McCain Backs Nuclear Power

bagsc writes "Senator John McCain set out another branch of his energy policy agenda today, with a key point: 45 new nuclear power plants by 2030." So it finally appears that this discussion is back on the table. I'm curious how Nevada feels about this, as well as the Obama campaign. All it took was $4/gallon gas I guess. When it hits $5, I figure one of the campaigns will start to promote Perpetual Motion.

Seriously, WTF?

[N8F8 (4562)]

Nuclear is the best option. Equating it with perpetual motion shows YOUR ignorance. Hate makes you stupid.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[nurb432 (527695)]

I don't think it was actually ignorance, it was just showing his irrational bias against nuclear and trying to lump it into fantasy land to influence peoples thinking.

But i agree with you, it didn't really have the effect he was thinking.

However, i would go so far as to say while nuclear is an very important piece of the domestic energy puzzle and needs to be brought back on track, its just one piece.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[cayenne8 (626475)]

Nuclear promotion? Good start. Let's hope they couple it with breeder reactors, to really stretch the fuel and decrease the waste.

Also...let's start drilling for our own oil reserves!! We have bans on drilling off of the east coast, the west coast, and even the eastern part of the Gulf. We have the capability to drill safely these days. Who knows...we might hit the motherload like Brazil did recently that I hear of?

We have TONS of shale oil that is starting to get cost efficient to process.

Why not do all these that are possible now to help our oil needs WHILE putting tons of money and research into the other alternative fuels?? I'm excited about ramping up , wind, solar and biofuels (particularly the algae and other processes to make fuel out of waste)...but, we need more oil now to ease the pain till the switchover.

In the US, we have got to get over the NIMBY. The gulf coast has carried the 'burden' for the drilling and refining for decades...we have to start having the whole country contribute...repeal the bans on drilling....

And it's only taken 2.9 decades

[Moryath (553296)]

...to start reversing the DEPLORABLE conditions started by Jimmy "I'm a fucking moron" Carter.

You know - the guy who thought that if the US didn't RECYCLE nuclear waste back into fuel (which would SOLVE the "nuclear waste storage" issue) it would be an "example" to tin-pot dictatorships and insane genocidal religious nations like North Korea, Pakistan, India, Iran, Syria, China... and they wouldn't try to get nuclear weapons. Yeah, how'd that work out for us?

The guy who coddled so-called "environmentalists" to the point where we haven't built SAFE, CLEAN electrical power generation anywhere because nobody can get past the permits process and NIMBY enviro-wacko whining.

Think about it - even the founder of Greenpeace [wikinews.org] (who long ago left the organization when it became obvious the commies and inmates were running the asylum and not interested in real, rational discussion) says we need nuclear energy because so-called "renewable" sources are inherently (a) unreliable and (b) limited in the scope of what we can do with them.

Not just that

[Moryath (553296)]

The newer designs of reactors have no CHANCE of doing what either Chernobyl or 3-Mile Island did. Pebble-Bed reactors fail "safe" (without guidance, they simply hit their equilibrium temperature which is well within the structural design limits and stay there). Plus, they cool by inert gas rather than water so there's no chance of a contaminated steam-cloud explosion (which was why Chernobyl was so nasty).

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[oodaloop (1229816)]

There's plenty of fissionable material, especially if you include the recyclable secondary material, somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000 years' worth I once heard. I'd hate to strip mine half the planet to get it, but I suppose it's a better choice in the near term than burning all our oil.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[by Anonymous Coward]

With effective breeder reactors, thorium utilization, and REPROCESSING the number is closer 100,000 years.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[russotto (537200)]

There's plenty of fissionable material, especially if you include the recyclable secondary material

And there's the key. The US stopped reprocessing under Carter, which greatly reduces the magnitude of fuel available while simultaneously massively increasing the waste stream.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[tha_mink (518151)]

1000 years worth assuming how many reactors covering how large a percent of our energy needs?

