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]

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

no American power plants burn Oil

[Anonymous Coward]

So why does $4 gas == need for nuclear power?

Oil burning plants were eliminated after Carter's oil crisis.

If we want cheap gas we need to do what Mexico does (for their $2 gas). Regulation and forbid speculation on a "critical" national resource.

(Or just get an ebike!)

Now all we need...

[oodaloop]

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.

$4 for gas, come on

[Mopatop]

I'm so sick to death of this "$4 for a gallon", my heart fucking bleeds.

Come live in the UK for a while.

Wha-huh?

[faloi]

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.

McCain making steps in the right direction lately

[the computer guy nex]

Last couple of days he has been pushing hard for oil and energy independance. I was pretty dissapointed with the party's nomination choice a few months back, but McCain is proving he can step up and fight the conservative battles to move this country in the right direction.

We need to be drilling in Anwar, we need to be drilling offshore, and we need more nuclear energy. These factors will help us last until something like Fusion power is ready.

Global Warming

[The Aethereal]

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.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[nurb432]

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.

McCain is ancient and he'll be dead in a few years

[A beautiful mind]

Seriously, one of the more classic political tricks is to promise something way ahead in time, something that would have to be achieved by someone other than you.

It is just more obvious because of McCain's age. Don't get me wrong, nuclear is currently the safest, greenest option that is economically viable, but promising things 20+ years into the future is pretty bad.

Re:McCain making steps in the right direction late

[pooh666]

Yeah what a great guy. Interesting that he is pushing for a "solution" that only works with massive amounts of very centralized investment. I mean why would anyone want to encourage a wide range of smaller but much safer and more sustainable solutions? Solar, Wind, Geo, are only held back by the standard economic factors. Government intervention that leads to increased usage and production could solve that problem and reduce those costs almost overnight and the consumer wouldn't then have to be slave to yet another(or the same) energy masters.

Re:Obama better support this too

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations, once again you've said nothing of substance while including two links to whore karma.

Every time I see your name attached to a post I know it's going to be the intellectual equivalent of a rice-cake.

Re:And it's only taken 2.9 decades

[SatanicPuppy]

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.

And it's only taken 2.9 decades

[Moryath]

...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.

Re:Nuclear is a great idea.

[navygeek]

I already have. Where I live in Michigan there are two (up and running) nuclear reactors within 30 miles of me. Those two plants supply most of the power to southwest Michigan and northern Indiana. I went to college at Purdue, one of many college campuses that have operational reactors on site (granted it's a small one) and that didn't bother me one bit - even though it was housed in the basement of the building I spent most of my time in. I'm all for it.

That said, I too agree that we need to find viable renewable energy resources. Some combination of wind, solar, and geothermal is my current favorite. Barring those, aren't there enough Scientologists we can put on the pyre? (yes that was a troll/gaff, no I don't apologize :-p )

Re:$4 for gas, come on

[jeffmeden]

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]

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:Seriously, WTF?

[SatanicPuppy]

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:Really?

[Dolohov]

To be fair, the sun (a large unlicensed fusion reactor) is the closest thing to perpetual motion/energy we're ever going to have.

Re:And it's only taken 2.9 decades

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

so where are you goin to put all of this waste that will not be safe to be around for hundreds of thousands of years? Yucca mountain *is* in my back yard.

I'm not surprised...

[DigitalSorceress]

I'm not surprised that a tech-savvy audience like slashdotters would support nuclear power. I haven't studied the issues of safety and environmental impact, and therefore really shouldn't make claims or arguments based on hearsay. However, as a geek, I consider how much science (nuclear, materials, environmental), and technology have advanced since the last US nuclear plant was built, and I have to think that much of the fear of nuclear power is based on 1960's/1970's (Three Mile Island) and/or Soviet (as in 'back in the days of the Soviet Union', and fears about Chernobyl) technology.

Computer control and monitoring has got to be vastly improved since then. I'd also imagine we have learned much about containment and recovery from the aforementioned accidents that would help prevent anything similar in the future. Again, I haven't got enough personal basis to make any claims, but these thoughts have occurred to me.

Add to that a story I recall about someone coming up with a direct nuclear-to-energy conversion material, (line the walls of the core and of high-level storage facilities to generate additional power from previously untapped/unused radiation/byproducts), and I figure nuclear could really give us a decent chance at meeting our energy needs while reducing greenhouse gasses and dependency on foreign oil.

With enough cheap, clean power, plug-in electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles might actually make sense (since those technologies may eliminate emissions at the car, but still require the generation of power elsewhere ... often not the cleanest generation at the moment).

Anyhow, IANANS (I am not a Nuclear Scientist), so I really can't offer any facts, and IANASP (I am not a stinking politician) so I can't really offer any FUD, but I believe we should give nuclear power a chance, and it appears that a lot of other geeks (for their own varying reasons) seem to believe the same.

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Re:Seriously, WTF?

[vidarh]

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

And recoverable at what cost (money and/or energy)?

it doesn't help much if we have a 1000 years worth of fissionable material if the cost of mining a large chunk of it is so high it's not cost effective for most uses.

Not saying nuclear isn't an option, but while a number like "1,000 years worth" might sound high, it might also be very low if it's a measure of how long the materials will last at current usage levels.

nuclear power is fine

[fermion]

The problem is the entitlements to the Energy industry and how we are going to deal with the waste. If the nuclear plants can be built without government subsidies beyond perhaps land grants, then that would be great. I do not see why we should support bussinesses that aren'r profitable witout entitlements.

The second issue is that we have to get a nuclear depository up and running. Every year the treasury is paying huge amounts of taxpayer money to the nuclear power plants for storage of waste. Who knows how many of those of payments are fraudulent. Until we get a national nuclear waste dump up and running, nuclear power is going to a magnet for corruption of the public purse.

Re:Obama better support this too

[Anonymous Coward]

wedge issues for the win! If you let ONE issue, be it nuclear power, abortion, fetus tissue research, gun control, you name it, decide your vote for the presidency, you are a moron who doesn't deserve the vote our forefathers put in your hands.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[SatanicPuppy]

The oil problem is that the big fields are all tapped already, so while there is plenty left, you have to set up tons of small pumping operations to keep up the quantity, and that's going to drive up the price regardless of whether we're doing more or less drilling.

I think we need to work more on adopting alternatives than trying to keep the oil rush going. An increase in efficiency (with attendant drop in demand) will keep the prices down even if the supply doesn't significantly expand.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[COMON$]

I have a friend of mine who is an engineer for the public power district out here. He mentioned that Nuclear power has come a long way in being efficient with it's waste product. Eg recycling it back into the plant and whatnot. So I think as we get more nuclear power plants going and more resources pushed in that direction we will see even higher efficiency levels.

