readily-available electricity. Negative effects the US balance of payments and US tax receipts I leave to the analyses of others.

[underpants]

59. $0--ZERO--- private dollars have been spent on Nuke construction since WWII

construction of nuke plants are completely paid for with public (your) money


they have passed laws to limit the liability for operators -the result of lobbying by ....guess who