As BP's ghastly gusher assaults the Gulf of Mexico and so much more, a tornado has forced shut the Fermi2 atomic reactor at the site of a 1966 melt-down that nearly irradiated the entire Great Lakes region.
If the White House has a reliable plan for deploying and funding a credible response to a disaster at a reactor that's superior to the one we've seen at the Deepwater Horizon, we'd sure like to see it.
Meanwhile it wants us to fund two more reactors on the Gulf and another one 40 miles from Washington DC. And that's just for starters.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has warned that at least one new design proposed for federal funding cannot withstand tornadoes, earthquakes or hurricanes.
But the administration has slipped $9 billion for nuclear loan guarantees into an emergency military funding bill, in addition to the $8.33 it's already approved for two new nukes in Georgia.
Unless we do something about it, the House Appropriations Committee may begin the process next week.
Like Deepwater Horizon and Fermi, these new nukes could ignite disasters beyond our technological control -- and our worst nightmares.
Like BP, their builders would enjoy financial liability limits dwarfed by damage they could do.
Two of the new reactors are proposed for South Texas, where two others have already been leaking radiation into the Gulf. Ironically, oil pouring into the Gulf could make the waters unusable for cooling existing and future nukes and coal burners.
Energy Secretary Steven Chu recently admitted to Rachel Maddow he has no firm plans for the radioactive wastes created by the proposed new reactors, or by the 104 currently licensed.
That would include Vermont Yankee, where strontium, cesium, tritium and more are leaking into the Connecticut River. VY's rotted underground pipes may have leaking counterparts at every other US reactor.
After 50 years, this industry can't get private financing, can't get private liability insurance and has no solution for its wastes.
The Gulf gusher bears the simple lesson that technologies that require liability limits will rapidly exceed them, and must not be deployed.
No US nuclear utility has sufficient capital resources to cover the damages from a reactor disaster, which is one reason taxpayers are targeted as the ultimate underwriters.
On May 27, the House Appropriations Committee was scheduled to vote on new nuke loan guarantees, which had been attached to an emergency military spending bill. Amidst a flood of grassroots opposition, the vote was postponed.
But it could return as early as June 15. We can and must stop these new guarantees, which would feed the gusher of nuke power hand-outs being dumped into new climate/energy legislation.
By all accounts, despite the horrors of the Gulf, the administration still wants legislation that will expand deepwater drilling and atomic technologies that are simply beyond our control... but that fund apparently unstoppable dividends for corporations like BP.
It's our vital responsibility to transform this crisis into a definitive shift to a totally green-powered earth, based solely on renewables and efficiency. We have a full array of Solartopian technologies that are proven, profitable, insurable and manageable. They are the core of our necessary transition to a prosperous, sustainable future.
As our planet dies around us, truly green climate/energy legislation must come... now! The next key vote may come when the Appropriations Committee reconvenes.
Make your voice is heard. It's all we have.
There are few externalized costs with nuclear energy, decommissioning is paid for upfront. http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/staff/sr1713/ http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf19.html http://climatecorps.org/e/externalized-cost/ http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf68.html http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=12794
That's why the pro nuke liars always bring up eating plutonium as relativity safe.
Nuke power is the dirties power every created.
Laugh when someone calls it "clean".
Gtons of million year waste, dumped in the English chanel and Somali by the Mob, and the nuclear power companies themselves.
you just watched BP cut corners till it breaks.
Nuclear energy is doing the same thing.
They are running 50 year old reactors "forever" claiming they can maintain them.
But trust big business, they only care about you.
what fools.
How do you measure it? 20% of our electricity comes from nuclear reactors that were obsolete (in my estimation) in 1994, when the Clinton Administration canceled the IFR program that would have built reactors about a thousand times better in both energy and "nuclear waste".
Even so, how many birds, bats, humans, fish, or even cockroaches have died in nuclear accidents since then? None.
How many scenic views have been desecrated by nukes? None.
Why do the old reactors continue to run? Perhaps it's because they're simple, and well built.
