Nuclear Industry Stands To Get Help from Taxpayers

[jpak]

http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=8067

With the president leading the cheers, the nuclear industry is poised to receive a bounty of incentives from Congress that could subsidize construction of new nuclear reactors in central Illinois and several other locations.

President George W. Bush on Wednesday became the first president in 26 years to visit a nuclear plant, declaring near Washington that the nation needs nuclear power.

<snip>

The Senate bill would place taxpayers squarely behind resuming new construction of nuclear plants for the first time in 30 years with tax credits that could reach $6 billion if fully used by the industry.

The legislation would authorize $2.7 billion for research and development over the next five years, similar to provisions in a bill already passed by the House. An additional $1.25 billion would be allocated for a nuclear reactor in Idaho that would try to generate hydrogen fuel.

<more>

[phantom power]

1. If I was going to generate H2, I'd rather do it with wind power.

Use the reactors for base-load electricity.

[jpak]

2. The Chimp plans to generate it with pork

n/t

[phantom power]

3. It's a strange feeling, to see BushCo advocating a solution I agree with.

I don't quite know how to react.

[Endangered Specie]

25. Feels kind of strange doesnt it?

:shrug:

[NNadir]

4. And the billion trillion quadrillion solar roofs bill was what?

Here is just one more of the thousands of examples in which the stupid try to examine some facet of the nuclear industry and pretend that it is somehow unique.

There would be NO solar industry without subsidies, as the recent praise for Governor Repuke Hydrogen Hummer's quadrillion solar roof bill demonstrates. The main difference between the nuclear subsidy and the solar subsidey is that the governor's bill will be useless - it is all window dressing, no reality. There will not be a million solar roofs, not even 100,000 any more than bills of the same quality failed to produce such roofs in the 1970's.

In the February 11, 2004 issue of Chemical and Engineering news the federal budget for energy resources is given. The budget for energy development is given here:



Now, you have to be a member of the American Chemical Society to access C&E News on line these days (which I deplore), meaning that one has to be a scientist - which automatically excludes Greenpeace members from being able to read it on their computers (if one assumes they can read at all) - but here is the link anyway: http://pubs.acs.org/isubscribe/journals/cen/83/i08/html/8308gov1.html?emFrom=emLogin

We note that the budget for renewable energy is 30% larger than the budget for nuclear research and that the entire budget is but a tiny fraction (0.5%) of the Iraq fossil fuel war's cost. Still, in spite of having a budget larger than nuclear energy's the renewable portion of our energy economy is for lack of a better term, pitiable. We have morons from Greenpeace crowing still about every insignificant kilowatt that is announced - even though we hear very little about these same plants when they become economic or environmental failures. Obviously the renewables have not achieved the same return on investment as nuclear energy realizes. Meanwhile nuclear technology provides 20% of the world's electricity.

Speaking of the promise vs. the realization of renewable energy:

One heard lots and lots and lots about the Changing World Technologies "turkey guts to oil" plant a few years ago. For instance it was covered in National Geographic in 2003.

The article is full of "can" and "could," the usual words used so frequently by twits who believe that the future of the atmosphere should be placed in their scientifically illiterate radiation paranoid hands.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/11/1125_031125_turkeyoil.html

Here we go:

"As Americans prepare to gobble down 45 million turkeys on Thursday, a factory in Carthage, Missouri, is turning the feathers and innards of the feted bird into a clean-burning fuel oil. Changing World Technologies (CWT), a New York environmental technology company that is behind the project, also has plans to turn the organic waste from chickens, cows, hogs, onions, and Parmesan cheese into light crude oil—and those are just the some of CWT's proposed ventures...

...Pressure on the mixture is then dropped, releasing steam that is recaptured to power the remaining process. More heat, then distillation, creates the byproducts—natural gas, which is diverted back to fuel the bio-reformer; crude oil, which can be sold to refineries; minerals, to be used in materials like fertilizers; and water.

Barring nuclear waste, anything can yield these goods, according to proponents of the process: 100 pounds (45 kilograms) of tires, for instance, yields 44 pounds (20 kilograms) of oil (along with the other byproducts); a similar quantity of medical waste would result in 65 pounds (30 kilograms) of oil.

