From The Daily Caller
Lawmakers Overwhelmingly Vote To Modernize US Nuclear Fleet
7:58 AM 12/22/2018 | Energy
Jason Hopkins | Energy Investigator
Congress passed bipartisan legislation that aims to streamline the regulatory process for commercial nuclear plants, bringing relief to an industry that has witnessed decline and uncertainty.
The Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act was approved in the House of Representatives by wide margins Friday, clearing the chamber by 361 to 10. The Senate had already approved the bill on Thursday by a voice vote.
Introduced by Wyoming GOP Sen. John Barrasso and co-sponsored by a number of Republicans and Democrats alike, the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act calls for a number of reforms that would unburden the industry. The legislation streamlines how the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) regulates facilities by improving licensing procedures and giving licensees more transparency on how the agency spends its money. Additionally, it encourages investment in nuclear research and supports the development new technology in labs around the country.
The end goal of the bill is to make the development and commercialization of nuclear technology more affordable.
The trade association representing U.S. nuclear plants hailed the vote.
“The Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act (NEIMA) is a significant, positive step toward reform of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission fee collection process,” Maria Korsnick, president of the Nuclear Energy Institute, said in a statement Friday. “This legislation establishes a more equitable and transparent funding structure which will benefit all operating reactors and future licensees. The bill also reaffirms Congress’s support for nuclear innovation by working to establish an efficient and stable regulatory structure that is prepared to license the advanced reactors of the future.”
In passing the bill, Congress joins a growing number of state governments that are also working to save their nuclear fleet.
Nuclear power plant after sunset. Dusk landscape with big chimneys. Shutterstock
Regulators in Connecticut have tentatively agreed to consider the Millstone Nuclear Power Station — the only nuclear plant in Connecticut and the largest in New England — to be “at risk,” allowing it the ability to participate in the state’s support program for carbon-free energy. This action follows New Jersey, where regulators have worked on a Zero Emission Credit program that will support uneconomic nuclear plants in the state. Illinois and New York have already established Zero Emission Credit programs in their states. (RELATED: MIT Study Finds Nuclear Energy To Be Essential In Reducing Pollution)
The federal and state action comes as numerous nuclear plants have closed down in recent years, and more are at-risk of early retirement. Pitted against cheap natural gas and subsidy-backed renewables, many nuclear facilities have been rendered uneconomical.
However, both Republicans and Democrats are recognizing the vital role nuclear plays in the country’s power market, providing reliable energy with zero carbon emissions. The decline of the nuclear industry has caught the attention of environmentalists who are concerned about climate change and more conservative officials who worry nuclear plant closures places the grid’s reliability at risk.
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John T
I am originally Dutch. Afrikaans is 2nd and English is my 3rd language.
I remember that when I came into this country 42 years ago, [2 Hale cycles ago} there was also a big drought here [just like about now]
and everybody was asking us/me to pray for rain [on TV, radio/churches etc.]
I remember that I found this strange. Coming from Holland, we never prayed for rain. We hoped for sunshine>?
Anyway, now 42 years later we are told that the ‘climate is changing’ and it ‘our fault’.
Man made climate change,
Funny, how things can change when ‘faith’ appears to be changing??
John E
I did make an argument,
namely that the fish and sea life were/are dying here because of the extra cooling water required by nuclear reactors.
Now bringing same thing to the other side of the country [the Indian Ocean] is making me/us upset.
In the face of this argument some of you have said that the fish in the rivers {USA} was getting bigger [after putting in nuclear]
I believe that story. But it is not going to work out here? So you keep nuclear there.
But please donot bring it here.
Thanks!
Not in the post I was replying to you didn’t. Here is the exact text of the post I was replying to:
“Gary
I suggest you keep the nuclear trash for yourselves
I don’t want anything of it here.
No more nuclear/
plse”
No where in that post do you mention “fish and sea life”, so my reply to that post should not be expected to address something from some other posting somewhere else in the mass of posts on this page. That’s not how forums work.