Nuclear power gets as much energy from a ton of uranium as we get from a million tons fossil carbon. The nuclear waste weighs less than the fuel. The waste from coal weighs more than three times what the carbon did.
Now wind turbines kill bats and birds, hydroelectric dams flood canyons and impede migratory fish, and the way we get "clean" natural gas is to smash up the deep layers that trap it, regardless of what happens to the aquifers.
Need I mention Appalachian mountain tops blasted into their valleys?
Personally, I'd like to see the USA do what France did, the opposite of what Ms. Thatcher did, and start an advanced nationally-owned nuclear reactor program.
But just see http://uvdiv.blogspot.com/ , which tells of some nuclear engineers who worked on the project that Clinton, Kerry, O'Leary, GreenPeace, and others who should have known better canceled.
The perfect mass murder.
http://www.greens.org/s-r/50/50-12.html TMI deaths
http://www.ki4u.com/three_mile_island.htm
http://wapedia.mobi/en/Ernest_J._Sternglass
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster_effects#Controversy_over_human_health_effects
trillion dollar nuke industry trying to white wash Chernobyl, but still multiple studies show over a million excess deaths.
Nuclear power and weapons cause the death of 65M people.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nuclear-weapons-and-pollution-linked-to-65-million-deaths-609008.html
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13825
real cost of nuke power: http://www.opendemocracy.net/arts-photography/nuclear_cost_3481.jsp
http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09553008414551081 tritium effects on mice
1kg of CIGS, embedded in a solar cell, produces 5 times as much electricity as 1kg of enriched Uranium, embedded in a nuclear power plant."
http://www.nanosolar.com/company/blog
Building 100's of new nuclear power plants will improve the economy, reduce or eliminate dependence on foreign oil, create jobs, reduce pollution, and provide for future technological advancement.
I have been working with nuclear power for 30 years, I would be glad to have a new Nuclear power plant or high level waste disposal facility "in my backyard". My family and I live in a home within 10 miles of a nuclear power plant. (Where I work) I understand the risks involved and I’m completely comfortable with a plant "in my backyard". I have confidence that our kids will be smart enough to treat the nuclear "waste" as a valuable resource, or at least to handle it safely. If the cavemen thought their children would be too stupid to use fire safely, where would we be now?
Using Chernobyl as a reason not to build is like saying because of the Hindenburg I will never fly in a commercial airliner.
Nuclear power has the smallest environmental impact of any current energy production method per unit of energy produced. One fuel pellet about the size of a pencil eraser produces the same energy as about 1 ton of coal, and if reprocessed most of what’s left can be reclaimed. Nuclear power is our best option for reliable, environmentally friendly base-load electrical power.
nukes are super dirty, deadly, expensive, and lead to proliferation.
30 DOLLARS per KWH for the waste storage, assuming that were possible.
As for the waste, we know exactly what to do with it; it's the government that refuses to do anything. The rhodium, plutonium and leftover uranium in the used fuel can be extracted and sold, while the true waste is concentrated and glassified. Salvaged fuels can be reburned in existing or newly built reactors.
Have you read Poisoned Power, The Case Against Nuclear Power Before and After Three Mile Island by Dr. John W. Gofman? It is available for free online. You might want to read his curriculum vitae first just in case you have any doubt about his credentials. I would look closely at his chemistry, medical, medical physics degrees and then examine his work history under the Manhattan Project, with the Atomic Energy Commission and his nuclear discoveries. Then come back here and let us know if you still want to rally around the most toxic industry on the planet.
The Price Anderson Act will be the least of our worries in the event of a terrorist act or large unplanned release of radiation in a heavily populated area.
BTW, I've been inside the reactor room of a research facility and the engine room of a nuclear submarine- both times with the reactor on at a large fraction of full power. I got no measurable dose from the submarine, and I got a fraction of a millirem from the research reactor. I received about ten times as much radiation flying there and back than I received working next to the reactor.