Other versions of the process have existed since the 1970s, but only Appel's addition of water and pressurization—instead of incineration, for example—has made the process environmentally friendly and, he claims, 85 percent energy efficient. "For every 100 Btus of energy in the waste that's used, only 15 Btus are needed to power the process," Appel said..."

Note the rather evocative - and as it turns out stupid - evocation of so called "nuclear waste." Pretty typical, I think, even though so called "dangerous nuclear waste" has injured zero people.

Now, I happen to be a big fan of so called "thermal depolymerization" schemes - but they are still plans which exist largely in theory. As nuclear engineers learned in the 1950's and 1960's it is one thing to make wild promises, it is quite another to deliver. It took nuclear energy a good forty years before it was really in the position in which it is now, the position to provide safe, clean, economic energy. This is because all technologies, both fanciful and realistic involve something that is apparently a mystery to the illiterates at Greenpeace: A learning curve.

Now, in 2003, a few short years ago, we were hearing how Changing World's Technology was going to, well, change the world.

We don't hear much about it today. The world hasn't really changed much since 2003, except that it is more violent, but if one looks, one can, in fact, find out what actually happened to Changing World's big promises. To wit:

" CARTHAGE, Mo. — The eyes of the world have been on this Missouri town for several years to see if a New York businessman can really turn turkey leftovers into oil.

The answer: A resounding yes. In fact, a revolutionary plant is turning 270 tons of poultry waste into 300 barrels of crude oil every day.

That would be cause for wild celebration in many circles if not for two not-so-minor problems.

First, the plant is losing buckets of money, and second, some residents of the town that once welcomed it now pretty much hate it.

It turns out that process of cooking turkey guts, feathers, feces and other waste gives off a horrible stench.

“It's rotten,” said Beth Longstaff, a resident who was shopping at Wal-Mart recently. “You can't get away from it. It's like something out of a horror movie.”

Residents have responded with hundreds of complaints to company, city, state and federal officials..."

http://www.mindfully.org/Air/2005/Changing-World-Technologies12apr05.htm

Note the words "First, the plant is losing buckets of money.". Did you get that? It's losing money when the price of oil is approaching a record level.

(Imagine what we'd hear from stupid anti-environmental anti-nuclear activists if it were a nuclear plant... We don't hear about the failure of this plant to deliver on it's promise because anti-environmental anti-nuclear activists have zero intellectual integrity. Since they seem not to be able to comprehend the integers, I'll repeat that number for effect: Zero.)

Then note the words "horrible stench.". Now what's another two words that can represent "horrible stench?". Well you won't hear them from a poorly educated Greenpeace twit with a nice middle class American lifestyle and oodles of hypocricy but here are two words that mean pretty much the same thing: "air pollution.".

A chemist comments:

"Now let's look a little further, to the subheading "Technological savvy could turn 600 million tons of turkey guts and other waste into 4 billion barrels of light Texas crude each year ". Apply a bit of that skepticism that journalism once relied on. How many pounds is 600 million tons. Multiply 600,000,000 by 2000 to get 1200 billion pounds. Now lets look at the oil. Depending on your definition of barrel, one of them weighs 300 to 400 pounds. So multiply 4 billion by 300 and you get 1200 billion pounds. What a strange coincidence! These phoneys say they can turn every pound of mixed water, dirt, rocks, paper, steel, acetone, tars, polyethylene, concrete (and oh, yes, turkey scraps too) into one pound of - are you ready for this - not just oil, not just a grease derivative, but light Texas crude. The loaves and fishes story has now been left in the dust. Jesus must be biting his nails with regret that he didn't think of this."

(I like this guy: He calculates and makes fun of Jesus. His remarks on the claims strangely evoke some stupidity I heard somewhere recently about cow shit.)

http://www.mindfully.org/Technology/2005/Changing-World-Technologies-Palmer9apr05.htm

Now, I happen to think that the problems of the Changing World plant do not mean that we should abandon biomass based supercritical water energy programs, of which this failed pilot plant is an example. What this means is that we need to do more research, not less. But it also means that this technology is a long, long, long way from being able to address the immediate crisis. It's an idea, not a reality.