As for the post where you did mention sea life (in a completely different sub-thread) as it was an uncited anecdote, it was adequately address by markW with the comment:
“All power plants need cooling water.
The fact that the cooling water for this plant was released improperly is the fault of the managers, not nuclear power.”
Ocean and lake-cooled nuclear reactors here have NOT caused any fish loss, but on both Atlantic, Great lakes, and Pacific sides the marine bilogy loves the warmer continuously-circulated cooling water near the power plants – both fossil-fueled and nuclear. The claims are exaggerated and (deliberately) projected fears created to cause the fear you now have.
On the other hand, with the tribal/race wars now underway and racial killing of educated minorities now condoned by South African racists in its government and by law in parliament, it perhaps is a good thing no more reactors will be built there.
Now bringing same thing to the other side of the country [the Indian Ocean] is making me/us upset.
Frankly, judging by your postings here, you are getting upset due to your own ignorance about nuclear power, not over any real danger from nuclear power.
As has been pointed out to you every time your repeat this claim, nuclear reactor’s don’t require any more cooling water than do any other type of power plant.
Your desperate efforts to remain uneducatable on this issue (assuming it actually exists) is why you have earned the monikers that have been applied to you.
BTW
another argument that you guys seem to be forgetting is that uranium is not exactly lying on the streets here.
It is mined here, similar like mining gold,
you have to go deep into the ground,
and the mining of it is not without cost of lives.
Like I always said: gas is best.
HP,
There is a lot of U.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/mining-of-uranium/uranium-mining-overview.aspx
Besides which, we have reworked bomb fuel and other fissile materials, to include nuclear waste. Plus of course breeder reactors.
Fusion, when and if it becomes economical, can run on seawater.
But natural gas is good, too.
And, as link shows, open pit mining and in situ leaching are also common. Not all U mining is underground.
Coal mining is less dangerous than it used to be, but still deadly.
All mining is deadly. Much safer in well anaged pits so you wuld have to be specific about that. It needn’t be more dangerous than other etractive industries. This demads two shaft ventilation and two neans of exit, plus appropriate safety measures enforced. THis is stil NOT the case in the USA BTW. money comes before safety in ultra caitalist reginmes with inadequate or ineffective laws.
Mining in the USA is a lot safer than in the PRC or in the old USSR.
Free enterprise capitalism and freedom far surpass socialism and state capitalism on every possible metric.
Ultra capitalist????
He don’t know us very well, do he?
Why is it some people think the world runs from communist, to capitalist to ultra capitalist.
PS: Why is it that communists are convinced that the answer to any problem is more government?
John, as good as the US is, it’s not perfect, and as the young communists that I’ve dealt with assure me communism will be perfect, once they get the bugs worked out.
Gas costs lives too. google gas pipe explosion.
The fact remains, that even including the mining (drilling) of the resources needed, nuclear is by far the safest form of power out there.
You can insist on that if you wish, but the fact of large exclusion zones around former reactor meltdown sites, and the abandoned towns, property, lives country side and agricultural land refutes the assertion that lives are not destroyed en-masse by such horrendously damaging incidents and their aftermath.
Both Chernobyl and Fukushima prove one thing very clearly. Radiation is far less dangerous to wildlife than humans.
Outside a few hotspots, there isn’t much need for a Chernobyl exclusion zone any more.
Ah yes, use the over reaction of ignorant politicians as proof of your position.
By that standard Global Warming is real and is going to kill us because so many politicians apparantly believe in it.
People are living in both of the exclusion zones, and are all quite healthy.
There was never any need to evacuate anyone from Fukushima.
We don’t make it without nuclear power.
This looks like the right decision based on the wrong (carbon-free energy) premise.
The fact that CACA acolytes reject nuclear power just shows yet again that the “climate change” scam isn’t about climate change, but domination by Marxist globalists by means other than the “proletarian revolution” scam. Both the Green and Red of watermelons are fronts for “power to my and my friends!”
More years ago than I care to remember I was MD of a PR and marketing consultancy that was pitching to an in-house client. By that, I mean that although the healthcare company involved were already clients they had reached what we perceived as a growth crossroads in their corporate
life and we were pitching a change in pace and scope.
