McCain: Nuclear Safety “Blah Blah Blah”
John McCain mocking the idea of nuclear safety seems about on a par with his air quotes around women’s health, but the fact that the whole audience shares his scorn for the idea that nuclear plants should be safe is odd:
The policy argument that our ability to use nuclear power on naval vessels indicates its safety is curious. For one thing, active duty military personnel are, as a matter of course, asked to undergo risks to their personal safety that we don’t routinely ask of civilians. Fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan isn’t safe, but the Army does it anyway — that’s their job. In the specific context of sea-based military operations, nuclear power has some unique advantages — you can’t make a solar powered submarine. But to conclude that because nuclear power works well in that context it’s obviously a good idea to provide large subsidies for civilian nuclear power is pretty odd. Meanwhile, they’re not storing nuclear waste for the long-term on naval vessels and it’s finding a safe way to store the waste that’s the big logistical challenge for large-scale civilian nuclear power.
87 Responses to “McCain: Nuclear Safety “Blah Blah Blah””
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October 27th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
It’s all about the hippy-hating. Hippies don’t like nuclear waste? Then we’re all for it!
October 27th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
I’m surprised he didn’t make the air quotes again.
October 27th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
And of course, there have been serious accidents on board nuclear powered naval vessels, not to mention the Chernobyl disaster and the meltdown at Three Mile Island. This obviously doesn’t mean that the safety record is so bad that we shouldn’t use nuclear power, but it’s more than enough to create some reasonable doubts about a massive expansion of nuclear energy even if the waste storage problem could be dealt with effectively.
October 27th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
McCain has demonstrated that he really doesn’t want to talk about anything. His previous campaigning has been one big tongue bath from the press and outside that comfort zone he just mails it in. Health care blah blah economy blah blah. Once it was clear that this contest wasn’t going to be a coronation for McCain he was revealed to be the dumb guy he’s always been. He didn’t graduate at near bottom of his class at Annapolis because he was a maverick. He graduated at the bottom of his class because he’s a dimwit who would never have gotten into Annapolis if it wasn’t for record of his father and grandfather.
October 27th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
But that’s the GOP’s point, Matt. It’s our job to accept bad outcomes, for ourselves and for the country, to benefit wealthy people and large corporations. Why can’t you just shut up and do your friggin’ job?
October 27th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
McCain is a fucking idiot.
The father of the nuclear navy, Rickover, was a safety fanatic. Now, I’m not the son and grandson of a high ranking Admiral, and I’m not even an American, and somehow I know this.
Probably because I wasn’t out crashing planes and chasing trim when I should have been doing my book learnin’, dontcha know?
October 27th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
Also, since the big operational safety issue with nukes is the “meltdown” naval vessels have a big advantage since they are already sitting in water and therefore it is much easier to design a passive system for cooling the reactor in an emergency. Modern reactor designs are not supposed to be subject to meltdowns, so maybe this is moot now, but Matt is right to point out that the toughest policy & engineering issue is long-term storage of waste. Nevada’s new-found status as a swing state is unlikely to make it any easier to open Yucca Mountain. Since no one has any better ideas we seem stuck.
October 27th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
The only way for McCain to get his 50 new nuclear power plants is to buy them from Montgomery Burns.
October 27th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
He really is the penguin.
October 27th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
McCain seems to neglect an important difference between the Navy’s reactors and commercial ones. The commercial reactors must operate in a profitable manner, the Navy is not subject to profitability issues. About a decade ago, I was discussing the reprocessing issue with a friend of mine who was one of the Navy’s nuclear engineers. He basically said that there was no way a commercial reactor could use the Navy’s method because it would wipe away their profits.
October 27th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
Are there any stats about relative cancer levels for naval personnel on submarine duty?
October 27th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
DCReader, we could always find a state that is not a swing state. Perhaps we should put it in the state that has the biggest Republican margin in the upcoming Presidential race?
October 27th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
No he isn’t, he’s Mr. Burns
October 27th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
Fucking liberals and their insistence on preventing a nuclear meltdown at a faulty power plant.
October 27th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
Isn’t it clear that people at the rally are cheering the fact that McCain is mocking Obama and not that they dislike nuclear power regulation?
It shows much more that McCain supporters (at least those who care enough to go to a rally) are there in part because maybe they want to be riled up.
October 27th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
I am going to keep saying this over and over again, If Sarah Palin is an energy expert, like McCain says, why doesn’t she ever speak to the merits of Focus Fusion, and the importance of our funding it?