(I note that many nuclear plants were also failures, failures on which the ignorant still fixate, decades after they occurred: Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fort St. Vrain, Windscale... That nuclear technology has become safe, clean, reliable and economic is a function of the failure analysis connected with these plants. Similar failure analysis of the Changing World plant is required. The next plant will be better.

On the other hand, if we hear someone presenting these cow shit/horse shit/turkey shit/chicken shit technologies as an immediate, serious solution to the world's serious environmental crisis connected with global climate change, we should recognize this as a clear demonstration that the person is scientifically and technically illiterate. They are placing their daydreams above the future of life on earth.

Now, I have no problem with research dollars for energy alternatives, including renewables, especially renewables. Rather than kill human beings as we are doing - all of us who are Americans - to maintain the status quo for a few decades of the status quo, an enterprise which is certainly more of a turkey than the Changing World plant. Moreover I believe that energy research is a proper sphere for the Government since, as a Democrat, I believe that the Government's role should be to provide for a healthy infrastructure, including the infrastructure of knowledge. Indeed, the United States investment in the 1950's and 1960's in nuclear technology - reactor design, fuel chemistry so on an so forth is providing a spectacular dividend to all humanity. We have some hope of averting the worst crisis we have ever faced - if we can arrest the ever powerful forces of ignorance.

It is a mistake, a very serious mistake, to imagine that it is somehow wrong to make further government investments in nuclear technology. Ethics demands that the nuclear development budget should be huge under the circumstances. Instead of buying the insane hallucinatory logic of those who think that nuclear technology is bad simply because they are too dumb to understand even the basics of it, we ought to kick stupidity aside and recognize that the nuclear investment has been a spectacular success. 440 nuclear plants operate on the surface of the planet now, with 361 gigawatts of clean power capacity. Without them New Orleans and Venice would be under water already.

Every penny spent on nuclear reactor research is an investment. We know this, because the investments made in the past are already being paid dividends.

We have lots of twerps, of course, who cannot recognize success when they see it, who whine and cry that nuclear energy should not be funded because they are personally weak minded paranoids and don't like it. Like everything else these people say, we ought to recognize these complaints for what they are: Ignorance and stupidity. Fuck these people. They are not merely stupid; they are also immoral.

Of course, it is an open question whether there will be much left of the United States after the Bushies are gone, and they will be gone someday, just as Caligula is gone. One hopes that when that time comes, there will be enough left of this country that we can participate, like a good international citizen, in the development of the Gen IV nuclear reactor program.

http://gen-iv.ne.doe.gov/

[jpak]

8. "There would be NO solar industry without subsidies"

Bullshit.

The US PV industry is thriving and exports most of the PV cells and modules it produces each year - without government subsidies.

Ronald Reagan eliminated all federal tax credits for residential PV systems in 1982 - the DOE estimates there are >225,000 PV equipped homes in the US - virtually all of which were built without federal tax credits.

"And the billion trillion quadrillion solar roofs bill was what?"

The California Million Solar Roofs program is a bipartisan partnership between California utilities and residential/commercial property owners and rate payers. It does NOT use tax dollars, and it does NOT cost $6 billion.

ChimpCo's nuclear tax-giveaway will build ~3000 MW of nuclear capacity for $6 billion - $2000 per kW!!!!

...and that doesn't include subsidies for spent fuel disposal.

California's program will cost <$2 billion over 10 years to deploy 3000 MW of PV capacity or < $700 per installed kW.

Nuclear power - such a deal!!! Go Chimp!!! Go Nukes!!!

"Without them New Orleans and Venice would be under water already."

Got a peer reviewed climate reference for THAT Fairy Tale???

You don't????

Didn't think so.

LOL!!!!!

BTW: all rendering plants stink - all of them, whether they're producing bio-fuels or not.

Please tell us all about that great financial success called the US Enrichment Corporation and the millions of dollars it's losing each year (and who is paying for it).

And while your at it, please tell us all about the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (that pays the medical claims of uranium workers exposed to radiation and beryllium), and how many claims have been filed (thousands) and how much it will cost the taxpayers (>$600 million).