We had worked closely with the Board for more than 10 years and had a good agency/Board relationship. But we always told them the truth and they never suffered fools gladly. So. We knew this market as well as our clients. We could see that they needed a step change in profile and expenditure. But the bottom line was massive and we knew that they could easily walk away.
At the end of the presentation, the Chief Executive sat back and looked at us for many long seconds. Finally, he stood up and picked up a black marker pen, walked up to a whiteboard we had screwed to one of the office walls and scrawled JGOWI over it. As he walked out of our agency building with the rest of the Board in tow he just smiled and briefly nodded at me.
Our FD watched him go, turned to me and shrugged: “JGOWI? What’s all that about?”
“Just get on with it” I explained.
At least you got it in writing.
What this really shows …. by a 97% ( ! 🙂 ) congressional vote…. is we really do understand the value and necessity of nuclear energy despite all the demonstrations by a relatively small group activists, lobbying by well funded NGOs, and bad press by the MSM. As shown by the yellow vests there’s only so much BS that can be shoveled to the people before they step up to the plate for their rights and start questioning decisions that are supposedly make on their behalf but in reality are made to support and ideology contrary to their welfare.
I think nuclear electrical power should be advanced, by reducing regulatory blockages, by the private sector.
Diversification is worthwhile.
But something important is happening with the now obvious financial pressures.
The intolerably long experiment in authoritarian government could be ending.
Previous ones such as was imposed in the 1500s became “too much” by the early 1600s. Quite simply the state had pushed taxation and tithes to the limit and then used currency depreciation for funding.
Popular uprisings turned into a great reformation, which included freeing up science.
Another authoritarian experiment has been doing much the same. The Fed has been corrupted to trying to provide unlimited funding for another experiment in unlimited government.
In so many words, the Deep State has been funding itself with serial financial bubbles.
The latest bubble is over and the public will condemn the trillions spent by theoreticians boasting that they can prevent “bad things” from happening.
The notion that a committee of experts can “manage” a national economy is about to be widely seen as a magnificent failure.
Further cooling due to the Solar Minimum will soon trash a couple of notions.
One is that the temperature of the nearest planet needs “managing”.
Two is that a committee of “experts” can set the temperature of the Earth.
Both assume audacity usually assigned to gods.
A credit contraction and further cooling will expose the fraud of beneficial central planning.
In terms of environmental impact, consider the following: A 1000 MWe coal fired power plant consumes what is known in the USA as a “unit train” of coal every day. A unit train is 100 coal cars carrying 100 tons of coal each. The volume of 10,000 tons of anthracite coal is about 308,000 cubic feet (8,700 cubic meters), or a cube 67.5 feet (20.6 meters) on a side. A 1000 MWe nuclear power plant consumes an amount of U-235 of 10.3 cubic inches per day (a cube 0.86 cm on a side). Yes, but U-235 is only 0.7% of uranium. So the total amount of natural uranium required is 1.5 liters, or a cube 11.4 cm on a side. The amount of low grade uranium ore (1,000 ppm) required to produce this would be 1,430 tons, equivalent to a cube 26 feet (7.9 meters) on a side. Note that almost all of that volume of material would be returned to the place it originated, sans the radioactive uranium.
It baffles me how the nuclear industry has failed to capitalize on the major environmental, cost, and safety advantages it has over every other mode of energy production. I know that there are opponents of all stripes. Some of good faith, many who simply want to see the demise of industrial civilization. But facts are facts, and all of them mitigate in favor of nuclear fission as a primary energy source.
And using thorium, which is four times as plentiful as U238, would produce a much smaller amount of material than uranium. Plus the mining of it would allow the US to mine for rare earths since thorium is found in rare earth deposits.
It baffles me how the nuclear industry has failed to capitalize on the major environmental, cost, and safety advantages it has over every other mode of energy production.
Government “help”.
And that is why China will do it and we won’t. China provides its corporations with government help all the time because the free market is not the answer 100% of the time.