Calculate the energy savings in megawatts by replacing all 6,700,000,000,000 light fixtures in the U.S. with highly efficient LED lights assuming a 50 percent increase in efficiency even though it is closer to 62 percent. A general caculation is okay based on the total electrical consumption attributable to lighting.
Do the same for swicthing out conventional HVAC sytems with geothermal HVAC systems.
Do the same for switching out 90 kwh/month refrigerators with15kwh/month units.
Now increase the percentage of combined heat power plants from 8 percent to 30 percent of total demand capacity.
Once you have done these calculations, the tell us how many nuclear and coal fired power plants can be eliminated.
Then eliminate the investor owned utility guaranteed rate of return model and replace it with the ISO model that allows small business and residential producers of wind, biomass and solar to get paid full retail rates for their excess capacity put into the grid and tell us how many more coal fired and nuclear plants we can eliminate. The answer is zero because the above took out the demand for them.
Under this scenario, there is no incentive to employ energy efficiency by the large users. The residential users adjust their thermostats and dim their lights at best to conserve within never ending rate increase cycles designed by Public Utility Commissions (PUC's) and the utilities to satisfy the utilities guaranteed rate of return. Once a power plants capacity has been absorbed through this process, the utility seeks permission to build a new power plant - which is rarely denied by the PUC. The process of discounting power resumes and the vicious cycle of rate increases follow on the backs of residential users to pay for the new power plant and to maintain the GROR for the utility.
To be continued!!
There are two mechanisms available to the President, Congress and state governments to facilitate the transition. The first is Net Metering, which has been an utter failure in all 39 states to date, and the Independent Service Operator (ISO) as utilized in California with some important modifications.
Net Metering Laws, almost without exception, have been written by utilities with onerous grid interconnection rules that no mater how good the Net Metering law is, will fail because of the grid interconnection rules. Most states credit the small producers utility bill at the utilities avoided cost rate - which is substantially below the the retail rate. Thereby, giving the small producer very little incentive to install a system that will take the majority of the life expectancy of the system to recoup their investment. If all of the credits, in many states, are not used by December 31, the credits revert back to the utility. Where is the incentive under this rigged system. For a complete breakdown of Net Metering Laws, see the 2009 "Freeing The Grid Report."
To be continued
The process of building up for peak demand in and of itself is inherently energy inefficient. It takes time to build up to peak production which means more power is being produced than there is demand for during this period. Higher price levels during peak demand periods helps shift demand and level the grid/demand. Another similar example in California, is the practice of utilites turning on their fixed cost assets first, solar, wind, geothermal and hydro, until demand requires them to start turning on or ramping up their variable cost assets such as natural gas, nuclear, coal gasification and biomass.
To be continued
local solar is also cheaper, faster, cleaner and creates more and better local jobs, while improving property values and grid reliability, and reducing urban heat island effects. a TOTAL win for all of us. Big Solar destroys, wastes water, kills species, emits GHGs, requires eminent domain and Big Transmission and is susceptible to weather and cyber-terrorism, not to mention the usual blackouts...
We need a legitimate change, not just a lateral move from BP and Chevron destroying our oceans to BP and Chevron destroying our deserts ... all for profit, while the built environment bakes and sprawls and money gets tighter and tighter for the taxpayers and ratepayers stuck subsidizing these massive re-distributors of wealth (from us to Big Energy)...
Just from a GHG emissions and water standpoint, we cannot afford to build a single Big Solar industrial power plant in our remote desert wilderness. not one.
support rooftop and other local solar, prevent Big Solar from taking over our deserts and our economy.
Check out my above posts under alvdh1.
Shame on you Harvey. Climb down from that high horse, you're no better than those you criticize, worse even.
How about having the Federal government save us from the oil-rich foreigners, by building nuclear power plants like they did the Bonneville Power Authority's hydro projects?
I've read that since the explosion in the Gulf, 28 new permits have been issued for off-shore drilling there. Why is that? Is it because the Gulf has been so contaminated they might as well go all the way. If there is another "accident", should be OK since there is nothing left to harm?