The reserve is based on the current price of the material and the current drain on that reserve. So actually, if the price goes up, that means there's more available because you can spend more to get to it. Kinda like the oil reserve. The more the price spikes, the more that can be spent on drilling, recovery, refining, etc. So there you have it.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[torkus (1133985)]

Or someone decides to ignore silly public paranoia and starts building breeder reactors or higher density reactors that 'burn' more than ~10% of the fissile material in their fuel.

Or with breeder reactors you basically have unlimited fuel. They're more complex to design perhaps but are certainly a solution to your claimed "problem".

Also - you probably read a few of the same articles i did about there not being enough fissile uranium around. The catch is it assumes a fixed (and rather low) cost as the ceiling. Once you increase that it becomes a non-issue even without breeder reactors. And before you compare tripling the price of uranium fuel to oil at $140 a barrel - the fuel cost for a nuclear plant is a rather small % of it's operating cost. It's not like they burn a trainload of uranium every few days like a coal plant.

I don't know the details of McCain's "backing" but if it results in more ecconomical and plentiful nuclear plants i'm all for it.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[networkconsultant (1224452)]

Nuclear Information [world-nuclear.org] Generation IV reactors are horribly efficient, even the lest efficient CANDU's use about 8 to 10KG of fuel / day, most reactors are designed to used unprocessed fuel (U238 or Enriched Blackshale) or fuel that requires very little development, the nice thing about the new designs is that they all use light water or liquid sodium.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[DaveV1.0 (203135)]

You think that way because you are ignorant of nuclear technology.

It is not really your fault. It is the fault of the hysteria-spreading, anti-nuclear, tree-huggers. They spent years spreading anti-nuclear disinformation and succeeded in stopping the building of nuclear reactors. More money was poured into coal and petroleum for energy production.

Re:Oil not equal to nuclear

[cayenne8 (626475)]

"Pushing nuclear energy has relatively very little do with our dependence on gasoline via crude oil. Please lets not confuse the two."

Well, in the northern US, it would/could make a big difference. For some reason up there...they use heating OIL to heat their homes during the long, hard winters.

Perhaps if we had more nukes providing cheaper electricity...we could get the heating done up north without so much oil usage.

I mean, if you think gas prices are bad now...wait till you have to buy oil to heat your house...something you REALLY can't go without....and be prepared for sticker shock...

Re:Oil not equal to nuclear

[oodaloop (1229816)]

I agree with almost everything you say. Coal is much worse; nuclear doesn't replace much of our oil dependence. Transportation makes up about half of our use of oil, mostly going to cars (SUVs!), trucks, desiel semis, etc. The only way I can see nuclear making a difference in our oil consumption is with the combination of electric cars. Right now, I wouldn't consider buying so much as an electric scooter as long as the power plant is coal. But if the grid is nuclear (or some other green power), buying an electric car, motorcycle, etc suddenly makes sense.

Ideally, I'd like to put up enough solar panels and wind turbines to power my house, charge my car, and sell back to the utilities.

Re:Oil not equal to nuclear

[prisoner-of-enigma (535770)]

Ideally, I'd like to put up enough solar panels and wind turbines to power my house, charge my car, and sell back to the utilities.

What's stopping you, then? Unless you live in a neighborhood with covenants restricting such devices, you have all the freedom in the world to do exactly what you suggest. The technology exists. The products exist. What's stopping you?

Ahh...perhaps it's that little thing called "cost?" Independence from the power grid really sounds like a neat idea until you consider how much it costs to do it. Sort of like electric cars, which sound neat until you consider the cost to acquire one versus the utility and flexibility you can extract from it vis-as-vis a gasoline-powered vehicle of similar cost.

I'm not trying to be a downer on such ideas, though. I'm just pointing out the hypocrisy of so many of the wealthy "treehuggers" out there who have the means to do something about their energy consumption yet continue to shuttle around in limos, private jets, and occupy 15,000 sq. ft. mansions with an energy consumption the size of a small town. Environmentalism seems great to folks until you ask them to put their money where their mouth is.