However, the greatest untapped energy source is, and always will be the sun. Things like using solar panels at your house and being more energy efficient will be our greatest step towards solving our energy problems. People themselves need to start taking their energy use into their own hands. Their are entire neighborhoods in the US who are self sufficient and actually give energy back. There is no reason why this idea cannot spread to more of the US. So rather than relying on 3rd party for all your needs, start thinking of how you can help at home.

What? What kind of nonsense is this?

[biolysis]

"Why the hell should we?"

So we'll have it when we need it? Drilling is not as instantaneous process.

"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."

Or, we could drill for it now so we'd have it when it reached 300 a barrel, instead of needing 5 years to get at it after it reaches 300 a barrel.

If that is the sum of your objections to drilling, then you have no legitimate objections.

Re:Obama better support this too

[FireFury03]

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:Seriously, WTF?

[tha_mink]

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?

[homer_s]

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:$4 for gas, come on

[Anonymous Coward]

What the average person pays for a gallon of gas has little to do with why the price of oil is a problem. Don't you think that the world economy benefits from the low price of US fuel?

Everything you buy has to be transported (pretty much), and many of them are made from petroleum. You may never pay more than $9 a gallon for gas (assuming your country reduces taxes to alleviate the price increase at the pump), but you'll end up paying more for everything else.

My heart bleeds.

yeah, but

[Reality Master 201]

1) Your country is far smaller than the US, so you need to do less in terms of commuting ,etc,
2) you've had the benefit of years of rational development and land use planning, and
3) you've got extensive and well funded public transportation systems. (yeah, I know NS has been having issues in the last few years - it's light years ahead of the way things are in the US. Most cities here have nothing nearly as good as the trams, busses, and metros of various European cities).

We built up our country stupidly, particularly after WWII. We put extensive, relatively sparse tracts of housing far outside of places where people work and provide only highways for transportation. And we're going to pay the price for that, but we're still in the kicking and screaming tantrum stage, and won't start to deal realistically with the issues till the situation is far worse. Expect our politicians to do nothing to get us to grow the fuck up, either.

Re:Oil not equal to nuclear

[antirelic]

This is mixing two separate issues. Oil is not the problem as far as producing electricity, its coal. Coal produces an enormous carbon foot print and is just all around nasty (from other residual waste to the damage to the environment that occurs just getting at it). I grew up in north east Pennsylvania, and I have seen first hand the impact of coal mining, its pretty horrific.

Back to my point. 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. Wind power will also do nothing for our dependence on oil for gasoline.

Another case of policitians using unrelated events to push policy. Albiet, in poor taste, he is at least using this opportunity to point us to a real solution. I hate to say it, but Wind, Solar, Geothermal, etc. are not ready for deployment today. They eventually will be, but by that time (10+ years), it will take another 20+ years before they even make up a few % of global energy production. By that time Nuclear plants can be rolled out en mass and go a long way to reduce our carbon footprint (but not demand on foreign oil, sorry, thats just a different topic).

No Silver Bullet

[s31523]

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.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[A beautiful mind]

The world seriously needs to loosen it's oil dependency. There aren't that many oil fields that are easily extractable anyway. There is tons of shale of course, but it's not nearly as energy efficient as oil used to be. Compared to that non-fossil fuels are more cost effective.

We need to factor the environmental impact into the price. Let's tax pollutants heavily and spend the income on energy efficiency research, energy source research, pollution cleanup and research. I'm thinking fuel prices like in Europe (so around double of the current US price), but the tax content spent like above.

So the two parties' basic energy policies ...

[argStyopa]

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.

Here they go again

[Moryath]

Any time you mention the truth about the enviro-nutjob movement, some slashdot troll with a mod point will be there to bury you.

I'm all about SENSIBLE environmental policy. That means we have to balance OUR needs for resources with RESPONSIBLE environmentalism, not turn the entire fucking planet into an off-limits nature preserve.

And yes, it means that there just may need to be a power plant, or a chemical refinery, or any other of a large number of the usual items that trigger "OMGWTFNIMBYAAUGH" reactions from the enviro-nutjobs, NEAR to population centers so that we RESPONSIBLY reduce the transportation and delivery costs (not just monetary but WASTED FUEL ENERGY).

Think about it. It costs us at LEAST 25% more fossil fuel energy [cbsnews.com] to turn OUR FOOD SUPPLY into ethanol fuel and deliver it where it needs to go, than we get back. Ethanol has been one of the biggest energy disasters we've ever gotten into. And at the same time we WASTE petroleum trying to do this, the price of food for starving countries is going through the roof because the US, an exporter of corn, is BURNING THE FOOD SUPPLY - LITERALLY.

Think of it this way: would you dump a gallon jug of Jack Daniels in your gas tank? Guess what - YOU JUST DID. Oh, and the reason you constantly have to get your injectors cleaned and serviced and buy injector cleaner to put in your tank? That's right - ethanol is incredibly corrosive to your rubber fuel line!

And yet the enviro-nutjobs keep screaming for ethanol production and refuse to consider how wasteful it is. They refuse to consider the fact that the "renewable" energy sources all have problems too: in order to make an order of solar panels from polysilicon, you create an immense amount of TOXIC WASTE [cnet.com] that has to be dealt with. If you run a mirror-based solar farm, you've got to keep the mirrors polished (congratulations, keep a lot of toxic chemicals handy and be prepared to toxify the hell out of the soil) just as a start. And all it takes to lower or cut entirely your generating capacity is a nice cloud or two. Earth seems to be fairly old hat at generating those, somehow. Walk outside and take a quick peek at the sky, chances are there's one around.

Wind farms are INCREDIBLY noisy and disruptive, the power is intermittent at best with very minimal generating capacity for the land area used, and a major killer of endangered birds already.

Geothermal has limited areas in which it can be placed, areas which are invariably tectonically unstable (or worse yet: the "best" places are usually right in the expected lava flow/blast zone of a volcano).

Tidal power has the same problem, you can only do it on a shoreline, and a rise/fall in the shoreline (not due to "global warming" but simply tectonic activity or seasonal changes in large lakes) can kill it quite easily, since the turbines have to be set at the right place to match the incoming/outgoing tides... and even then, they ONLY generate power during the tidal shift.

Biomass is a nice thought, but you get back to the food supply and other effects. Wood chips? Watch the price of particulate board matter of all sorts (the sort likely most of your furniture is made of, especially if it came from Ikea) jack through the roof. Much of the rest is fed to animals or composted to create fertilizer in order to grow more food, which means you'll decrease crop yields and jack food prices up again.

Do I say we shouldn't use these? No. But if we had a SENSIBLE and RESPONSIBLE nuclear policy, including recycling "spent" fuel and refining it back for reuse rather than trying to stash it under a mountain, we could eliminate a LOT more of the oil/natural gas/coal portion of our energy than these sources are ever likely to manage.