The Learning Curve for nuclear power is a negative slope. That's why ChimpCo and their natural allies in The Corporate Welfare State need $6 billion dollars in tax payer subsidies to build these new nuclear plants.

These are the same assholes that deny Global Warming exists, that blocked reductions in power plant mercury emissions, allowed grandfathered coal-fired power plants to expand without adequate emissions controls, and blocked new CAFE standards.

Under the ChimpCo/GOP Nuclear Plan, US CO2 emissions will increase, US mercury emissions will increase, emissions of acid and ozone precursors will increase and the national debt will soar...

...and new nuclear electric utility customers will get screwed every month as well as every April 15th.

Fuck that.

[amandabeech]

12. With respect to TDP, one of the economic problems is that

Changing World expected to pay nothing for the turkey waste. The notion was the result of an earlier Mad Cow scare that had many believing that protein meal derived from rendering animal carcasses would no longer be permitted as animal feed. Without protein meal sales, rendering would not be as profitable, and disposing of animal carcases and waste would be a real problem. Changing World would then be paid to cart away the remains, or so it was thought. Needless to say, that did not work out here, but may work out yet in Europe, where protein meal is banned as animal feed.

As to the smell, the appropriate comparison would be to rendering, which I understand does not smell too good, either. It is still possible that protein meal from animals subject to Mad Cow and its relatives, like cattle, sheep and deer, might be banned here.

In addition, the new energy bill is likely to give a tax break to TDP by classifying it as a biofuels production process, at least with respect to animal and vegetable wastes.

What I find fascinating are two of TDP's other claims. First, it claims that the technology can recycle plastics, synthetic fibers of all kinds, PVC and treated wood into diesel fuel-like hydrocarbon liquids. We have lots of this stuff taking up space in landfills and much more on the way. Reducing landfills and producing a little fuel would really be a winner, IMHO.

Second is the claim that TDP can process contaminated sewage waste into liquid fuel, distilled water, some fertilizer and contaminated carbon that can be disposed of more easily than the original sewage waste. Once again, reducing landfills, getting a little fuel on the side and recycling phosphorus, potassium and trace minerals key to plant life sounds good.

Of course, no one will really know whether TDP can do any of the above, but I look forward eagerly for new developments.

[jpak]

5. kick and a...

<snip>

But Keith Ashdown, an energy analyst with the nonprofit Taxpayers for Common Sense in Washington, argued that the government should not be risking a bounty of tax dollars on an industry "that cannot exist in the private market without huge handouts from Uncle Sam."

"We pay for nuclear research and development," he said. "We're starting to pay for siting plants. We're backing loans to build the facilities. We're paying for the production of energy. Then we pay for the decommissioning of plants. There's no other industry that's completely subsidized from cradle to grave."

<end snip>

[struggle4progress]

6. You'd think that after 50 years, the industry would be mature enough ..

.. to make it on its own, if it could ...

[NNadir]

7. 440 nuclear plants operate at a profit. What about the turkey plant?

In spite of all the stupidity to the contrary, just about all of the 440 nuclear power plants each produce more profit than the entire US budget for "nuclear research."

The budget for nuclear research is posted here. It is in plain English. The number is 200 million dollars. In the United States, 600 billion megawatt hours of nuclear power were produced in 2003. At $30-40 bucks a megawatt-hour wholesale one can calculate what fraction of the power produced is represented by so called government "subsidies." Now I know that anti-environmental anti-nuclear activists can't do math which is why they are what they are, but for those who can, they can figure it out.

I am sorry that the anti-environmental anti-nuclear paranoids can't understand integers, but if all of the government spending on nuclear energy were cut tomorrow, nuclear plants would still hum along quite nicely.

What about the changing world technologies plant that is bleeding money and poisoning the Missouri air - one of thousands of failed schemes of the "solar only" immoral idiots? Oh yeah, it runs on grants. No grants, no plants.

Weaker than usual, and that's saying quite a bit, since most anti-environmental anti-nuclear paranoid comments are pretty weak.

