(US) Nuclear Renaissance Plagued by High Costs, Waste Issues

[jpak]

http://www.stockinterview.com/Story/01152007.html

Depending upon which side of the fence you are sitting, the nuclear renaissance is either in full blossom or an arid landscape. The new uranium miners – Paladin Resources, UrAsia and SXR Uranium One – celebrate the record spot and long-term uranium price. Exelon Corp Chief Executive John Rowe is less sanguine, based upon comments he made this past Friday, “The government may have fooled me on 17 reactors that I currently run, but I’m the one who’s being foolish if I build a new plant without knowing what they’re going to do with the spent fuel.” Exelon is the largest owner of nuclear power plants in the United States .

In a September 19th article, we interviewed Steven Kraft, Nuclear Energy Institute Director for Used Fuel Management. Mr. Kraft hinted the stalls around the nuclear renaissance in the United States would revolve around the spent fuel depository issue. What happens with the 40,000 metric tons of used nuclear reactor fuel? Right now, they are chilling out in 141 concrete cooling ponds scattered around the country.

For the past quarter century, the nuclear industry expected the reactor fuel would end up in a centralized depository, as has been proposed at Yucca Mountain , Nevada . Thanks to U.S. Senator Reid, and his efforts to squash this site, the Department of Energy has been paralyzed in moving forward. Alternatives are now being proposed, and the U.S. part of the nuclear renaissance remains stalled.

Then the other shoe drops. Because of the vociferous environmental lobbyists, pre-construction costs dissuade nuclear utilities from accelerating their plans to build new nuclear reactors in the United States . Utilities do what is convenient – they pass on these licensing costs to their utility consumers. Because of the environmental lobby, Georgia electricity consumers are paying the freight to license the new nuclear reactors proposed by Atlanta-based Southern Co. Charlotte-based Duke Energy hopes to get the same deal in North Carolina .

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[phantom power]

1. Coal is cheap. And nobody hassles the coal industry about their spent fuel.

Lucky us.

[GliderGuider]

2. Yay, coal!

The savior of the human race. :grr:

Don't you sometimes think that a species this stupid deserves a dieoff?

[phantom power]

3. I think we've got one coming.

I'm ambivalent about the concept of "deserve," except in the sense that we could have prevented it, and we didn't, and now it's going to happen. The thing about a die-off is, it doesn't just happen to a species, it happens to individuals. The people who deserve it least are the ones most likely to die first.

"Deserve's got nothin to do with it."
--Bill Munney