Re:$5 a gallon?

[nurb432]

Its not our fault you are paying more, so why should we suffer the same fate?

That makes ZERO sense and is a tired, lame argument. We of course want to better our situation, and if others dont follow suit and roll over, that is their problem.

Besides, our nation is far more spread out then yours, and we rely on private transportation. ( for both daily life and food manufacture, which we export a lot that food )

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[dspratomo]

wrong, volcanic soil are mostly rich, therefore many settlements is near volcano. I live in one of the most volcanic area in the world, Indonesian Archipelago, and Java, the most dense island has some active vulcanoes. I think geothermal never really start because most first world countries doesn't have enough volcanoes to harness it, where here (IMHO the perfect natural lab, because of ring of fire) our government lack of willing to pursue such energy (they plan to build a nuclear reactor nearby)

Re:And it's only taken 2.9 decades

[Just Some Guy]

Flamebait? More like painful honesty. Carter was a nice guy and obviously very smart, but his energy policies are crippling us. Think of where we might be today if we had 30 years of experience running breeder reactors on a wide-scale basis.

Re:$5 a gallon?

[Remus Shepherd]

Your economy is different than ours.

Most European countries can easily be crossed by road in an hour or two, and they have extensive rail service besides. America runs on trucks that deliver goods from one coast to the other and back again. Not to mention that we have commuters who live 1-2 hours away from their jobs. Imagine living in Paris and commuting every day to Amsterdam, by car. That's what a lot of Americans depend upon.

To adapt to $9/gallon gas, we will need extensive changes to our way of life. That's why people are complaining. Change isn't easy.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[SatanicPuppy]

Eh. It's not economical for big business in some cases, but it often does make sense for individuals.

I live in the Southeast US and I get to listen to the politicians and power company execs tell me that our area "isn't good for solar power" when I have to take my tapes and CDs inside in the summer so they don't melt in my car.

Adding a few middling well placed solar panels to your roof to offset your power usage isn't that expensive, and there are companies that will do it in exchange for you paying them an amount of money equal to the difference between your average electric bill (pre-panels) and post-panels for a decade or so.

Energy efficient appliances; why does your stereo use almost as much power when it's off? Actual awareness of the amount of power your appliances are using is a very simple way of reducing your power consumption.

If enough people took modest steps like that, the need for coal and oil power plants could be dramatically reduced, and yes, big business is very much against that, because they're in the business of selling you electricity, and the less you buy from them, the less money they make.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[torkus]

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.

actually, most studies show 35% gain from ethanol

[N8F8]

soem references [journeytoforever.org]. And that's not including new genetically enhanced corn varieties or other crop/waste sources that will come along once the industry is established.

Re:$5 a gallon?

[Shakrai]

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.

2 other things to consider

[aztecmonkey]

1. More reactors = more nuclear waste

Look how long it has taken for any state to accept the toxic nuclear waste. How long before we have to start looking for more dumping grounds for these new active power plants?

One of our biggest poblems, particularly in the US, is the lack of long-range planning when it comes to energy policy. Our entire society has been built on the presumption that oil is and will always be cheap, which considering Hubbert's peak oil predictions in the 50's is remarkably foolish and short-sighted. We really need to look at the long-term implications of nuclear or any other energy source, and start planning now instead of waiting for another crisis to develop.

2. Where there's vast amounts of money, there is fraud.

Near my home in the 1980's a nuclear plant began construction, and it turned out that the contractor was skimming money off the top and not building the plant to spec. When the state finally inspected it, the walls were honeycombed because the contractor was skimping on the concrete! Imagine if that plant had gone online.

It's not so much the technology I'm worried about - it's the greedy motherfuckers who are willing to cut corners for a profit that concern me. I have no interest in helping some CEO finally get that island in the Pacific while my state turns into a Chernobyl site.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks to the miracle of "power transmission", you can generate power and send it to people literally miles away!

Seriously, on the west coast, geothermal power is terribly under-exploited, it doesn't consume any fuel or take up the thousands of acres that solar and wind do.

Re:$4 for gas, come on

[neumayr]

OMG, a bicycle?! Really, you must be on the brink of poverty.
By the way, it's for a large part because of that taxation European governments do that European gas prices haven't risen as much as they did in the US.
You people get to feel the economy's hiccups raw and unfiltered. That's raw free market for you, something some slashdotters seem to take as the pinnacle of economic development or something...

Re:Oil not equal to nuclear

[oodaloop]

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

[Dougmeister]

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

Yes actually, and I WILL blame him

[biolysis]

"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."

When viewed in retrospect, yes, that is exactly how it appears things have shaken out.

Your post is just a reworded argument form authority.

"Don't blame Carter for the hysteria of the day."

Why the fuck not? He, according to YOU, was trained better and more informed, yet he ALLOWED the hysteria, even kowtowing to it in some cases. Why shouldn't I blame him for allowing irrational fear to dominate the discussion, when according to YOU he should have had the information necessary to defuse the hysteria?

History proved his positions wrong. If he was as informed as you think, how did he ALLOW that to happen? And why do you think he gets a pass for it?

Re:Nukes could solve a lot of issues

[drinkypoo]

How about a 2 gigawatt plant dedicated to pumping and desalianting seawater for the Southwest's water supply?

How about doing it with solar desalinators, which cost almost nothing to operate?

Not only could this provide a primary source for drinking water, it would provide the immense environmental benefit of stopping the drain-to-dry on the rivers and aquifers.

Why on earth would you do this any way other than solar? We're talking about the desert, where you can pump water with basically long glass tubes which are operated by solar. They use them to pump water in the sahara now. Look it up. You are so far behind the state of the art it's not even funny.

Actually, it makes FAR more sense to simply combine solar desalination with algae production. The US DOE said this (just the algae part, let alone producing fresh water which you get to do for the price of tenting your algae ponds with clear plastic, basically) would be profitable by the time petrodiesel hit $3/gallon. It's over five now.

Building the plants and using the majority of the power on site has big benefits, too, since you won't lose half your power to transmission loss -- it's like getting a free power plant.

We lose a total of 5% in the US due to transmission. I CALL SHENANIGANS. You are either promoting an agenda or simply do not know what you are talking about.

Re:$4 for gas, come on

[yolto]

You know, I'm really tired of Europeans telling me to "stop whining" about high gas prices. Have you ever BEEN to the US? We don't live the same way as most people in Europe do. We're less densely populated, have to commute farther to work, and many of us (unless we live in a big city) have very little to nothing in the way of public transportation options (Since our gas isn't taxed to fund public transportation as it is in Europe).

This isn't to say that the US couldn't benefit from some adjustments in the way we commute, but for now the reality is that although in many places in the world a car is a luxury, in most parts of the US it's a necessity.