October 27th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
There are long-term safety studies done for workers at civilian nuclear power stations. Short answer is that cancer death rates among this group is lower than national averages, most likely because they’re high paid jobs, typically union, with good benefits.
Anyway, I’m still pretty firm in the belief that it’s silly to talk about where we’re going to store plutonium underground for 200,000 years. If we reprocess spent nuclear fuel, the remainder that is not fissionable in existing LWR’s decays to background in under 600 years and constitutes 3% of total spent fuel volume.
Nuclear discussion is so often hard because the perfect is the enemy of the quite nearly perfect…
October 27th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Many times, McCain has made tactical or policy decisions that I disagree with, but I could at least understand why he made them. But decades from now, when I am McCain’s age, I still will not understand how on earth it came to pass that, in the year 2008, the GOP candidate for President repeatedly demonstrated the belief that literally mocking nuclear safety would be a vote-winner.
October 27th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
We have a perfectly good place to store nuclear waste — under Yucca Mountain. Instead, we’re having it sit around in various locales because Nevada has too much political power in the federal government.
October 27th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
@woolie – but don’t you know – St. Jimmy Carter himself came down upon from high and said ‘yea and verily, thou shalt not reprocess spent nuclear fuel.‘
And thus it was not done, and we endure stupid arguments such as these, instead of using all these great technologies and reducing our carbon footprint.
October 27th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
I demand that we store any nuclear waste in Sedona, Arizona. He’s the one who had a problem with nuclear waste traveling through Arizona. If it’s so safe, then he should live right next to it.
October 27th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Maybe someone could ask McCain what the “free market” sets for insurance rates on nuclear reactor liability if it melts down?
Short answer is that Nuclear reactors are NOT financially feasible unless Congress imposes a limit on the amount of money citizens can collect if damaged by a meltdown.
If Peach Bottom nuclear reactor north of Havre Grace Maryland ever melted down, most of the Philly real estate to the east –including Philadelphia –would be caput. Same goes for the much closer Limerick nuke if the winds were right ..er..wrong.
October 27th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
Our brains shrink with age and become less able to respond flexibly to the world. That is generally why people have usually already left positions of leadership by the time they reach McCain’s age.
McCain’s “blah blah blah” means he is not longer mentally equipped to deal seriously with policy issues. His “blah blah blah” is a substitute for actual explanation, which he is no longer capable of making.
October 27th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
Three other problems with McCain’s comparison that I haven’t seen noted yet:
1. Naval nuclear operations are highly classified; he’s taking advantage of the fact that we don’t know of any major naval nuclear problems.
2. Naval nuclear reactors are preferable to other options because of the relative safety (or shear possibility) of transporting nuclear fuel instead of petroleum-based options. Civilian power generation generally isn’t a regular target for high powered artillery fire; having large quantities of combustible fuel is not as much of an issue. Refueling a natural-gas fired power plant isn’t (nearly as much of) a national security issue.
3. As touched on above, naval nuclear reactors are smaller than commercial reactors used to generate electricity (by about an order of magnitude) even at their largest and use fuel that’s far more expensive; there’s no comparison.
All that said, I agree with McCain that nuclear power’s safe and ought to be expanded. Unlike McCain (I wager), I think nuclear power should be expanded as part of a nationalized energy company to eliminate liability issues and pesky private property barriers and whatnot in the way of expanding nuclear power generation.
October 27th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
off message here but who is the Sarah Palin lookalike standing behind McCain? Do they now have Sarah Palin clones accompanying McCain on his rallys?
October 27th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
Don Williams, that’s just not true. Your comment leads me to think you’re not quite sure what it is you’re talking about. Do you mean a fuel cladding failure? Do you mean a reactor containment breach? What kind of scenario are you imagining. Do you think a Chernobyl style accident is possible in an American LWR?
October 27th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
I would guess that the lower death rate is in part caused by a higher level of checking for cancer, which would allow for earlier and more survivable treatment.
October 27th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
@ Don Williams
Short answer is that Nuclear reactors are NOT financially feasible unless Congress imposes a limit on the amount of money citizens can collect if damaged by a meltdown.
Wrong tense; we already have that in the form of the Price-Anderson act. McCain and other bitching about regulatory barriers making nuclear power impossible always forget that the Federal government has totally taken on accident liability (well, to an obscenely low limit) for a pittance.
