Should federal regulators OK completion of the TVA's nuclear reactor at Watts Bar?
Fri Oct 9, 2009 12:09 PM EDT
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Should federal regulators OK completion of the TVA's nuclear reactor at Watts Bar?
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Hey wake up. Talk about framing a question around a noose. We know all the tech weenies just can't wait for the latest gadget, but a nuclear facility isn't a gadget. The TVA like all big utilities is all about BS'sing the public into paying for huge projects that generate a lot of money for the nuclear industrial complex. Go look at the lobby stats. Check out how long its gonna take for this thing to come on line. And guess who won't benefit in the short term!
Its a stupid scam to take money from energy efficiency, wind and nano-solar development which could all be online within a year or to so that a bunch of nearly dead nuclear pirates can rebuild their nuclear security state.
By the way, as long as GE, one of the largest nuclear developers in the world owns NBC, don't look for any bias here! :) Oh, yeah, I'm sorry this is MicroSoft's side of the bowling alley.
Rather than framing the question around the tech issue, frame it around the real issue, namely following the money.
The system wants to suck up your cash ratepayers.... Look to own your own power, just like the microcomputer revolutions that changed the world.
All good points, but I must reinforce the concern of the age of the preliminary construction and its constraints on building on new technology. It does not seem like a safe or cost effective investment.
Instead of large centralized electric-generating solutions we should be looking at localized, local owned (or personally owned) strategies to conform to the ideals of energy independence. If you are sold on nuclear, there's this. We can also expect solar and wind solutions to become more cost-effective in the next ten years.
Energy independence is not just trying to not buy foreign oil, it is also independence from large energy concerns and their lobbies determined to squeeze us for every dollar they can. Remember how Enron made their money? They just got caught. If I can generate my own, there will be no speculators there to artificially raise my costs.
That's what my last point was about Roy. Thanks for expanding on this. The nuclear industry is 2nd only to the missile industry in terms of the number of jobs it produces per dollar spent. The Building Trades industry loves this stuff as there is a huge bulge of construction work that all goes away afterwards.
Furthermore, 90% of all commerical nuclear fuel today comes from the HEU program that was set up to remove old Soviet weapons grade fuel left over after the cold war. Its a great way to see the direct connection between the nuclear weapons security state that Ike warned about and DOE/reactor industry pushing for these huge cost plus deals.
By the way.... How about pulling this off the alternative energy group!
Nuclear power doesn't have anything to do with alternative energy. For the youngsters amongst us, the term alternative energy was originally created by the anti-nuclear movement thirty years ago to describe energy sources that were "ALTERNATIVE" to nuclear fission, coal and oil. There has been a blatant attempt by the corporate media to redfine the lines that we once laid out.
Nukes are '70s technology. Remember 8-tracks, mimeograph machines, and phones which were tied to the wall?
Let's get real and get modern like those awesome I-Phones and BlackBerrys. We've got powerful computers which fit in a shirt-pocket, and we really believe we need poisonous nuclear power from 4 decades ago??
Roy's comment goes to the heart of another golden opportunity ... update the 100-year-old, antique, electric grid which is oriented to serving bloated 1000 megawatt coal and nuclear burners. We could have, in a matter of months, small 10-100 megawatt solar and wind installations, and tie them together in a new smart grid made from modern materials. Dispersing the grid is less polluting, more stable and more secure.
Good, green jobs. You can download Carbon Free and Nuclear Free: A Road-Map to U.S. Energy Policy for free from www.ieer.org or www.carbonfreenuclearfree.org and see how we can be free from coal, oil, and nuclear by 2040.
We just have to do it. No Nukes No Coal No Kidding!
1 Electricity produced by Nuclear Power (NP) is not renewable so the supply is not secure.
2 The waste problem is not solved, it will not be safe for over 100,000 years
3 There is a link between NP and Nuclear Weapons
4 NP stations are vulnerable to flooding as sea levels rise
5 Nuclear Power is not fully insurable
6 Routine discharges of radioactive materials cause cancer
7 Nuclear Power Stations are vulnerable to terrorist attack
8 Electricity Produced by Nuclear Power (NP) is not CO2 free
9 Uranium mining is overwhelmingly done on the land left to Indigenous People. These communities are disproportionately affected with sickness and genetic impacts.
10 NP would take funding away from the real long term solutions which are energy efficiency and renewable energy.
1. Nice point, but we're not at a point where we are willing or able to move entirely to renewable energy sources... plus we may find that some of those sources are either inadequate or have troubles of their own (think windfarms, waste of space; bird guillotines).