So please get off your high horse and realize that the situation is different over here and we are much more affected by the price of gas than you are.

Re:$5 a gallon?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it's a cycle. It's a cycle where OPEC learned (back in the 1970s and 1980s) that they can only push so far before the global economy starts to suffer, demand goes down, price goes down, and they stop making money as rapidly. That crisis was artificial.

There are two things to understand about the cyclic pattern:

1) this one is a little different because of the phenominal growth in demand in the developing world. Even if the industrialized world's economies suffer a bit, overall global demand may still go up, and, in the last decade, the growth has been 2-4% per year. Do the math. That growth is real, strongly driven, and it will be hard to reduce it to zero.

2) even if prices go down significantly (something I doubt will happen for very long -- see #1) they'll be back up again eventually. Prices will cycle back and forth on an overall upward curve, even on constant-dollar prices adjusted for inflation. The reason is simple: it is a limited resource and it is getting more expensive in real terms to find it and produce it (e.g., the Canadian tar sands have ample, but more expensive, oil). That reality will not change fundamentally unless demand declines enormously (as in: global economic collapse, not merely a recession, or some magical new energy source).

You're right that it's a cycle, but people are blaming the producer rather than themselves for most the problem. The main reason for the recent price spike is more than a decade of increasing *demand*, not decreasing supply.

If you model the whole thing as a drug [wikipedia.org] to which the world economy is severely addicted perhaps it will make more sense. The only way the price will truly and permanently go down is if people lose interest and swear off it forever, or they switch en masse to something else to get their energy hit. That ain't happening much so far, so pay the pusher and get used to varying but on average rising prices, junkie, and hope that you don't have to also finance another drug war to ensure you get your next fix when you visit the pump. Maybe if people hadn't binged so much with their SUVs for so long and depleted their domestic stash the withdrawal wouldn't hurt so much now.

Blame it on the pushers all you like, but that's only half the story.

Re:Now all we need...

[Gallamine]

I live 25 miles from a nuclear power plan (Shearon Harris) and I've never come across anyone in the area that seems all that bothered by it. In fact, the entire capital of NC is that close and we live our lives like normal people.

Re:Oil not equal to nuclear

[Alarindris]

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

[Just Some Guy]

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.

That's dumb. As dirty as coal plants are, they are far cleaner than the equivalent power output from internal combustion engines. If it takes n joules to get you from place to place, you're better off using the more efficient method of getting those joules.

Re:$4 for gas, come on

[Locklin]

So, you have the right to whine because you built your country wrong??

DISCLAIMER: I live in Canada, which is arguably worse when it comes to "urban sprawl" and poorly designed cities, but I am one of the few that doesn't whine about fuel.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[Mprx]

Coal and nuclear are the only feasible options to meet current energy needs. Coal burning is already an environmental disaster, and produces more radioactive waste than nuclear. Even if we disregard the possibility of CO2 induced climate change coal is still totally unacceptable. Nuclear is the only sensible option.

Re:And it's only taken 2.9 decades

[DaveV1.0]

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.

This is exactly what the PP is talking about. Carter ignored his own training and bowed to the anti-nuclear enviro-whackos. It was the anti-nuclear crowd, including Hollywood types such as Jane Fonda, used scare tactics, such as tying nuclear power to nuclear weapons, and disinformation to destroy the nuclear power industry.

Re:Oil not equal to nuclear

[prisoner-of-enigma]

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:$5 a gallon?

[Mongoose Disciple]

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.

Re:Nukes could solve a lot of issues

[tjstork]

We lose a total of 5% in the US due to transmission. I CALL SHENANIGANS. You are either promoting an agenda or simply do not know what you are talking about.

I call ignorance. The reason we have relatively low losses is because we tend not to move power very far. Once you start trying to ship power from the spot in the country that happens to be sunny or windy, losses will go up and by quite a bit. Having power being produced where you want it, and when you want it, has enormous advantages and, up until quite recently, is what separated the industrial world from the third world. Now we'll all be praying to the Wind Gods to come... humanity renders itself helpless again. Hell of a future you got there for us.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[xaxa]

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.

They all have at least one good point though: what do we do with the waste?

Re:yeah, but

[Lurks]

"1) Your country is far smaller than the US,"

...and the other two points. Sure, those are true but they didn't just magically happen either. It wasn't just because these countries are 'small' - much as Americans are so very fond of thinking of Europe (while they themselves tend to move very small distances from where they were born, as a statistic) - it's because the governments of Europe imposed tax penalties on fuel.

This was done to hit demand and create a market for fuel efficient vehicles and other practises that curb demand. It's worked too, oil burned per capita of people in Europe is a fraction of what Americans use and the CO2 output per capita is even more stark.

America retained the love of huge fuel inefficient cars, SUVs etc while the lobby-driven politics ensured it was political suicide for anyone to grow a spin and impose fuel taxation or indeed any other significant measures to break the American love affair with burning oil.

Most cars people drive in Europe are smaller, designed primarily for running costs and not the sound that a large capacity engine makes (you've got to listen to the round-tabel panel on Ward's Top Ten engines for a clue as to just how important they believe this junk to be), but instead the engines are more expensive and technically advanced to improve economy.

So baring this in mind, it's pretty unfair to suggest that Europe just got handed all of these advantages. They were hard fought and hard won. We've been paying decades of tax on fuel.

While you're whining about $4 a gallon, we're paying $5 a gallon JUST IN TAX. We're already driving around fuel efficient vehicles and paying through the nose with road/green taxes, CO2-based taxes, expensive emissions standards driving up costs of vehicles and servicing costs and have been for YEARS. So you'll have to excuse us if we don't have vast amounts of sympathy for the complaints coming from the other side of the Atlantic right now.

Nuclear very expensive

[mlwmohawk]

Nuclear power is far far more expensive than oil. Not only is it security risk, but the health hazards are enormous in obtaining the fuel, refining the fuel, using the fuel, and disposal of the spent fuel.

Inevitable accidents have world wide affects. To make it worse, nuclear power plants are not the most productive.

I can't recall the study, but the cost benefits of nuclear energy that are quoted never factor in disposal (storage actually) of the spent rods or cleanup of accidents.

Do we need a reminder of 3 mile island or chernobyl?

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[loshwomp]

If it were economical to harness energy from all those sources, don't you think the greedy capitalists would've been all over it?

Pure capitalism doesn't work well, here, because it's so easy to externalize your costs on the rest of society. In other words, burning coal seems cheap and great because you're probably not accounting for the cost of global warming, acid rain, etc. Power companies (and, by proxy, their customers) "externalize" these costs onto the rest of the world.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[TubeSteak]

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.