There are somethings that the free market sucks at. Sometimes things need to be done that don’t make a profit. Do you clean your house because it needs to be done, or do you rely on the free market to do it for you?
10.3 cubic inches should have been a cube 2.2 inches, or 5.5 centimeter, on a side. I started out with the volume as a sphere, and it’s almost exactly the size of a tennis ball. No fun when you have to correct/explain it.
Nuclear is the best option for Australia, IMO, being large, geologically stable and sparsely populated country, but after decades of fear mongering it will never happen. How France has managed to supply ~80% of power via nuclear over decades without a major incident doesn’t matter.
In 1969 an aerial survey east of Darwin NT detected a uranium signal that led to the discovery of the Ranger ore bodies. I consulted to, then joined the team and stayed with it until 1993. These were the world’s largest U deposits by far when first discovered. There is more resource there, but politics has sterilized it for the time being.
Last time I checked, there were no fatalities attributable to this mine. The accident safety record was better than other comparable non-U mines.
As far as I am concerned, uranium can be mined in safety today and for ever more. It is anti-science to claim it cannot.
Geoff.
Here is a picture of this proud achievement. There are a couple more big mines from our efforts elsewhere.
http://www.geoffstuff.com/Ranger aerial.jpg
Something is causing URL accidents. Geoff
http://www.geoffstuff.com/Ranger aerial.jpg
Found the bug. Probably I am ignorant of an old convention for titles of URLs by using capitals and spaces that are usually but not always corrected by the host.
Here is the third time lucky try
http://www.geoffstuff.com/rangeraerial.jpg
And another thing:
as long as too much electrical power is in too few hands [like with a big nuclear plant] you are always going to have problems with corruption, price fixing, damage to supply lines (people are stealing cables here], work stoppages [strikes] and ‘maintenance’ periods, leading to black outs, etc.
I therefore think that it would be a good thing if everybody made sure he is able to supply his own house with electricity.
I have a patrol driven generator for emergencies [which are happening more frequently here now] but I must admit that it is rather noisy. I wonder if it would be possible to ‘make’ a small generator that is driven by gas and that is not so noisy?> Now, if anyone can create such a product, I am sure that it will have a great future. If you don’t already have a gas supply line to your house you can just buy the big LPG bottles?
Let me know if such a product already exists?
I am saying we must look at power that can be easily generated in our own backyards.
Just forget about nuclear.
henryp:
You are arguing against several centuries of industrial experience, which show that economy and efficiency increase with scale and concentration. And quality, safety and pollution control as well.
But for your personal situation: yes multiple manufacturers offer home generators of various sizes that are natural gas or propane fueled. In the US, Genrac is commonly available as is Honda to name just two. I have looked into them for my house and concluded it would not be worth the expense.
But in any case that’s just for emergency power; there’s no way any of these could replace the central power distribution system.
Alan
thx for ur comment
but that would still be a noisy 2 – or 4 stroke engine providing the power?
henryp:
We have friends who recently replaced an older whole-house generator with a new, larger one. Among other things they report the new one is both much quieter and faster to come online. They live in a neighborhood that has frequent power outages due to fallen tree limbs. Even from the outside porch right next to the generator you can barely hear it. From inside you hear nothing.
All the natural gas home generators I am aware of are 4 stroke.
After our pre-Thanksgiving ice storm there has been a surge in whole house generator installations. Thanks to the Evil Marcellus Shale most are natural gas, the rest propane. This according to 2 contractors I know, they and their crews missed out on most of deer season and worked on Christmas Eve to finish some jobs. I got a few days in with Rich cutting and tying rebar for pads so his other guys could be doing interior work. It is a very ill wind that does not blow some bit of good.
Increased size also increases inefficiencies as decision makers get further away from those who do the actual work.
Each type of company has a best size, above which and below which overall efficiency decreases.
There’s a reason why companies go through cycles of growth, followed by cycles of divestment.
Wow, the paranoia is strong with this one.
Nuclear plants aren’t that much bigger than gas and coal plants.