2. The waste problem is not solved yet. My guess is that if we last on this earth another 100,000 years, it will be figured out well before then. Think of the progress in the last 100 years... if people are willing to make this a priority, we can figure out a solution, probably in the next 30 years.
3. Not really. Nuclear power plants in the US do not make weapons grade materials. They aren't designed to do so. Scarily enough, the plants that did are often located in within city limits (like Chicago, Madison, etc.) but they are tiny, and well managed. Now if TVA was 1980's Soviet Russia you might be right, but it ain't, so you're, well... dead wrong.
4. Not even sure what you're trying to say here.
5. Uh.... yes. But everything is. And really, what a dumb argument. "Well, lt's not build anything that could be harmful if destroyed, because well, what if a tornado hits it? Or a hurricane? Or there's a war?" And, what are the chances (?), and the sea levels don't rise so fast that we couldn't design a solution to prevent problems from flooding.
6. Radioactive materials DO cause cancer, but from all the evidence I've seen, there is no higher incidence of concer in the area surrounding a NPP than anywhere else. This probably means they're not "routinely discharging radioactive stuff." If you're scared of getting cancer, stop grilling, kill your microwave and leave the NE. New Jersey in particular is a wonderful place to 'catch' cancer.
7. Um... pretty much everything is vulnerable to terrorist attack. Shall we cancel the Superbowl, since it's vulnerable to attack? Shall we dismantle our water treatment facilities? Consider the damages that could be done there. Break down the Hoover Dam before the terrorists blow it up?!?! No. We're assuming the risk, and well, we're aware that these could be targets, so we do a pretty good job of protecting them.
8. Maybe not. I can't speak to this one, but MIT probably can. Google CO2 emissions and nuclear power. Apparently it's looked at as a great way to drastically reduce CO2 emissions.
9. Almost 60% of the Uranium in the WORLD is mined in Canada, Australia and Kazakhstan. In the US uranium mining only still takes place in NE, WY and recently in TX. There is concern that mining will begin in AZ, but this proposed mining is to take place on public land (not native land). So.... I'm not sure where you got your data. Maybe it's just out of date.
10. Yeah, this is logical... if we spend money here, we can't spend that same money elsewhere, but really, we don't have to put every dollar toward developing renewable energy. It's preferable to be able to spend money on future development, but we can't neglect the current state of things while we look at future development. Let's try to do both instead, and maintain a steady momentum in our search for better alternatives.
How many barrels of Arab oil will never be imported, how mant dollars will never be exported once this reactor begins supplying 650,000 homes. We need 500 more GE designed nuclear power plants in this country.
Until our cars run on electrictricity, none. Only about 1% of electricity generated in the US comes from oil.
Do you have any concept of how much 1% of electricity generated in the US would be?
I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that 1% is SIGNIFICANT. Yeah, you can say "well, it's only 1%" but that is a flawed argument. If 1% of the trees in the world died, would you say the same thing? Probably not. 1% of the fish? No way.
If we could reduce oil consumption by 1%, it would be a big deal. Don't dismiss it just because the percentage is small compared to the whole.
Nuclear power has taken fewer lives than the anti-abortion crazies who killed doctors - outside the USSR, where Chernobyl was run by a society which jails environmentalists for their mysteriously shortened lives. France and Belgium provide far more than half their electric power by nuclear plants, and the electricity is cheaper than all other competing power generation methods. Better to beat the nuclear warheads into power plant fueling rods to fuel our advancing civilization, than continue to burn fossil or bio-fuels, loading up the atmosphere with carbon dioxide, or to scar our dwindling natural landscape with hideous windmills that can't produce reliable energy - and at a cost more than three times that of nuclear. Nuclear power produces no carbon dioxide (save the hot air expelled by the Druids who would have us all on horseback trotting through great forests, eating mushrooms and Soylent Green - ever lived in a city where horses were the motive power? It is an odiferous horror, but there are lots of people employed scooping poop . . . ); no acid rain, no scarred landscapes where coal has been ripped from the depths, no mine deaths where coal faces are too deep for strip-mines, no giant piles of toxic ash. We have enough uranium in the USA to provide us 100% of our electricity needs for more than 100,000 years. Our cars could one day be the clean, environmentally sound all-electric variety, eliminating the need to import oil and provide funding for islamic terrorists. And by the way, every living human being is directly descended from an African ancestor - including the "indigenous peoples" - so we are all interlopers. Let's have an open, non-shouting dialogue for a change, and throw out those whose only answer to progress is "no."