Re:Oil not equal to nuclear

[Dougmeister (829273)]

Yes, but cars *can* be powered by elecricity. So nuclear energy *does* have something to do with our dependence on gasoline.

Re:Oil not equal to nuclear

[Alarindris (1253418)]

Pushing nuclear energy has relatively very little do with our dependence on gasoline via crude oil. Please lets not confuse the two.

I disagree. We could use electric cars. Plug em into the wall and you've got yourself a nuclear powered car.

Re:Oil not equal to nuclear

[sribe (304414)]

Much of your comments are accurate, especially how renewables do not eliminate the use of oil for transportation. But you're wrong about the state of renewables: wind is in large-scale deployment today (19% of electricity in Denmark, 9% in Spain & Portugal, 6% in Germany); solar is closer than 10+ years as the first large-scale installations are being built.

A little more about wind power in Germany: they're aiming for 20% in about the next 10 years. And their experience is interesting; it turns out that when you have large numbers of wind farms all across the country, the wind is always blowing somewhere, and the problem with intermittent output starts to go away. (Requires, of course, a power grid able to deal with shifting inputs, which may require expensive upgrades.)

WRONG

[DriedClexler (814907)]

Pushing nuclear energy has relatively very little do with our dependence on gasoline via crude oil. Please lets not confuse the two. There is no chance that there will be cars powered by "under the hood" nuclear reactors in the near future.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, WRONG. As long as you have an effectively unlimited energy source, you can use that energy to draw CO2 from the atmosphere, and store it in octane (i.e., what people already use, so no infrastructure changes), which the cars useas fuel. Basically, you just do the reverse of the combustion reaction:

C8H18 + O2 --> energy + H2O + CO2 (modulo a little balancing!)

Take energy from the nuclear plant, CO2 from the atmosphere, and every time a car burns that fuel, it's simply returning to the atmosphere, that which was taken from it. Carbon neutral octane!

This is NOT a crackpot idea, it's something that a federal lab [nytimes.com] has already worked out, and it can provide that fuel for $4.60 a gallon (before brilliant people optimize the process even further). That's not much more expensive than gasoline is today. To make it competitive, all you'd need is a $.60/gallon tax, and it's probably already competitive if introduced in the rest of the world which has higher fuel taxes.

I have no idea why this idea is not more widespead.

Re:Oil not equal to nuclear

[cayenne8 (626475)]

"In my mind the biggest problem with nuclear power isn't nuclear plant safety, so much as it is the risk of weaponization of the fuel."

It is only 'weaponization' of the fuel...IF you put it in a weapon.

Frankly, we've got enough nuke weapons now, and aren't really looking for a new source of fuel for those. If we look into IFR (Integral Fast Reactors) and the like...we can make very efficient use of the nuclear fuel...and reduce the amounts of waste, and possible weaponizable by products.

We do have pretty good scientific minds in this country, if we'd just use them, and stop playing politics with all this....our energy needs should be above petty partisanship.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[SatanicPuppy (611928)]

Because volcano's don't conveniently locate themselves next to large population centers?

Solar and Wind are nice and all, but it's Nuclear power that's going to pull our eco-bacon out of the fire; it is the cleanest source of power per kwh that we've got. Once we start reprocessing the waste, we'll be able to sustain output for a long time.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[cthulu_mt (1124113)]

Because volcano's don't conveniently locate themselves next to large population centers?

You've got the logic reversed. Large population centers wisely do not locate themselves near volcanoes.

See: Pompei

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[Red Flayer (890720)]

You've got the logic reversed. Large population centers wisely do not locate themselves near volcanoes.

See: Pompei

You've got the logic misordered as well. Pompeii was, in fact, located near a large volcano.

Wise population centers do not locate themselves near large volcanoes. FTFM.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[Muad'Dave (255648)]

Again, that's a common fallacy. It depends on how you go about reprocessing. The current once-thru fuel cycle actually results in more and purer plutonium in the waste stream than an IFR [nationalcenter.org] would. IFR's can burn up all of the current nuclear waste and all of the 'pure' plutonium from dismantled nuclear weapons. I'd say that's a reason to REQUIRE IFR reactors and reprocessing. 200 year waste with essentially no useful isotopes in it is a clear win over what we have now (that being lots of terrorist-bait in poorly guarded swimming pools at reactors sites all over the country).