October 27th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Seriously, why don’t we put a major nuclear waste facility in Texas or Wyoming? Huge chunks of land with nobody living anywhere close and they’re so Republican that the Dems suffer almost no electoral damage. Was there any particular reason why Yuca Mountain was chosen that couldn’t be replicated elsewhere? The only real threat that I see to this plan is that it is so baldly political.
October 27th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
Price-Anderson establishes an upper limit on the liability of reactor operators, beyond which the government indemnifies them. In the case of an accident, the liability is spread to the pool with a liability of about $100m per reactor, for a total of $10b before the government picks up the tab. In addition, operators are required to take out private insurance to the tune of $300m. It’s a subsidy in a narrow sense, although one that hasn’t cost taxpayers anything since it has never paid out of the secondary (government) insurance.
October 27th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
How about the fact that McCain witnessed one of the biggest disasters in US Navy history?
October 27th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
woolie: Those pesky scientists just won’t fall into line on this!! Why do they Hate America (TM)
October 27th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
Who provides secondary insurance in the case of massive dam failure, in which thousands of people die and billions in property is destroyed? Hmmm….
October 27th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
I’m not a big fan of increased nuclear power generation, but I’m always amused by the inevitable rasing of the dread spectres of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, usually in the same breath.
The Chernobyl reactor was criminally mis-designed.
No remotely-similar nuclear reactor is operating in the US, nor could a reactor design with those characteristics ever receive a license to operate. Chernobyl teaches us nothing about the safety of the nuclear power industry in America.
Three Mile Island does have a lesson for us: a properly-designed reactor is not a dangerous neighbor. Even though the operators of TMI made a cascade of stupendously-bad decisions, which led to the worst-case scenario of coolant loss and core meltdown, not one person was harmed by the event or its aftermath. The containment heirarchy worked nearly perfectly; a negligible amount of radioactive material was released.
You would get a bigger radiation exposure by visiting Yosemite for a week (altitude + granite), or by working in Grand Central Station (granite).
October 27th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
This is a super idea. President Obama should agree to 10 new nuclear plants. The first one will go right next to McCain’s ranch. The remaining nine will go in the counties with the biggest margin for McCain in the election. Obviously Republicans will not oppose that at all.
October 27th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Sarah Palin knows more about energy than anyone else in the country, and she told him it’s ok to laugh.
October 27th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
The submarines have to have their energy core cut out and replaced after their mission/tour. Then the entire enrgy center of the sub must be replaced before they tour again. This task takes two full years on average to complete.
Sounds like one heck of an idea – lets widely use this ’safe’ and (heavily subsidized)’wise’ use of our now ‘dear’ Capital. Sounds like an idea choke full of holes just like all the rest of McCains ideas.
October 27th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
One last thing. I think “Woolie” needs to stop hiding behind an alias so we can be sure he is not a shill for the Nuclear Industry. If he quacks like a duck and walks like a duck …
October 27th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Again with the air quotes – right at 0:13. It sends chills down my spine.
There’s something so creepy about his air quotes – and I noticed this before the infamous “health of the mother” comment two weeks ago.
October 27th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Re Joel Hanes’ comments
“The Chernobyl reactor was criminally mis-designed.
No remotely-similar nuclear reactor is operating in the US, nor could a reactor design with those characteristics ever receive a license to operate. Chernobyl teaches us nothing about the safety of the nuclear power industry in America.”
———
Oh, bullshit. US nuclear reactors have fucking swimming pools filled with used reactor fuel. What would happen if those swimming pools were drained of water by a terrorist attack? (And access roads were dynamited by the same terrorist teams so neighboring fire engines couldn’t reach them?)
October 27th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
I’m interested in reprocessing to recover the long-lived Pu, which is a nice fuel, and to decrease by 3 orders of magnitude the amount of time the remaining isotopes require to decay to background (= how long we have to watch it). Building a containment vessel that will last 600 years is easily doable with existing technology; building a containment bunker that will last 200,000 years is an anti-nuclear obstructionary tactic because it endlessly moves goalposts and is inherently undoable… similar to “hydrogen economy” catch-22’s. Recovering the Uranium is secondary, since it can’t be used in existing reactors except for CANDUs.
Long-term I’d like to see where Gen IV reactor designs take us — low cost online reprocessing with 100% burnup of abundant Thorium fuel and great passive safety…
October 27th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
I have little interest in playing character assassination games, Scott Ferguson, but if you really care, I am a graduate student in the biomedical sciences, with no professional interest in nuclear power, nor any conflict of interest. I am a policy advocate because I believe in nuclear power on its technical merits. I use my academic .edu email address in this form every time I submit it, and it clearly contains my real name and institution. My phone number at this desk is a google away. If you wish to go on a witch hunt, ask the moderator.