You liberals crack me up. Daily you point to how things are done in Europe. You exhalt about the wonders of the French socialists. France is 80% nuclear, so why not the US? Because, talk about following the money, you hypocrites, if we went all nuclear, and well we should, then your whole justification for wasting tax and business dollars in environmental efforts would be shut down within a year. No smoke, no fire, no reason for universities to hire your agrarian loving butts that want to reduce us to 3rd world sufficiency and dependency on others. You complain about nuclear disposal while failing to mention that many of your alternative methods require heavy metals, create excessive local heating and disrupt the normal flow and temp of ground and subterranean water. You dont want alternative energy, you want limited energy. Just enough that it can be controlled by a central government and funded solely by tax dollars with no individual corporations or states rights. Go France!!
Hey, maybe you are descended from Africans, but the rest of us are not. Ardi told me.
Anything other than what I refer to as "Point Of Use" power is archaic. Twenty percent of power produced is lost in transfer to users.
They are 28 billion in debt and want to sell every kilowatt they can muster. No, I'm not a tree hugger but I'm sick of being controlled by monopolies. It all comes down to greed and control. If solar energy could be controlled and sold, it would be on every roof.
If we would pony up some incentives, like Hawaii, we may see 13,000 solar water heaters installed in two years, as they did. TVA cleverly shys away from thermal solar because it is very efficient.
Do the math: 13,000 solar water heaters can produce 85,000,000 KWH's in a year. Who but TVA will benefit from another "store" that sells their wares? Will you?
Just wait until coal ash is declared toxic waste and watch your rates increase.
Tennessee, TVA's main consumer is in the bottom ten states in solar thermal. Coincidence? I think not.
Jim
As a nuke power retiree, I feel compelled to respond to several misinformation on this discussion.
1. The nuke industry has still not paid off their loans from Wall St. from the 60's and 70's. Why send good money after bad?
2. During the Eisenhower admin., Ed Teller told the President to let nukes go commericial. Don't worry nuke waste will not be a problem in 3 to 5 years. Read Wm. Broad's book on Teller's life.
3. The TVA is producing nuke weapons material in the Watts Bar U1 for induction into US nuke weapons since Christmas 2001. So yes we are doing in my yard what we are condemning Iran and N. Korea for. Sorry you guys missed the news hidden in weekly news papers here in the south from 1999 thru 2001. And now they want to expand that production into U2! The front page of Isvestia---Russian paper--- carried the news in 1996! Tritium is the material. It increases your death from 7 seconds to 3 seconds. Great stuff!
4. How many nukes set on the coastal line of America? Begin in Mass. at the Seabrook plant then follow the coast down to FL and go to the Gulf and over to CA and up to Wash. and count. The NRC will point them out on their website. Why shut them down in LA when Katrina hit if water and bad weather is not a problem? Check out the NRC website. Amazing info if you care to read it.
5. No US isurance company will insure any nuke problem for home owners. That went down the drain in the laate 80's or 90'. So go read your policy and see the exemption.
6. Cancer is not the only health issue around nuke sites. Look at how much tritium you are drinking each time you drink the nuke coolaid!! Even the NRC on its own website makes the statement that "their is not a safe level of radiation exposure" to any of us. Also check out the billions of dollar that DOE has paid out to workers over health issues.
7. School security, Washington, DC, the New York City streets might be OK BUT nukes have worse security than the local bar and grill. I know. I have seen the schemes that this industry has lowered itself to and believe me security at nukes is a massive issue and problem.
8.Read up on all the garbage that nukes put into your drinking water, your air you breath and lets not forget all the good stuff that is carried home by nuke workers.
9. For those that have not read the reports and seen the pictures of the current state of the Navajo people that are being exposed daily to uranium mining go to "the Independent". It is a daily newspaper in Gallup, NM and pull up just how much of this mining is not done on public lands. The Navajo are on reservations where we put them and the land belongs to them along side the mining being done in S. Dakota on reservation up there. So lets not rewrite the books on what is actually happening.
10. Lets take away the nuke subsides. Since nukes are 2nd in line behind the defense industry, we should level the playing field. Provide the same amount of funding to renewables and then we can discuss nukes again. They have been around for over 70 years, when do you think that these corporations will begin to stand on their own feet?
With new nukes down here in TN, the cost of this WB u2 reactor has already began at $2 Billion and that was in 1989. And it has been sitting there all these years. And it is already behind schedule. The nuke VP does not have the same info that I have and he won't get it from his boys. And the VP in charge of the U2 is an Iranian. So how much and how long.do we have to tolerate this kind of abuse? New nukes? No Thanks!
It is a good thing you are retired. Sounds like you really never liked your job. Perhaps you should return your pension.
I live near the San Onofre nuclear power plant. It’s great; the water at San Onofre state beach is warm. I’m sure the marine life appreciates it in the winter.