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[hatchet (528688)]

We only need enough fission fuel to last us for 50 years... after that we can count on fusion. Fusion is the future.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[homer_s (799572)]

People really need to start investing in sustainable renewable energy, things like tidal, wind, solar, and what IMO is the most untapped, geothermal. Seriously, we have all these active volcanos around the planet exerting kilotons of energy spewing gasses into the air and creating massive amounts of heat, why aren't we harnessing that more?

If it were economical to harness energy from all those sources, don't you think the greedy capitalists would've been all over it?
The reason nobody wants to harness those sources is because they are inefficient compared to coal and oil. Spending money to get energy from inefficient sources only makes mankind poorer.

Re:Nukes could solve a lot of issues

[Muad'Dave (255648)]

How about a 1.21 gigawatt plant dedicated to time travel?

Re:Nukes could solve a lot of issues

[multipart/mixed (163409)]

Doc Brown's stuff doesn't run on gigawatts, it runs in jiggawatts.

I'm not sure what those are, but that's clearly what he said.

I think it has something to do with dancing at a riot.

Nuclear is a great idea.

[Meor (711208)]

I would support this and would allow it in my back yard.

Re:Nuclear is a great idea.

[Lumpy (12016)]

Hell I WANT it in my back yard. I have a Coal plant within 30 miles and it is an eyesore of the comunity. the piles of coal and the huge ships coming and going are ugly ugly ugly. and the days when the scrubbers fail or are offline you can see the crud going up in the air.

Now all we need...

[oodaloop (1229816)]

are 45 backyards in which to build them.

Seriously, the NIMBY (not in my nackyard) and BANANA (build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything) mentalities have held back nuclear power as much as anything else, especially after TMI. Getting local communities to agree to construction will be no small task.

Re:Now all we need...

[Cutie Pi (588366)]

Ah yes, TMI.

The amazing thing about TMI is that, had everyone left things alone and let the automated safety systems do their job, a normal shutdown would have occurred. Instead, the human operators intervened and basically did everything they could to cause a meltdown. Nonetheless, the whole thing went out with a fizzle, with essentially zero radiation being emitted to the outside. You'd probably receive more radiation smoking a pack of cigarettes or flying across country than you would have sitting in TMI's backyard.

Nonetheless I'm sure when the general population hears TMI they think (OMFG! Meltdown!!!!!111)

Re:Now all we need...

[PMuse (320639)]

Ah yes, TMI. . . . the whole thing went out with a fizzle, with essentially zero radiation being emitted to the outside. You'd probably receive more radiation smoking a pack of cigarettes or flying across country than you would have sitting in TMI's backyard.

Mod parent up.

Number of people dead due to TMI incident [wikipedia.org]: zero.
Number of health problems conclusively linked to TMI incident: zero.
Amount of radiation to residents: 8-100 millirem.
Improvements in power station design since 1979: lots [wikipedia.org].
Chance of same incident happening again: ~zero.

Wha-huh?

[faloi (738831)]

Nuclear seems to be working pretty well for various foreign countries. It takes a while to get a reactor on-line, and it's not a perfect solution... But it's better in many ways than the fossil fuel options.

Wind and solar are great, and I support them also. But, $4 gas or not, all energy options should be on the table. And they should've been for about the last 30 years.

$5 a gallon?

[nurb432 (527695)]

Didn't you hear, opec has decided they pushed the bubble far enough and is going to scale back the 'waters testing'?

We go thru this all the time with them, they push prices up to where they get worried we might actually go find an alternative, then bring it down just enough ( but higher then before ) to quiet us down and lose interest in alternatives.

Its a cycle that most people are too stupid to see, and thus we are stuck in it.