The "solar only" crowd crows stupidly about each proposed pilot plant, even though few, if any have even a gigawatt. What they don't come back and tell you after their crowing is when the plants are economic, environmental, or technical failures.

Now, I personally think that the government should participate in building a greenhouse gas free infrastructure and in the nuclear case - there still is a lot of stupidity and mysticism to over come, and it makes investors skittish. However the anti-nuclear anti-environmental religious case is getting weaker and weaker and weaker and weaker and weaker and weaker by the hour.

I personally hold flat earth guys, of whom the anti-environmental anti-nuclear crowd is a particularly appalling case, in contempt, but they are losing big time in any case whether one simply hates them, as I do, or whether one has bemused sympathy for them, as others do. Reality exists no matter how much one tries to chant it away. Their big time was twenty years ago and being conservatives, they don't change their slogans to meet events. Countries where people can think are tiptoeing away from the specious commitments made decades ago to abandon nuclear energy. This is based on the reality that immoral anti-nuclear anti-environmental activists can't get through their weak brains: Hundreds of millions of tons of CO2 being dumped into the atmosphere.

There is no solution for coal waste. None. I hate to use an integer in the presence of intellectual weaklings, but that would be zero, 0, zilch, nada.

Worldwide, nuclear capacity is expanding and expanding hugely, on a 100 gigawatt scale. We may be left behind in this country, but if so, it will be wholly because of ignorance and stupidity. We deserve what we will get.

[struggle4progress]

9. If the industry is so profitable, why the constant search for subsidies?

[struggle4progress]

10. The industry got billions in subsidies in the 90's for "stranded costs."

This was supposed to revitalize them and make them profitable in a free market economy. Now, just a few years later, they're back with their hands out again ...

[Endangered Specie]

26. Thank you for pointing this out

great post :)

One begs to wonder how many anti-nuclear people live on a nuclear grid?

[thegreatwildebeest]

36. Actually I do...

I live right by the way of Turkey Point in South Florida. It's a FPL plant. I also note that FPL's sister company is the largest provider of wind energy in America. And owns some of the largest solar fields in America. In fact, its wind output is larger in MW than its non-Turkey Point output (a small nuclear facility in NH if I remember right). More interestingly, to my knowledge FPL has little to no interest in expanding its operations, though it is seeking license renewal of its St. Lucie and Turkey Point oeprations. Most of its construction in recent years has been in natural gas as well as as the aforementioned wind and solar energy, as well as one or two "clean coal" plants (a misnomer at best, but then again at the end of the day FPL is a electric utlity....they're more concerned with keeping up with production often than with how they get there).

[Massacure]

11. The U.S. should stop subsidizing all energy sources cold turkey.

It would be interesting to see what happens to the price of oil when they do not have the world's greatest navy protecting their tankers.

[jpak]

13. Amory Lovins advocated this 30 years ago

He argued that if all tax subsidies were removed, and if all external costs of energy production were internalized (i.e., environmental costs), conservation, mass transit and renewables would win *hands down* over nuclear and fossil fuels.

Be careful what you wish for...

[Massacure]

14. Nuclear was much more expensive 30 years ago.

But on an even playing field, let the best guy win.

[dcfirefighter]

15. Exactly

Those of us who support nuclear power do it because we believe it is the cheapest - all costs considered.

Of course, I expect that Dems would scream about how high energy costs disproportionally affect the poor, and how we need energy subsidies.

My solution, which isn't usually received well, is to tax pollution, etc, in an effort to collect those externalities. The key is to turn around and give this revenue back, in equal amounts, to everyone. Say it was $100 a person. The average person's energy costs would go up $100, and he'd break even. A poor person's (low energy user) costs would go up less than $100, while a rich person's would up more. Due to skewness in the distribution of energy use, more people would gain than would lose.

[jpak]

17. If it is so damned cheap - why aren't US utilities building them???

and why do they need $6 billion dollars in taxpayer subsidies to build these new "cheap" nuclear power plants????

I'm sorry, but gas- and coal-fired plants and wind are cheaper than nuclear.

http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:gw05usfEzB0J:www.awea.org/pubs/factsheets/Cost2001.PDF+california+energy+commision+nuclear+11.1-14.5+costs+per+kWh&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

Sorry to burst your bubble.