And now the industrial base does not exist to quickly ramp up nuclear plant production.

http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/08/03/14/1238233.shtml [slashdot.org]

"There stands the only plant in the world, a survivor of Allied bombing in World War II, capable of producing the central part of a nuclear reactor's containment vessel in a single piece, reducing the risk of a radiation leak. Utilities that won't need the equipment for years are making $100 million down payments now on components Japan Steel makes from 600-ton ingots. Each year the Tokyo-based company can turn out just four of the steel forgings that contain the radioactivity in a nuclear reactor. Even after it doubles capacity in the next two years, there won't be enough production to meet building plans."

It'll take their "competition" 5 years to possibly get in on the action.

As for McCain...
Call me a cynic, but I can't imagine a nuclear plan is going to survive across multiple administrations without getting seriously screwed up. The only way it'd work is if hypothetical President McCain finds *all the money* for his program *now* and throws it in Al Gore's hypothetical lockbox.

Re:Obama better support this too

[PseudoQuant]

Here's a statement from Obama before the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works:

"However, as Congress considers policies to address air quality and the deleterious effects of carbon emissions on the global ecosystem, it is reasonable - and realistic - for nuclear power to remain on the table for consideration. Illinois has 11 nuclear power plants - the most of any State in the country - and nuclear power provides more than half of Illinois' electricity needs."

"But keeping nuclear power on the table - and indeed planning for the construction of new plants - is only possible if the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is vigilant in its mission. We need better long-term strategies for storing and securing nuclear waste and for ensuring the safe operation of nuclear power plants. How we develop these strategies is a major priority for me."

Seems like a reasonable position to me, growth is possible if there is sufficient oversight.

Nevadans for Nukes

[Visual77]

As a Nevadan who lives within 100 miles of Yucca Mountain, I'm pro nuclear power. The containment methods are rock solid and the shipping bypasses the major city of Las Vegas entirely. Plus, the fees my state will charge other states will provide a good supply of income that can be used to overhaul some underfunded departments, notably transportation and education.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[vijayiyer]

What's your source for this? Why would a jetliner do anything to a nuclear power plant? Do you realize what those containment vessels are like? And even a breach of the containment vessel doesn't render anything uninhabitable for 5000 years. Even Chernobyl didn't/doesn't have that problem.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[Timothy Brownawell]

They all have at least one good point though: what do we do with the waste?

Reprocess it and use it instead of throwing it out. The reason it's dangerous is that it still has enough energy in it to be useful. Supposedly reprocessing is dangerous because someone might steal it, but I suspect that this risk is vastly overstated, and the risks of waste being stolen or just leaking away over time are similarly understated. Is it easier to guard something for a year, or a few centuries?

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[vijayiyer]

The problem is that the environmentalist movement is not made up of technically savvy people. They do spread FUD all day without any interest in gaining a real understanding of the underlying technologies, their risks, and their rewards. Partly, that's because the masses have lost trust in science itself (look at the creation/evolution "debate"), and science no longer wins over public opinion. That's extremely frustrating to the engineers who understand the issues involved.

Re:Oil not equal to nuclear

[SydShamino]

The price of that coal still doesn't properly reflect its true cost, because the people who burn coal don't have to pay for the air they pollute or the CO2 they release. And too many of them get away without installing the available technologies to scrub the exhaust, such as what almost happened here in Texas when Rick Perry fast-tracked a bunch of plants and forgave them from pollution controls.

When the real cost of coal in considered, and nuclear scales with more regular plant production, I think the prices will be more equitable.

(My home is powered from wind and hydro. http://www.greenmountainenergy.com/ [greenmountainenergy.com])

Re:McCain making steps in the right direction late

[bockelboy]

Any idiot can see the need for nuclear power and cheap oil now. It's funny how we only see the need for something which takes 10 years to build when we need it today.

A real leader would have seen it 10 years ago.

I'm not impressed. Building new power plants is a proposition that a 6th grader could write. These politicians act like their geniuses when their train of thought appears to be "If people scream about problem X, then we fix problem X.". It should be "X will become a problem in 5 years. Better start fixing it now."

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[KDR_11k]

Proliferation concerns could cause diplomatic trouble with other nations, especially China. If other nuclear powers see that as a threat they might start increasing their own arsenal.

Bush, McCain 2005 Energy Act and PUCHA

[MrKaos]

It's not surprising McCain supports this idea, the Energy act of 2005 abolished a guardian of the American Economy called the P.U.C.H.A, the Public Utilities Company Holding Act. It was put in place to prevent a repeat of the 1929 stock market crash and nullified by none other than George. W. Bush. Pre approved reactor designs get you tax discounts even if a suitable company does nothing but say they will build one. Get ready to sell existing nuclear utilities and ratepayers get ready to part with more and more cash.

Because the companies ideally placed to take advantage of these changes and really get a strangle hold on the American economy are Oil Companies. The only way for them to really pillage the American Taxpayer is to be able to speculate on building reactors that are of the "approved design" into the future. The only approved designs are all 'once through' fuel cycle so any discussion about breeder reactors ends here and the discussion about the lack of net energy returns from the nuclear fuel cycle begin.

You have to be pragmatic about this, P.U.C.H.A was put in place to stop America going back into a economic depression. Greed is greed, supporting this will enable the legislative framework to gut the American economy and taxpayer of remaining assets for the next 20 to 30 years.

Please America, you are a technological nation, you can solve your energy needs without nuclear power.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[interstellar_donkey]

Or 4) Put it in the well designed, over engineered Yucca Mountain facility. Oh wait, the anti-nuke fundies refuse to accept that the place is safe.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[drsquare]

So what you're saying, is that if we all switch to nuclear, the costs of the fuel will shoot up like oil is doing now?

Re:Not just that

[rukkyg]

Chernobyl is nothing like any plants in the US.
There are only a few plants like 3-Mile island, and the issue was fixed. Including in other plant designs, where they added a detector on pipe by the block valve out of the pressurizer, to verify that the valve is shut. Further, there has been huge amounts of advances in emergency procedure and trainings since then.

Also, all of the new designs that are just now being completed (and built in China) fail safe as well, even though they too are light water reactors.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[lawaetf1]

Had a $10 padlock and a 1/4" of aluminum door been in the way of the 9/11 hijackers they would have been rendered helpless. We essentially gave them a bunch of jets to do what they wanted to do with. That sort of free weaponry is no longer as readily available to any lunatic with a box cutter.

Yes there's a risk but there are other needs as well. Like stop pumping carbon into the atmosphere by the megaton.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[lawaetf1]

if hypothetical President McCain finds *all the money* for his program *now*

And why not? We found a trillion+ for a pointless war in Iraq.

Re:Oil not equal to nuclear

[slashname3]

Water heated by a nuclear plant won't be radioactive it will just be hot.