October 27th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
Let me point out one other thing about McCain. While he drones on and on about how safe nuclear power is, he doesn’t even want the nuclear waste byproduct driving through his state on the way to Yucca Mountain. It’s so safe he doesn’t even want it in his state for as long as it takes to drive across or cut through Arizona. It must be something about the Arizona roads that contaminates the safe nuclear waste.
http://thesebastards.blogspot.com/
October 27th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
US nuclear reactors have fucking swimming pools filled with used reactor fuel.
Yup. I agree that this is a bad idea, but it’s not an inherent characteristic of the industry; it’s because fear-driven politics have prevented opening of Yucca, and have prevented development of additional waste storage sites.
I did say I’m not a big fan of increased nuclear power, and this is one important reason.
What would happen if those swimming pools were drained of water by a terrorist attack?
You tell me what you think would happen.
I think that the unmoderated old fuel would get warm, but not so warm as to break cladding or to create a plume, because the people who work at the reactor sites have taken pains, particularly since 9/11, to avoid creating dangerous situations.
How about addressing the points I actually made: that no graphite-moderated reactor (like Chernobyl) is now or will be operated in the US, and that no one was hurt by the worst-case accident at TMI?
October 27th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
It is a dumb argument for many reasons. The main reason is that we already have more nuclear reactors in the United States than any other country. Except for one meltdown which was fully contained, there have been no major accidents.
But also nuclear reactors on Navy vessels have nothing in common with civilian reactors. The scale is that of a research reactor and the personnel and the organization have a long history of following rules and not trying to cut corners to save money. The reactor is also located where it is pretty hard to attack, or even locate.
October 27th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
We seem to be overlooking something: why on earth is he still appearing in Iowa? Or was this from weeks ago?
October 27th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
The existing plants have been very safe. The new designs would surely be safer. Setting aside the fact that their absurdly inadequate off site liability insurance is provided by Uncle Sam in the best socialist tradition, like the waste disposal and the initial design etc. etc. etc. etc., the dirty fact is they are too expensive.
$10 billion plus is a number that was thrown around before the huge run up in commodity prices in 07 08 which actually stalled the announcement of some virtually finalized deals to build. Now that those prices, concrete, steel, stainless steel, copper and the like are falling some deals will probably go through. Deals based primarily upon enthusiasm not common sense.
The problem with a $10 billion dollar plant is that if it does fail badly your out $10 billion. It’s too expensive to insure such gigantic capital investments. TMI Unit 1 was at lest a $1 billion loss for PG&E. Then it cost a billion to sort of clean up. The clean up cost when it ocmes time to decommission the plant will be gigantic, unless the NRC let’s them skate. Those huge losses scared the crap out of the utilites. That was the final nail in the coffin of the industry.
Any rational plan for electric power should include nuclear. It makes some sense on many levels but of course has plenty of drawbacks. One thing that isn’t in the plus column is the cost of the power that would be supplied. It isn’t going to be super cheap. The original hype in the 50’s was that it was going to make electric power so cheap it wouldn’t need to be metered. That didn’t work out. On an energy security basis having nukes in the mix makes plenty of sense but it’s hardly a home run.
One other dirty little secret is that the world supply of uranium is very limited, and getting more limited every day. It decays. A couple of hundred thousand or million years agot the situation was better. Darn, bad luck. There is not enough in the entire world to provide anywhere near a majority of the worlds power.
October 27th, 2008 at 6:16 pm
Rapier, world availability of uranium extractable at commercially viable rates is still very much so an open topic. The estimates I assume you’re using (MIT study) make debatable assumptions about how prospecting, known reserves, and sustainable prices… not to mention restricting ourselves to once-through enriched Uranium LWR’s. Even at $120/kg the total cost for the entire fuel cycle is in the neighborhood of 5% of the cost of the electricity provided, and the commodity uranium price itself is only a part of the fuel cycle cost.
There are alot of things we can pursue to bring down the capital cost of newer reactor designs. Reliable passive safety is probably chief among them. High temperature reactors. Liquid (unfabricated) fuel. Etc. Even if the long-long-term viability of existing LWR designs is disputable, we’re shooting ourselves in the gut if we don’t serious increase research into Gen IV+ ideas.
October 27th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
Re joel Hane’s comment “I think that the unmoderated old fuel would get warm, but not so warm as to break cladding or to create a plume, because the people who work at the reactor sites have taken pains, particularly since 9/11, to avoid creating dangerous situations.”