What promotes corruption is turning control of your electrical system over to the government.
MarkW
I told you. Your conduct here was unacceptable. You have not yet apolologized for calling me an idiot.
The forum here is like a universal place [lecture room] of learning. We are all teachers and students to each other.
must say: people resorting to A H attacks know that they have lost the argument so all that is left is insulting the people who do not agree ….
i.e.
those who did bring the other side of the argument
Go home, MarkW, and count your blessings without nuclear power.
Despite the rudeness, Mark made some excellent points refuting the nonsense you have posted (hence his frustration resulting in rudeness at your continued ignoring said points to go on and repeat the same nonsense in multiple posts).
And speaking of “unacceptable” conduct, I seem to recall you being told that you should reserve the [ ] brackets for edits (by the mods). yet here you are still using them. please use the ( ) or { } brackets instead.
And, BTW, I shall count my blessings *with* nuclear power, thank you very much.
John Endicott
clearly you are unaware of the relevant procedures
Much more cooling is required for nuclear plants than for gas powered plants.
why not have a look at the ywo plants offering similar electricity?
e,g
\in the case of Fukushima, disaster struck to the spent rods that were left to ‘cool’ in the water
Please
no more nuclear?
thanks
henryp, you’ve shown your ignorance (bread from irrational fear) about nuclear in multiple posts in this thread. No other fuels source has the safety record that nuclear has, and that’s even with the overhyped Fukishima and Chernobyl accidents counted in the mix. For example, more people have died in Natural gas accidents in the past decade than have died from nuclear power accidents throughout the history of the nuclear power industry.
John Endicott
irrespective of the ARGUMENT
it seems to me that you have agreed with MarkW that I am/must be an idiot.
namely, you have not callled MarkW to order,
like others did;
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/12/26/lawmakers-overwhelmingly-vote-to-modernize-us-nuclear-fleet/#comment-2567620
and the moderator simply failed [again] to respond…
I must tell you, that Jesus [God} tells us that calling another person an idiot [and refusing to apologize for it] means that that person [who calls another person an idiot] is on its way to hell?
Matthew 5:22
Or how do you interpretate the Scripture?
Wow, talk about idiotic.
@2hotel9
I take it from your comment then that you also prefer to be on your way to hell?
–
looking at your writer’s name that must be somewhere in your 2nd motel, room no. 9 and you have nobody that gives a hoot whether you live or die.
Ahh, so triggered! Don’t worry, your Access Card will be monied up on Tuesday and we will still be laughing at you.
but there is always hope….
start by reading Henry’s blog
at
http://www.breadonthewater.co.za
and get wise.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!! Oh, my, itsHahahahahahahahahahahah!!!!!!!! You are just so precious. Does that Identity Theft scam of yours actually get any hits? My security flagged it as soon as the link hit my email. Try again, sweety.
@2hotel9
I have no clue what you are talking about
i.e.
identity theft?
It could be that my website has been flagged because of my submission
https://www.dropbox.com/s/tps2cd4kuds8o6g/SUBMISSION%20by%20Henry%20Pool.docx?dl=0
because I am a “climate denialist” level 10?
Ya just can’t help yourself, it is kinda sad, if it was not so funny.
OK, this will be the end of it, I don’t go to any webpage my security flags for invasive malware. Have a noice life, buddy. Buh’bye.
yes
please
enjoy your hotel room
I hope it has a view?
henryp, you have once again demonstrated why you have earned your moniker.
No, nuclear power does not require more cooling.
All power plants create heat to boil water, the steam is then cooled so that it condenses, then the cycle repeats.
The amount of steam being generated depends on the amount of electricity you are trying to produce. It has absolutely no dependency on the technology used to boil the water in the first place.
Looks like scripture is another subject that henryp is eager to display his ignorance of.
speaking of not responding henryP here you are using the [ ] despite the mods telling you to save them for mod edits and despite my re-pointing that out to you last time you did it. And you wonder why MarkW thinks so what he does about you?
namely, you have not callled MarkW to order
what part of “Despite the rudeness,” was unclear to you?