[Massacure]

19. Legal wrangling.

[jpak]

21. LOL!!!!

Pleaase tell us more..

:rofl:

[jpak]

16. And what has changed since then????

nothing.

[Massacure]

18. Efficiency.

[jpak]

20. Bullshit

Maine Yankee went on-line in 1972 at a cost of $295 million.

In 1996, Seabrook I (New Hampshire) went on line at a cost of $7 billion.

The thermal efficiency of nuclear power plants is ~30% and hasn't changed in three decades.

[Massacure]

22. Not talking about thermal efficiency.

I'm talking about crew efficiency. In the 60s and 70s nuclear plants would be operating for about 70% of the time. Now they operate for about 90%. Besides, Yankee was built with the subsidies which you think are so evil.

[jpak]

23. A 7 billion dollar nuclear plant with a 90% capacity factor

is still a 7 billion dollar plant.

And today's "cheaper more efficient" nuclear power plants don't need subsidies????

Why then do they need $6 billion in taxpayer's money to build them?????

[Massacure]

24. They don't

100 1000 megawatt reactors running at 90% efficiency = 90000000 kilowatts, or about 788,400,000,000 kWh per year. Sold at nine cents, that is $70,956,000,000 of income per year. Multiply by the 40 year life and this is $2,838,240,000,000 of income over all of their lives.

If we spent seven billion dollars on each, we spend $700,000,000,000 total. This is using your unexpectedly high figure.

Decommissioning would be $150,000,000,000 for all of them (roughly 1500 per kWh peak capacity according to three different sources I read before posting this.)

If each plant had 1000 workers earning $100,000 a year, that would end up being $400,000,000,000 in labor cost. This is hypothetical, but I doubt a nuclear reactor needs 1000 people to operate it with all of its advanced electronics, and I doubt they earn $100,000 per year.

Lets say $100,000,000,000 for waste disposal even though you quoted only $60 billion.

Each reactor would need about 35 tonnes of fuel enriched per year, at a cost about $55,000,000 each, or about $77,000,000,000 billion dollars during the course of all the operating years between the reactors. I used table 1 data from this site for this calculation:

http://www.ecolo.org/documents/documents_in_english/spent_fuel_by_sutherland.htm

Overall we have $2,838 billion in revenue minus $1,427 billion in expenditures.

[Endangered Specie]

27. Sounds like a good money making idea...

but did you figure inflation and MARR (interest) in to your calculations (might want to to make them more accurate). Be generous and use a total rate of, say 10% annually I bet it will still make good money.

The only problem is convincing people of such a long term investment.

[dcfirefighter]

28. I pay ~9c/kW-h to my utility

I don't think wholesale electricity goes for 9 cents.

[jpak]

29. If it's such a good idea

Then they should use their own $6 billion to build the damned things.

Corporate Welfare is still Corporate Welfare whether it's the Oil or Nucular Industry sucking at the public teat...

[Massacure]

31. I agree with you

For once.

[jeffreyi]

30. Amory Lovins on the nuclear boondoggle

Nuclear is a big loser, the only way it "works" is with massive subsidies....

http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid1154.php

[jpak]

32. Nuclear advocates do NOT want to read this.

Don't even go there...

[pberq]

33. Background facts on nuclear power

Just a little bacground info on nuclear power from the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy:

http://www.cleanenergy.org/programs/programs.cfm?ID=4

<snip>
What is Nuclear Power?
Nuclear power is a very dangerous, expensive way to boil water to generate energy typically done by splitting (or "fissioning") a uranium atom. This process releases tremendous amounts of energy and many man-made radioactive by-products that pollute the environment and negatively impact human health. The process also results in long-lived, highly radioactive nuclear waste that must be isolated from humans and the environment for essentially forever.

Why Nuclear Power is a Deadly Problem
All nuclear power plants release radioactive contaminants to the air, soil and water during normal, daily operations. Regulatory guidelines have essentially been set to allow the industry to operate, rather than to protect public health. The airborne contaminants affect nearby crops, vegetation. Tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen that is produced at all nuclear reactors, acts like water in the body and can pass across the placenta to affect a developing fetus.