————-
Anyone can tell when intensely hot used fuel has just been taken out of a reactor — the steam stops coming out of the cooling tower during a refueling.
Yes, the hot new rods are dispersed around the pool to avoid a concentration — but if they are exposed to air and if coolant is removed, won’t they still start an uncontrollable fire which emits large amounts of radiation? Couldn’t suicidal terrorists stack some of them back together?
Yes, the nuke plants have fierce watch dogs. The ones here at Peach Bottom, PA evidently like to take naps:
http://wjz.com/topstories/Peach.Bottom.nuclear.2.430733.html
October 27th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
The “blah blah blah” is always what scares me with McCain. It’s the never looking past the surface level of an important issue. It’s the lack of nuance that destroyed the Bush administration’s ability to effect change.
On the other hand, too much nuance and presto!: You have the long, forlorn mug of John Kerry in 2004 – his “blah blah blah” droned on and on into the interminable campaign darkness.
Obama’s blah blah blah is concrete, succinct and necessary to solve problems.
Love your blog. Come chow on Dan Quayle’s Potatoe (danquaylespotatoe.blogspot.com).
October 27th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
To give some numbers to the cost of a nuclear meltdown, this
1982 Sandia study indicated that a meltdown of the Limerick reactor here in PA would kill 74,000 people early on, would injure 610,000, would cause an additional 34,000 deaths from cancer and would cause economic damages of $213 Billion.
Ref: http://www.nirs.org/reactorwatch/accidents/crac2.pdf
You should probably double those casualties for today because PA allowed the spread of suburban development into the Limerick emergency zone. Population density is much higher than it was in 1982.
$213 Billion in 1982 dollars is $483 Billion today. Add in lawsuits for death, pain and suffering and you’re looking at $1 Trillion easy.
How much is the industry insurance? $10 Billion?
Plus Limerick is on the River which provides Philly with drinking water.
October 27th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
I should add that I strongly favor development of new nuclear reactors — I think it is the only long term viable solution. Although we badly need to give much greater funding into researching alternatives.
But the major risk/problem of nuclear is that it will be governed by the same corrupt Congressional/White House assholes who let the financial derivatives get out of hand.
October 27th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
Don, the NRC is designed to be independent and insulated from the whims of any particular administration; 5 commissioners are appointed by president and confirmed by congress for 5 year terms. The licensing process is arduous and open to public input, protest, and litigation at almost every step — perhaps too much, enough to turn informed dissent into blind obstructionism, and why there is now a combined construction/operating license.
Anyway, re: your NIRS link (hardly an unbiased source…), it makes serious sins of omission. it’s cherrypicking worst-case scenarios in a Probabilistic Risk Assessment analysis (in this case, CRAC-2 and NUREG-350) — without giving the probabilities associated. Risk = probability * outcome. In typical scare-mongering NIRS fashion it gives you the scary half. The probability of the NIRS scenario is in the neighborhood of 1 in 10 billion reactor-years. Anyway, the usual results of these kinds of studies is in the neighborhood of 2 * 10^-8 deaths per reactor-year for a PWR, or let’s say, for 100 reactors over a period of 30 years, then 0.00006 people will die.
The What is the probability that one of the listed events will occur? Are we talking about something once in 5 reactor years? 5,000 reactor years? 5 million? Risk is probability * outcome. The modern science of risk analysis is based in large part on work done in the nuclear field.
October 27th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
Ignore the last paragraph in my comment above — it’s a draft I forgot to delete before hitting submit.
October 27th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
Safe is not a binary term. It involves probabilities and risk management. People who say that some activity is perfectly safe or perfectly environmentally harmless don’t inspire a lot of confidence in me. If it was perfectly safe and harmless nobody would be organizing to stop it. It may be worth the risks or ecological damage, but you have to make the case. A more benign Republican party would say and believe that when we don’t weigh the costs of environmental rules, we end up missing environmental and ecological opportunities. Pitting environmental policies against one another is both substantively and politically more viable than the current approach.
October 27th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
Many thousands more people have died from burning fossil fuels than in nuclear accidents. Not to mention the minor issue of climate change. If we are to maintain the standard of living we all now embrace nuclear will have to be a major component of meeting our future energy needs.
October 27th, 2008 at 9:06 pm
The perfect nuclear waste storage site would be in Arizona salt deposits well below the water table. The area is craton-stable and almost nobody lives anywhere around. Seal the waste by vitrifying it and bury it beneath a couple of billion tons of salt.