Others and I have been wondering what is the consequence of Corexit being used and it ability to enter the atmosphere quickly due to warm waters, and with the weather patterns sending storms inland. How significant is the damage going to be when rain contaminated with Corexit falls onto crops and water sources? I don't believe I've found an answer to this question that wasn't vague or speculative. I'm still wondering about health hazards from the oil.
I'm for small wind/hydro generators, solar panels that will reduce and cut oil dependence. I don't trust the future of my children in the hands of the big corporate giants. However, I am one voice that may be echoing the voice of thousands or tens of thousands that may transcend into millions. We'll see.
The Integral Fast Reactor that was killed by Clinton, Kerry, Greenpeace, Sierra Club and others who should know better was the only renewable energy option that has a chance of being sustainable with our profligate energy appetites.
I'm not in favor of building additional Cold War-technology nuclear plants. But when you raise ambiguous fear, uncertainty, and doubt as in this piece, you are scaring people off of a whole world of new nuclear technology that will soon be at our disposal (and would have been already if not for the rampant fear of nuclear caused by the Cold War and all its insanity.)
There are brilliant physicists out there, much smarter than you or I, who know how to use the waste from our current nuclear plants as fuel. There are brilliant physicists out there, much smarter than you or I, who know how to design a reactor that inherently, by design, with no external control systems, will extinguish any reaction before it can risk a meltdown. There is a whole world of nuclear technology just waiting for people to pull their heads out of the 60's and give it an educated look.
Or we can continue pretending that solar and wind won't take until the year 3000 before they make a difference in our CO2 levels. Or at least they might make a difference if we aren't all underwater by then.
given cost, construction lead times & all the other contingencies, only completely profit-blinded corporations would ever choose the corporate option.....
solartopian technologies are proven, profitable and ready to be community-controlled---which is why the corporations hate them.....
In addition, there is the problem of energy storage. Rechargeable batteries are heavy, require large amounts of sometimes-scarce minerals, quickly lose their charging capacity, and (in the case of Li-ion) can be prone to fire or explosion. Also, now you've left it up to individual residents to make sure they're not leaking lead acid into the ground water. And you can't possibly inspect every home in America to make sure.
Given those conditions, we need a new storage mechanism. Enter the hydrogen fuel cell. Much lighter, with a much better energy density than batteries. One big problem: We have two ways to get hydrogen, and both of them stink. One is to get it from fossil fuels. The other is electrolysis.
Unfortunately, electrolysis uses more energy than the resulting hydrogen can produce. So, given current technology, the prerequisite for using fuel cells as a storage mechanism is a very cheap and abundant energy source. One so cheap and abundant that we can afford to pay the cost in wasted energy that it takes to make our energy portable.
Photovoltaic cells simply cannot perform efficiently enough to make the widespread use of hydrogen plausible. So if you don't want to go nuclear, you have one hope: That the people researching artificial photosynthesis right now will hit a home run.
But for now it's just hope.
Don't let people make the OUTRAGEOUS claim that nukes are "CLEAN"!
Everybody alive today,
the companies storing the nuke waste,
the countries that would regulate those companies,
even the memory of where the waste is,
will all be dead and gone,
The waste will continue to be deadly for another million years.
our children's, children, for generations
that will have to deal with nuke cr@p.
In just 50 years of 500 reactors, nuclear waste has been dumped all over the world, the Mob has gotten involved, and big companies clearly just don't care. The English channels and Somalia are huge nuclear waste dumps now. Radiation is invisible, and insidiously kills after 20 years of cancers that are indistinguishable from natural cancers.
We all just watched BP murder the Gulf to save a buck.
Chu, Wake up! Think. Break the propaganda hold the Nuclear PR geniuses have on you.
Solar Wind and Waste Bio Fuels can provide several times the worlds energy needs, clean safe, cheaper in the long run 26$/barrel, cheap now 2-6 cents, installable in 12 years at 50% growth, and good forever.
Stop the insanity of nukes.
If anyone doubts his credentials read his curriculum vitae.