Re:Distributed Generation and Conservation

[russotto]

Electricity can most efficiently be generated as close to where it is consumed as possible.

Um, no. We have these things called "high voltage transmission lines", and while they are not 100% efficient, the economies of scale achieved by placing a larger plant further away mean that it just isn't that simple. Not to mention that you also have to consider the issue of providing the plant with the fuel.

What we need to look at is massive investment in small scale generation. Every house in the world should have grid connected photovoltaics on the roof.

Yeah, that'll do a lot of good in Seattle. Not to mention the cost of _producing_ all those photovoltaics, in both money and energy.

The power companies may find they have such a windfall of power during daylight hours that they have to invest in pumped storage hydro, flywheel, or other energy storage systems. While they can take the fossil plants offline permanently.

Another one who hasn't looked at the numbers. All these "alternatives" (unless you count nuclear) can barely make a _dent_ in fossil fuel use. They're boutique sources, good for environmentalists and politicians to point to justify not finding more oil or using more coal, but they just can't cut the mustard.

Re:Here they go again

[hypnagogue]

Wind farms are INCREDIBLY noisy and disruptive, the power is intermittent at best with very minimal generating capacity for the land area used, and a major killer of endangered birds already.

Assuming you use the word "INCREDIBLY" to mean "nothing you say can be believed", I would agree.

Re:yeah, but

[Reality Master 201]

Sure, those are true but they didn't just magically happen either. It wasn't just because these countries are 'small' - much as Americans are so very fond of thinking of Europe (while they themselves tend to move very small distances from where they were born, as a statistic) - it's because the governments of Europe imposed tax penalties on fuel.

Oh, I agree, these things didn't crop up magically.

But when I say America is bigger, I mean, our cities are more spread out and our suburbs (and exurbs, and beyond) are further from population centers; and whereas you have a way of doing a 50 mile commute via public transportation in most of Europe, that's not the case for most of the US. And a lot of us commute from suburb to suburb, which presents a problem since most of the public transit we do have is of a wheel-spoke design. Just in terms of convenience and practicality, a lot of Americans are in a living situation where driving is their best option. I'm not endorsing this, but it is the way things are.

America retained the love of huge fuel inefficient cars, SUVs etc while the lobby-driven politics ensured it was political suicide for anyone to grow a spin and impose fuel taxation or indeed any other significant measures to break the American love affair with burning oil.

I completely agree. Americans love cars that are unnecessarily large, and have myriad justifications for why they're better (leg room, lots of children, safety, etc.). And it's a combination of that love and the fact that our development has been such that it encourages dependence on cars that's led to the pain we're having now WRT oil prices. You do have to keep in mind the double whammy we have here - it's not just we have a love of SUVs, it's that we love them and we also have gotten our society into the position of "having" do drive a lot.

So baring this in mind, it's pretty unfair to suggest that Europe just got handed all of these advantages. They were hard fought and hard won. We've been paying decades of tax on fuel.

I didn't say that, and if it seemed that I did, that certainly wasn't what I meant. I know you guys worked at it - you had the minor advantage of a smaller and more established population setup, but you didn't go hog wild for driving and you controlled the situation very well through gas taxes. Kudos, believe me - we didn't have the discipline to enforce sane development practices or gas efficiency, and we are and will continue to pay the price for that.

And, for what it's worth, I don't own a car. I live two miles from where I work, and I walk there, or take a bus if it's raining. I chose this living situation, and rearranged my life around it. You'll hear Americans bitching that they can't do that - it's a lie. They can. It might be expensive, or inconvenient, or different - a lot of them don't want to live in cities because of crime or whatever. But a lot of Americans are living an unsustainable lifestyle, and that's going to have to change, whether or not they like it. If nothing else, the cost of maintaining that will shoot up dramatically for the foreseeable future.

Re:WRONG

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Well, then you'd have people worried that pulling CO2 from the atmosphere will kill the plants that need the CO2 to survive! :)

Re:Here they go again

[Arccot]

And yet the enviro-nutjobs keep screaming for ethanol production and refuse to consider how wasteful it is.

Hmmm... I haven't heard of any real environmentally focused organizations supporting corn-based or sugar-based ethanol. Who has been saying that?

Switchgrass and bio-diesel are a different story; they can be more efficient without decreasing food production.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[hey!]

The problem is that the environmentalist movement is not made up of technically savvy people.

Oh, is the "Environmentalist Movement" the new "Democrat Party" now?

The truth is that the environmental movement is made up of all kinds of people, some of whom are of course luddites, some of whom are extremely technical, but get their techie jollies from things like energy saving technologies and alternative energy.

The problem is people who think they can solve the world's problems by selecting a label, applying it to people as a way of saying everything is their fault. This works when Mom and Dad are around to clean up the mess, but in the grown up world, you quickly find out that blaming somebody else doesn't get anything useful done.

The problem is too many people depending on somebody else to be the responsible adult.

The truth is that petroleum is a commodity that is, as far as we know, limited. Too many of us, however, acted like cheap oil was a permanent feature of the world. And now they're looking for somebody to gripe about.

So now it's the fault of the people who chose to drive the smallest car they could to cut down on pollution, or to live close to where they work, or to find a job where they could telecommute or take public transportation. Worse yet are the people who chose careers in things like alternative energy technologies and conservation. Nobody liked those people anyway, so it must be their fault we don't have fusion powered SUVs.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[torkus]

Yes, but someone might get ahold of a box cutter and after a few intermediate steps knock down two skyscrapers in downtown NYC. Just because something might happen or even DID happen doesn't mean you put life on hold (ok, so the giant pit of WTC is an embarassment but they're finally building). It means you take a careful look and weigh risks.

Should you sell enriched plutonium samples to guests after the group tour of your breeder reactor plant? Probably not. Should you not build something that produces a net gain in available fuel while also producing a shit load of power and potentially solves the looming energy crisis because someone, somewhere, somehow might do something bad?

That sounds like paranoia to me.

Build some breeders in a safe location and the use the fuel to build those 'tennis ball' reactors that use a bit of fuel in a graphite ball and helium coolant.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[Shakrai]

Nuclear is not financially sustainable when you factor in waste disposal and storage or waste reprocessing.

And carbon based energy sources are financially sustainable when you factor in the costs of global warming, food shortages, sea-level rise and increased disease?

We used to have a name for this kind of policy

[hey!]

It was called the "planned economy". If you reckoned the economy needed 100 units of steel mills and 50 units of aluminum factories, but private individuals built 150 units of steel and 25 units of aluminum, you'd take money from steel to ensure that an additional 25 units of aluminum were brought online.

Not coincidentally corporate welfare is exactly the same thing, only you don't tell people they aren't allowed to build steel mills. Instead, you just take money away from everyone, and give it to the aluminum producers. As a result fewer of everything else gets built, including steel mills. What we have here is a proposal to have the government guarantee to the nuclear industry that at least two nuclear plants per year will be built on average, every year for the next twenty years.