Arizona, alas, has lots of votes.
October 27th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
Are there any stats about relative cancer levels for naval personnel on submarine duty?
Yes. Can’t find it on line right now but there is a pub that comes out every five years that has shown no statistical difference in cancer rates between individuals (military and civilian) that have received ionizing radiation due to navy nuclear power and those who have not.
October 27th, 2008 at 10:55 pm
2. Naval nuclear reactors are preferable to other options because of the relative safety (or shear possibility) of transporting nuclear fuel instead of petroleum-based options. Civilian power generation generally isn’t a regular target for high powered artillery fire; having large quantities of combustible fuel is not as much of an issue. Refueling a natural-gas fired power plant isn’t (nearly as much of) a national security issue.
“Things around here do not react well to bullets” has very little to do with the ‘why’ of navy nuclear power. Nuclear power is useful because
1) no O2 required (submarines)
2) energy density (carriers)
other nuclear ships have gone out of style because the expense is not worth it. And most of these are in fact ‘gas’ powered (Burkes and Tychos are gas-turbine, using fuel similar to jet fuel)
October 28th, 2008 at 1:30 am
Speaking as a grad student in physical science, we liberals need to get over our fear of nuclear power. It is perfectly safe. The question of waste is legitimate, but the safety issue isn’t.
October 28th, 2008 at 3:25 am
It totally makes sense to locate nuclear power generating stations in the most Republican counties in the country, with a particular emphasis on the emptier regions of Wyoming, Idaho and Utah. As for nuclear waste, well, I’m sure Governor Palin would be thrilled to host a storage facility with a footprint much smaller than that contemplated for drilling in ANWR. And with “Uncle” Ted Stevens out of the way, so much the easier.
October 28th, 2008 at 7:54 am
As a philosophical point it is broadly accepted that distributed systems are superior. On that basis alone one should be highly skeptical of making a 50 plus year commitment of capital to a new generation of nuke power plants. Local renewable generation with current and future technologies along with efficiency and hopefully at some point storage, could make that commitment now look dumb in 20 years. Besides which no new plant is projected to go online in less than 10.
The long lead time does argue on a strategic level for going ahead now but it must be fully understood that it’s a hedge and not some sort of final solution. A hedge with costs that are already being socialized. One can come up with all sorts of scenarios where huge portions of the costs would be socialized.
One of the biggest problems with nuke power always was the pretense that it was a free enterprise exercise. It never was and pretending it was poisoned the well in countless ways. Now we are going down the same road and it’s a huge mistake.
October 28th, 2008 at 10:43 am
I’ve never gotten a coherent answer why distributed generation is superior. Philosophically how? This is a concrete, engineering challenge. Distributed generation means smaller generating units, which are always less efficient. Even small wind turbines are less efficient than large wind turbines, not to mention siting them away from ideal geographic conditions. And of course a much more complex grid. So, I usually think of liquified natural gas executives high-fiving each other in their offices, because that’s the most likely basis of this system, whatever token gestures to micro-wind and solar.
You can invoke future technologies to support any outcome. Why not build the hell out of cheap, dirty coal right now, if fusion and super-cheap solar and energy storage and offshore wind and distributed generation are just around the corner!
ps. this might make me a filthy commie, but I don’t think nuclear power, or any power generation for that matter, should really be left solely to free enterprise. To a large degree it should be socialized because power is a resource that is critical to everyone’s life.
November 27th, 2008 at 1:19 am
I think that overall,the ignorance and hysteria over nuclear power is far too overblown.Future generations of reactors will get even safer and more economic as time goes by.
My only worry, however,is the mini-nukes idea they are pushing these days.Like the hyperion reactor.Although they have their economic advantages over large reactors in that they can be practically rolled-off the assembly line like cars instead of taking years to build.Instead of having nuclear waste produced at only a few large centralized reactors where it is easier to keep track of and manage….you will now have literally thousands of smaller sources of waste and potential environmental contamination to deal with….scattered all over the place.That is why I prefer centralized nuclear over micro-distributed nuclear.
Furthermore,it seems like it would be difficult and costly to dig them up again to replace and recycle fuel and spent nuclear waste….if they are buried in the ground and encased in concrete.And what if there was a major catastrophic earthquake,fire,hurricane,flood,etc.that damaged the mini-nuclear plant? Would the buried below-ground reactor leak radioactive contamination into the surrounding soil and ground water?
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