Re:$5 a gallon?

[Shakrai (717556)]

I'm always amazed to hear Americans complain about gas prices. We pay 1.70 Euro per liter of regular gas. That is (1.70 x 1.55 x 3.78) $9.96 per gallon. And guess what, we are still driving our cars and our economy is still running. Sure, people are mad about it, but it's not the end of the world.

I'm always amazed to hear Europeans try and compare Europe to the United States. Do you have any idea of the scale of the United States? Mass transit simply isn't an option for a vast majority of this country. Most Americans (particularly those in rural areas) have to commute to work, to buy groceries, etc, etc.

For starters, get your fat *ss out of your SUV when going places less than a mile away...

Nice way to stereotype but at least half of this country doesn't have ANYTHING within a mile of where they live. Where I grew up it was a four mile drive into town.

Re:$5 a gallon?

[Mongoose Disciple (722373)]

For starters, get your fat *ss out of your SUV when going places less than a mile away...

What you may not realize is that America is, in general, much more spread out and less densely populated than Europe.

There literally isn't a single business within a mile of my house. I purposely chose my home location to minimize my distance to shopping/work, and we're still talking multiple miles to get to any of the above in different directions. 20-30 mile commutes each way are typical in my area, not exceptional, and I know more than a few people with much longer commutes. Public transportation is poor at best. (It's better in some cities.)

I'm not saying any of this isn't our fault as a country, but the situation in general is a lot different than yours with respect to driving.

I'm all for this, IF...

[Muad'Dave (255648)]

I'm all for this, if it includes research into IFR technology [nationalcenter.org]. If you haven't read this article, please do. I know it's biased toward IFR technology, but even if 10% of what the scientist says is true, we should be researching the hell out of it! Here's Wikipedia's take on the IFR [wikipedia.org].

The current reactor design is antiquated and hobbled by President Carter's decree that we will not reprocess nuclear fuel [pbs.org]. So instead of extracting 90+% of the energy in the fuel and having 100 year nuclear waste, we extract 2% and have 10,000 year waste with the once-thru fuel cycle [wikipedia.org]. Real smart, Jimmy. And he was a 'Nucular Engineer'!

Clarifying

[misterjava66 (1265146)]

I'm a Nuclear Engineer.

Let me help clarify a few things.

1. In the 70's, our technology was not sufficient for reprocessing. It is arguably that we might have the ability to develop the tech now.

2. The HLW (high level waste) from reprocessing is hotter longer after final use than once through methods.

3. 10,000y is a design specification for HLW storage facilities. HLW is less radioactive than the materials dug up to make it after only 700y.

4. Furthermore, since HLW is loaded with rare earths and lanthanides, and our knowledge of their special and sometimes unique chemistry grows every day, and HLW is actually the only reasonable source for some of these elements, its possible that HLW would enter its own reprocessing cycle after just 200y.

Regards,

Jerry

Global Warming

[The Aethereal (1160051)]

You can not think global warming is both human caused and a genuine threat and not be for nuclear power. Yes nuclear power has its own problems, but far better than the purported consequences of global warming. Keep your eyes open for "environmentalists" that are against nuclear power. Those people have other interests in mind. "Environmentalism" is just their tool.

In addition to Carter, here's who to blame...

[Muad'Dave (255648)]

...for our current backwater nuclear power status. From Wikipedia: [wikipedia.org]

With the election of President Bill Clinton in 1992, and the appointment of Hazel O'Leary as the Secretary of Energy, there was pressure from the top to cancel the IFR. Sen. John Kerry (D, MA) and O'Leary led the opposition to the reactor, arguing that it would be a threat to non-proliferation efforts, and that it was a continuation of the Clinch River Breeder Reactor Project that had been canceled by Congress. Despite support for the reactor by then-Rep. Richard Durbin (D, IL) and U.S. Senators Carol Mosley Braun (D, IL) and Paul Simon (D, IL), funding for the reactor was slashed, and it was ultimately canceled in 1994. [Just 3 years before completion.]