Or how do you interpretate the Scripture?
Scripture/religious beliefs is rather off-topic for this conversation. Unless you are claiming that “thou shall not use nuclear” is one of the commandments in the bible. But somehow I missed that verse, which book of the bible is it in?
it seems to me that you have agreed with MarkW that I am/must be an idiot
given your lack of coherent arguments, your irrational fear, and you outright not understanding the technology, I can’t see why anyone could possibly come to that conclusion (and, yes, that was sarcasm).
I don’t necessarily think you are an idiot, but I do know you are talking on a subject you clearly know very little about and what little you do is based on irrational fear and not any real understanding of the technology.
If you continue to behave like an idiot, I will continue to call you on it.
Your fear of nuclear is just further evidence of your total disconnect from reality.
As to all being teachers and students, you seem to be incapable of any learning. Your errors have been corrected over and over again, yet you keep repeating the same lies.
My life, and yours is better with nuclear power, and would be much better with more of it.
New Nuclear is the solution to local power generation and should make solar and wind obsolete.
There are several reasons why society’s (including henryp’s) consensus about nuclear electrical power has become irrational. This decision in the US congress possibly represents a realisation of this entrenched nuclear irrationality, and a sane, responsible and bold attempt to escape from it.
The roots of nuclear irrationality are several:
1. Association with nuclear weapons;
2. Scientifically flawed and unsupported belief in harmful effects of ionising radiation at low doses below about 5-10 mGy, including ignorance of natural background levels of radiation and radioactivity;
3. Baleful effect of an ill-informed but well organised anti-nuclear movement in media and politics
This anti-nuclear bias has led to inaccurate yet entrenched opinions concerning nuclear. The severity and consequences of the Chernobyl accident for instance have been grossly exaggerated. It is widely believed that the accident caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, for instance, when the real number is in the hundreds or low thousands only. The large numbers of deaths were mere statistical artefacts of assuming the flawed LNT linear no threshold hypothesis assuming radiation to cause excess deaths down to zero dose, in defiance of evidence of harmlessness or slight benefit of natural background radiation. In California they were talking about birds stopping singing when the minuscule yet instrumentally detectable Chernobyl radiation blew over. Such irrational assertions gained widespread traction.
The Bhopal chemical accident in India was many times more deadly than Chernobyl and Fukushima combined. Real people died in the thousands, not just statistical abstractions. Yet these is no protest movement to ban electrical batteries because of Bhopal. Quite the opposite.
This adverse politicised atmosphere in which nuclear has been forced to operate has grossly inflated design and safety related costs beyond what is rational, and has reduced the incentive and freedom to innovate beyond a very conservative and non-ideal nuclear technology in the form of the pressurised water reactor. Hopefully a more enlightened generation of policy makers will change for the better the environment in which nuclear can operate.
Politicians are possibly looking at the serious riots in France and realising that, whether we like it or not, the world’s population is what it is today primarily because of our energy and technology based civilisation. And that, if we choose to accept the conjecture that increasing atmospheric CO2 is unsafe, then the only way to curtail this increase, without effectively waging a war of extermination on the world’s population, is by nuclear power.
You’re right. Senior moment. Should have checked.
Nuclear is dead, for 2 reasons.
1) Nuclear is hopelessly uncompetitive, due to our enormous reserves of cheap natural gas
2.) Nuclear’s serious risk of catastrophe that results from its vulnerability to incompetence.
Thanks to cheap gas, today, Dec 28th at 12 noon the price of wholesale power in Texas was 1.8 cents a kilowatt hour. In Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston it was 2.2, 2.3, 3.3, and 3.5, cents respectively.
The annual average wholesale price of power is less than 3-1/2 cents almost everywhere in the USA.
By contrast, power from new nuclear plants will cost more than 15 cents. And that is according to their promoters! Does anyone really think that the public should pay 5 times the fair market price for electricity.