And here are a few more facts on nuclear power plants:

http://www.cleanenergy.org/resources/factsheets/Nuclear.pdf

There is no safe level of radiation.
Radiation exposures damage reproductive cells and can lead to mutations from generation to generation. Each new exposure to radiation adds to the risk of: genetic mutations and cancer, damage to the immune system, spontaneous abortion, mental retardation, spina bifida, heart disease, leukemia and more.

Nuclear power is highly water dependent.
All reactors must be located next to large bodies of water because of their excessive amounts of water needed to create steam to power the turbines and to cool the fuel rods in the reactor core to prevent meltdown. A percentage of this water, some radioactive, is discharged to the river, lake or ocean upon which the plant is situated. This “thermal discharge� produces thermal plumes that affect organisms living within the area and causes stress on the surrounding environment.

Nuclear Power is Not Affordable.
The construction of nuclear plant Vogtle, near Waynesboro, Georgia, along the Savannah River resulted in the worst rate hike Georgians have ever experienced. Original estimates ballooned from more than $600 million for four reactors to more than $8 billion for a 2-reactor plant.

Nuclear Power is Not a Clean Energy Source.
Radioactive spent fuel, generated by nuclear power plants, is highly toxic and remains radioactive for millions of years. Exposure to any unshielded radioactive spent fuel would result in instant death. Each nuclear power plant acts as a high-level radioactive waste dump due to the radioactive spent nuclear fuel stored there. The only way to stop generation of this waste: STOP RUNNING A PLANT.

[Massacure]

35. That article is BS.

Nuclear Reactors generally release between 1 and 3 millirems of radiation per year. On contrast, you get 5 millirems from smoking a single cigarette. You are exposed to 350 millirems of radiation a year for just living, usually from cosmic rays or from the phosphorous, which is radioactive, that your body cannot live without.

I also like how they use radiation "could" kill thousands of people. Never mind the thousands of people who die every year from mercury, arsenic, smog, etc... from coal.

The water used to cool nuclear plants is not radioactive, because there are two loops. Water is sucked in from a lake or stream and then takes head away from a heat exchanger then discharged. The second loop flows directly over the core and deposits heat in a heat exchanger; this loop is radioactive but is never discharged into the environment.

The thermal plume is an adequate concern, but coal plants have the same problem.

Nuclear power is a little more expensive the coal in the U.S., but cheaper than coal in Canada and most of Europe. Nuclear power is cheaper than natural gas just about everywhere though.

I personally disagree with how the U.S. wants to dispose of waste at Yucca mountain though. We need to develop better breeder reactors to increase the amount of burn up in nuclear plants and lower the radioactivity of the waste. When the U.S. did tests with the Integral Fast Reactor, IFR, for example, the nuclear waste from that will be safe within 300-400 years instead of the tens of thousands.

[pberq]

34. Nearly 300 Groups Reject Nuclear Energy as a Global Warming Solution

http://www.nirs.org/press/06-16-2005/1

<snip>
Nearly 300 Groups Reject Nuclear Energy as a Global Warming Solution. Groups Urge Congress to Choose Clean Energy Path, Not Embrace Dangerous and Dirty Nuclear Power.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In response to an industry campaign touting new nuclear reactors as a solution to global warming, nearly 300 international, national, regional and local environmental, consumer, and safe energy groups reiterated their substantial concerns today over nuclear energy and rejected the argument that nuclear power can solve global warming. Rather, the groups urged a focus on clean and renewable sources of energy and energy efficiency and conservation.

With votes on global warming amendments anticipated in the next week during Senate consideration of the energy bill, representatives of several of the groups called on Congress to reject legislation that subsidized nuclear power plants as part of reducing global warming pollution.

"Global warming is the most serious environmental problem facing us today and we should aggressively increase energy efficiency and renewable energy to reduce carbon dioxide pollution," said Anna Aurilio, Legislative Director for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. "We're now one of nearly 300 public interest groups that say nuclear power is too dangerous and expensive and should not be part of a global warming solution," she added.