Speaking as a free-spending political liberal, that's too much even for me. I'd be all for giving some government grants and regulatory relief to enable several pilot plants for new technologies to be built, to help the industry get back on its feet. But after that, they're on their own. I'm for technology research (which conservatives view as interfering with the market), but at least I don't think the government should be in the business of putting nuclear power's competitors out of business.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[badasscat]

The only way to blow up a nuclear power plant is to pack it full of TNT.

I'm sure the former residents of Pripyat, Ukraine would be relieved to hear that.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[yhetti]

Blaming people doesn't get anything done, that's correct...but what happens when a "movement" spends decades raising fear about something that would never happen and then rescinds on their proverbial deathbed?

Or, another way, the founder of Greenpeace is now a strong proponent of nuclear energy because it's safer, cleaner, more plentiful, and cheaper (in that order) than any other energy source we have available for the next few decades. Even he has rescinded his view [washingtonpost.com]. He has also made the comment that Greenpeace has largely been taken away from true environmentalist and taken over by anti-capitalists that use the environment as a weapon.

So in this case, we can very clearly "blame" environmentalists for shouting loudly and obnoxiously for decades...and being flat-out WRONG. They are -responsible-, directly, for the predicament we're in now. Any moron with a cause can get TV airtime, but everybody has to deal with the fallout.

It's important to place blame, in this case, widely, loudly, and prominently so that, hopefully, future generations won't be suckered in by charlatans with a "cause." If we give previous generations of "environmentalists" a pass on this one, and on "climate change", and on DDT, and on... you start to see the pattern developing here.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[badasscat]

And carbon based energy sources are financially sustainable when you factor in the costs of global warming, food shortages, sea-level rise and increased disease?

No form of energy production is financially sustainable on its own. That's partly the point. You're just substituting one set of problems for another, and in the end you're back in the same boat. Only you realize it *after* having spent $40 billion or whatever on building all these reactors. (And I suspect the costs would be much higher, because nobody wants to live within 20 miles of a nuclear plant... and that drives property values down, which in turn affects property tax revenues. These hidden costs are ongoing, and over the life of a reactor probably add up to an enormous amount that's far greater than the initial outlay to build the reactor.)

Nobody would argue that the solution to our energy problems is to do nothing. But nuclear power is no cheaper than coal or oil when all of its costs are factored in, and it has a lot of other problems that sources like solar and wind don't. (Of course, they have problems that nuclear doesn't too, but I'd still rather have a bunch of ugly windmills on a hill nearby than a nuclear power plant or a nuclear waste site.)

And it's funny to see people say things like "oh, Chernobyl wasn't that bad... it's only been 20 years and it's almost inhabitable again!" Great. Tell that to New York City when Indian Point blows a proverbial gasket and spews radioactivity all over the area. What do you think would happen to our economy in the case of a single accident that affects a large metropolitan area? Indian Point is notorious for safety lapses and poor maintenance (including radiation leaks) and I see no reason to expect that any new nuclear reactors would fare any better.

Re:2 other things to consider

[clonan]

#1 With reprocessing the amount of nuclear waste created in a year by ALL US nuclear plants that is unusable/dangerous would fit into a standard closet. If you then include that into the fuel for breeder reactors the danger time period drops to about 50 years at which point that one ton of material a year is as radioactive as coal ash. Or you can use this extremely highly radioactive waste to generate even more energy and do so for the next few hundred years...

#2 The same is true of ANY big money operation. Go watch Erin Brockovich. That was a coal fired power plant. In your power plant example, there is actually no reason to expect that a honeycombed wall would compromise safety. So long as the reactor was built well the other walls of the building don't matter much, it's not GOOD but it's not more likely to irradiate you. Also note that the inspections process worked...

uranium price

[Dr. Cody]

They already have. [stockinterview.com] Nuclear power will get vastly more expensive than today, but with operationally proven technologies we'll see the end of coal (over 200 years from now, all things being equal)) before we see the end of uranium as a viable fuel.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[Shakrai]

I just have a hard time accepting this "no we can't" mentality. Your whole argument boils down to what might happen, even though it never has in any Western nuclear power plant.

But nuclear power is no cheaper than coal or oil when all of its costs are factored in

And how much more expensive is coal and oil when you factor in all of the aforementioned environmental impacts?

Of course, they have problems that nuclear doesn't too, but I'd still rather have a bunch of ugly windmills on a hill nearby than a nuclear power plant or a nuclear waste site

And how many of those windmills do you need to produce the same amount of power that you can obtain from one nuclear power plant? What will the environmental impact be of removing that much energy from the atmosphere? How many migratory birds does the typical nuclear power plant kill?

What do you think would happen to our economy in the case of a single accident that affects a large metropolitan area

What do you think would happen to our economy in the case of a single accident in any industry that affects a large metropolitan area? Why are you singling out nuclear power but ignoring the chemical industry? It's not like their disasters [wikipedia.org] are any better.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[Xiaran]

Had a $10 padlock and a 1/4" of aluminum door been in the way of the 9/11 hijackers they would have been rendered helpless. We essentially gave them a bunch of jets to do what they wanted to do with.

Are you sure about that? I suspect even if the cockpit was locked they would have still had a good chance to carry out their plan. What got everyone on 9/11 was the surprise. The flight crew may well have opened the door when the terrorists demanded. The flight crew would have reacted to way they were trained, which is to do what they say(this is because before 9/11 all terrorist hijackings were usually not nearly as destructive). What has changed it the perception to hijacked amongst the population. In the past if a plane I was one was hijacked I probably would have done what they said and hope to get out of it. Now a would be hijacked would be torn to pieces by the passengers and crew... even if he had a gun. Notice that no other terror groups are hijacking planes these days. There is a reason for that.

Waste disposal

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>They all have at least one good point though: what do we do with the waste?

Power plant equality, now!

Why not hold all power plants to the same standard?

The mercury from a coal plant doesn't decay. It stays toxic forever.

Vitrifying nuclear waste is already a better solution than the one used for coal plants, which is to dispose of the waste in the downwinders's lungs.

Re:Nuclear very expensive

[mlwmohawk]

There's no question that in an environment of standardized reactor design and streamlined regulation that nuclear would be less expensive.

There is no evidence to support that statement.
Inevitable accidents? Interesting way of phrasing it

Please tell me of one human run technology that has never had an accident.

PBRs are interesting in their "fail safe" design, but there are airplanes in the sky, earth quakes, hurricanes, tornadoes and so on.

Nuclear power is unlike other technologies in that an error can have world wide catastrophes that result in generations of injury.

I'll trade that risk to eliminate emissions from coal, oil, and gas fired plants.