And then there is safety. Take Fukushima. The plant got hit by a 45 foot tsunami, which destroyed several reactors and spent fuel storage pools. Had the wind direction been different, an evacuation of Tokyo Japan would have been necessary. It was designed for an 18 foot tsunami, 40% of the 45 feet. The 18 foot design criterion was selected after the usual “extensive research by top peer reviewed experts in the fields of blah blah blah”. If that doesn’t demonstrate gross incompetence, what would?
Agree 100%
For Fukushima to be a general argument against nuclear safety, you are assuming that the risk of a 45 foot tsunami is the same everywhere in the world. So for instance if a nuclear power plant was under construction in, say, Bavaria or Minnesota, it would also be necessary to design against the possibility of a 45 foot tsunami.
And while you’re at it, why not design nuclear plant – or any other building such as a new public library for that matter – to withstand a direct hit from a 10 km wide asteroid.
Safety first. The precautionary principle should always apply.
Think of the CHILDREN!!!!!! Sorry, Maud Flanders just possessed my fingers for a moment.
Actually, over the life of the plant, Nuclear energy is far cheaper. The problem is upfront costs to build the plant is greatly more expensive.
Nuclear energy is far cheaper over the life of the plant?
Most respectfully, that’s silly.
Did you bother to read the article here? “Lawmakers Overwhelmingly Vote To Modernize US Nuclear Fleet”
It notes that the state of Connecticut is forcing the public to subsidize the Millstone Nuclear Power Station, lest its owners shut it down. That’s because they cant compete with gas fired plants. Same thing in New York and Illinois.
And around the country 13 reactors have been or will be shut down, just in the years 2017, 2018 and 2019 because they cant compete with gas.
(In these cases, the cost to build the plants is irrelevant, because they’re already built.)
But, you were quite correct that “upfront costs to build the (nuclear) plant is greatly more expensive.”
How much more?
Nuclear is about $12500 per kilowatt, while gas is $900.
And that’s why nuclear is dead.
They cost 1000+ percent more to build
Even their operating costs are so uncompetitive they need subsidies.
and as Fukushima taught, they combine the risk of catastrophe with gross negligence and incompetence in their measures to assure safety.
What fool would consider one?
Tammie Lee Haynes
I totally agree with your comments and summary. These were my arguments as well. Due to the new regulations -rightly or wrongly – nuclear energy has become too expensive; nevermind that there are also issues with the waste which has to be buried securely and whatever you do to try: as a tourist you will never get a see one spent rod. I am sure that must be to show us off how ‘safe’ the waste is ….?
Also here in Africa, we had a couple of near miss accidents at Koeberg with nuts and bolts left at the wrong places after maintenance. To tell you the truth: We have had more than 20 years of ‘affirmative’ action here but I can give several examples of how this has led to poor supply and services in a number of indutries.
I hope John Endicott now realizes why I am not in favor of nuclear energy (here).
Don’t bother about the insults by some of the commenters here who are most probably employed in the nuclear business or related indutry. Always interesting to note which commenters resort to insults and ad hominem attacks when they know that they have lost the argument.
Must also tell you that I spent quite some money 3 years ago to run my office on solar panels. I still have not made the money from the investment back and in the meantime I had problems with batteries and regulators and dirt on my panels, etc. etc. In fact, at one stage it came pretty close to a battery exploding.
So, electricity from solar is also a waste of time and money.
I do have a solar geyser and this works out quite well for us. It works like a inverted radiator: the heat is captured on thin copper foil and the heated water circulates through the geyser.
WE MUST BELIEVE YOU BECAUSE YOU TYPE YOUR NAME IN CAPITAL LETTERS! Talk about a bunch of “go sit in the mud and die” bullsh*t. If you had the slightest idea how dangerous every day live is, well, I really don’t think you can grasp the prospect of the world all of us live in out here. Please remain in the facility you are currently restrained in.
Thank you, Human Race.
R u enjoying ur stay at 2hotel,9?
@tammy lee haynes
I am just toying with 2hotel9, who critisized your but offers no idea of the view from his hotel room
….
Funny
Ahh, you so triggered its funny. And the view is excellent, unlike yours.