Emphasis mine. See all those bold 'D's for Democrat? Uh huh.

No Silver Bullet

[s31523 (926314)]

I don't understand why people can not get it through their heads that no one single item is the answer.

Look, we (US) have enjoyed our luxury of cheap single source energy. Now it is time to get with the program. We need ALL options for energy started now. Think of it as a diversified portfolio. So, I say the following:
YES! Drill for more oil and make some more darn refineries
YES! Build some nuclear power plants.
YES! Explore better ways to use coal in existing power plants.
YES! Build huge solar arrays and start larger solar power plants
YES! Build wave generated power plants
YES! Build wind generated power plants
YES! Build electric-based "commuter" vehicles
YES! Explore better ways to make bio-fuel

The government needs to subsidize some of the projects and needs to throw some money at these problems. If we deploy all of these strategies we may not get cheaper energy but we will get stable energy and maybe, just maybe avert major crisis as population and demand increases exponentially over the next 10 years.

So the two parties' basic energy policies ...

[(arg!)Styopa (232550)]

Republicans: build 45 new reactors.
Democrats: nationalize the oil industry, price controls on gas.

I'm not going to post which I think is which, but one seems rational and reasonable, the other is pandering to the masses with a policy that is not only short sighted, but dangerous.

Japan holds keys to nuclear plant construction

[AeroSC (640154)]

I'm all for building more nuclear plants and think they, along with fuel reprocessing, are a key element in reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. McCain's plan, however, ignores the realities of what it would take to physically build 45 plants in the US by 2030.

There was an article covered a while back (http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/14/1238233 [slashdot.org]) talking about the 600-ton steel forgings required for a reactor containment vessel and the fact that on one company in Japan can, currently, make them. Given that their production rate is only 5 per year and their first open slot is in ~2015, the US would need 80% of their output from 2015 to 2027 to hope to meet that goal.

Unless the rest of the world stops building nuclear plants or someone else starts making containment vessels, all this is just talk.

Re:no American power plants burn Oil

[halivar (535827)]

Yeah, and Mexico's ban on private capital investment in oil production is why Mexico imports 25% of its gas from the US, even though it's the world's 5th largest producer.

You know why?

Economics 101: Price controls create shortages. Every. Time.

Re:And it's only taken 2.9 decades

[SatanicPuppy (611928)]

Yea, because Carter, the only president to have ever had any formal training in any sort of nuclear technology, and also the only president ever involved in the cleanup after a nuclear accident [wikipedia.org], is all irrational and uninformed where nuclear power is concerned.

The 70's were a different world. Nuclear power meant nuclear weapons, and the public opposition then to nuclear power is hard to even imagine today. Don't blame Carter for the hysteria of the day.

Re:$4 for gas, come on

[jeffmeden (135043)]

Don't think that all Americans are as naive as CmdrTaco. I, for one, realize both that $4 for a gallon of gas isn't extravagant, and that the cost of a gallon of gas has little to do with global nuclear energy politics. McCain is simply following the Bush stance on 'alternative energy' which is to say, any alternative to oil that will net equally high profits for equally large, heavy lobbying companies.

Re:Obama better support this too

[Dolohov (114209)]

I also oppose drilling for our own oil resources. Why the hell should we? Let's use up the oil resources of the people who hate us while it's still relatively cheap, then tap our own resources at $300 a barrel and make them come crawling.

Re:Obama better support this too

[FireFury03 (653718)]

Let's use up the oil resources of the people who hate us while it's still relatively cheap, then tap our own resources at $300 a barrel and make them come crawling.

s/crawling/attacking/

Re:Obama better support this too

[Colonel Korn (1258968)]

You make a big deal about how Obama is generally a bad guy and thus won't support this, but it's just a troll post. Obama specifically has stated that he supports nuclear power during his campaign. One of his biggest campaign donors is Excelon, a nuclear power company. The only anti-nuclear power thing he's done isn't really anti-nuclear power: he introduced legislation to force nuclear power plants to report leaks.