Its funny, the idea of "risk" doesn't trouble me. The idea of a "for profit" company running nuclear power plants does. If you want a good analogy, look at private health insurance. People are dying because their health insurance companies will find any way they can to keep from paying out what they are supposed to pay. Now, a private company running a nuclear power plant, weighing risks against a corporate bottom line scares the hell out of me.

The safest technology in the hands of corporations isn't. Remember Bhopal India?

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[idobi]

You're aware that coal mining in China kills more people on a yearly basis than the number of people who have died in Chernobyl, right?

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[LiENUS]

Got news for you... You're on earth as well, and things that get airbourne or into water, have a way of ending up where you are too.

I've got news for you. Earth is filled with this "nuclear" stuff. What do you think keeps the core hot? (http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/12/10_heat.shtml [berkeley.edu]). Nuclear material doesn't exactly grow legs and walk around. Contained nuclear material tends to stay contained. Yes it could spread but "someplace safe" usually means if it spreads you've got an area a mile or so across that people are scared to live in. So we move out, animals move in and thrive and eventually the scared people move back in kill all the animals and go back to whatever they were doing before someone gave them an excuse to get upset.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[Koby77]

Although I don't think that nuclear power plants are a viable targets with the right security, I don't see how building more plants will endanger us from terrorist attacks. If terrorists are or will be capable of attacking a nuclear power plant, they already have available targets. One of them already would have had a terrorist-induced event, or one of them will be affected, unless we eliminate all existing power plants (which isn't going to happen). Adding more "targets" doesn't increase the number of attackers.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[hyperz69]

The only way to blow up a nuclear power plant is to pack it full of TNT, or to have potential hazardous tests run on a faultily designed reactor by a 3rd shift coal plant team of rejects. FIXED! Happy?

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[AKAImBatman]

Strictly speaking, water is a highly stable molecule and cannot become radioactive. Radioactive liquids in reactor areas come from two sources:

1. Contaminates in the water can be irradiated and become mildly radioactive. This can be mediated by using a pure form of water or heavy water.

2. The water is pumped directly past the radioactive materials. Some of the material erodes and is carried by the water. This can be mediated by physically separating the water from the actual materials, and actually using the "spent" materials rather than leaving them to sit in a cooling pool.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[DDLKermit007]

You would assume keep burning something that WILL injure people over something that "might" in the event of a near impossible meltdown. Not to mention coal pumps out allot more radioactive material than a plant will! Sure, coal is dispersed over the entire planet, but thats a ton of material floating around in the atmosphere. Thats not even counting the numerous other shit thats emitted when you burn coal. I don't know about you, but I'll happily take the EXTREMELY unlikely possibility of a plant going critical over the shit thats emitted by coal flying around everywhere. I wonder if people like the GP would suddenly change their tune if they ever experienced living near a coal burning power-station. It's a guarantee the coal will injure many living near the plant in the long-term, and the rest of us further away in the even longer term.

Nuke-plant? No one has their life impacted short of a leak, or catastrophic meltdown. Which by the way, how long ago was the last time a nuke-plant injured anyone? Oh yeah...Chernobyl. The last actual meltdown was the 3-mile incident which no casualties occurred. Those were also when the technology was still largely misunderstood. Proper precautionary measures have since been adapted that far exceed any possible future meltdowns. Reactors have had their problems since, but have shown themselves quite safe. But by all means! Don't let logic & reason sway you. You have principles!

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[kesuki]

"The waste produced by a coal plant is more radioactive [sciam.com] than nuclear waste"

you know, the radium could be used in breeder reactors, and the thorium in thorium reactors

the problem is that coal companies just dump the stuff in mines and landfills, we could be using the results of burning coal for electricity to make important nuclear fuel, cheaply, that would allow more and more safe, practical nuclear energy, perhaps to create the 'hydrogen' economy to switch vehicles from burning oil, to either burning hydrogen, or to use fuel cells to produce electricity from hydrogen.

too bad we're putting radioactive materials into the soil and water, instead of using it to make more fuel, that would make nuclear power even more attractive. (imo, nuclear is the only attractive fuel source that isn't base on renewable green energy)

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[negRo_slim]

Just because something might happen or even DID happen doesn't mean you put life on hold

But think of the children!

But no I appriciate hearing that, it reminds me of republicans blasting the supreme court ruling on Guantanamo detainies, one said it will cost us a city.

Well that may be true, probably not... But still isn't that the whole point? To live free? I'll gladly accept the risk someone with bad intentions might 'get me' if that means I and my fellow citizens can enjoy my freedom and civil liberties.

This 'think of the children' mentality is destroying us.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[rantingkitten]

"What do we do with the waste?" is a common outcry from anti-nuclear sorts, or even just those who want to know more, but I find it curious that those same people don't seem to ask that question about coal-fired plants, or whatever other type of polluting power generator is around. Don't worry about that waste, guys -- we can just dump that into the atmosphere!

I haven't researched this too thoroughly, but hasn't the US been test detonating nuclear weaponry in the New Mexico and Nevada desert for freaking decades? Wouldn't those sites already be contaminated? What's a little more? Carve out a huge hole in the desert, eight miles deep, whatever. Line it with concrete. Dump the waste in there. It's not going anywhere and if it does, so what, it's ten miles underground in a site that's already been nuked to hell and back.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[blacklint]

Don't put another Soviet RBMK reactor anywhere on the planet. I'd gladly have a modern reactor installed in my metaphorical backyard. The best analogy I can think of is the RBMK reactor designs were test tubes full of nitroglycerin ready to go off, while modern reactors have the danger of exploding of a medical nitroglycerin patch - aka none. Chernobyl was a horrible disaster, but the reactor design is absolutely not comparable to modern reactors, or even other designs of its time. It was simply conceived, designed, built, and operated wrong.

Oh, and Chernobyl was still a functioning power plant until 2000. That's scary. But well designed plants? Not in the slightest. Can we please recognize the difference 20 years after the disaster and move on?

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[AndersOSU]

The entire purpose of Cheney's false remark is to raise the specter of communist competition and spur the US into an action that we shouldn't pursue. So yes, it is fearmongering - by spreading the fear of the reds, it's hyperbole, "obvious and intentional exaggeration," and if it's not a lie, then it's incompetence in that Cheney should have fact checked, and the OP should have seen that Cheney's statement was so false that he had to retract it.

You're right though, the OP made a slightly more accurate statement than Cheney who said, they ARE drilling off the florida coast. However, slightly more accurate than bullshit isn't truth. The fact that the Chinese hold a lease does not in any way mean that drilling is imminent, and it does not mean that drilling will ever happen.

The oil companies hold leases all over the world. A very small percentage of the land that is leased to someone for oil production will ever be utilized.