Re: Say no to Nuke Plants
- From: chatnoir <wolfbat359a@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2009 05:01:49 -0800 (PST)
On Feb 3, 7:56 pm, Dave Head <rally...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
On Tue, 3 Feb 2009 17:42:52 -0800 (PST), chatnoir <wolfbat3...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/2/3/rep_marcy_kaptur_d_oh_urges
excerpt:
Slightly off topic, but very much a part of the stimulus package, we
just got this emergency email from a fellow Ohioan, Congress member
Kaptur. It is from the well known anti-nuclear activist Harvey
Wasserman. As you were talking about alternative energy, he says, “A
$50 billion nuke power bomb is dropping toward Obama’s stimulus
package.
http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/7/2009/1721
The desperate, dangerous nuclear power industry has dropped a $50
billion stealth bomb,” he says, “meant to irradiate the Obama Stimulus
Package.
“It comes in the form of a mega-loan guarantee package that would
build new reactors Wall Street [wouldn’t] finance even when it had
cash.” He says, “It will take a [healthy] dose of citizen action to
stop it, so start calling your Senators now.”
He says that “[t]he vaguely worded bailout-in-advance provision was
snuck through the Senate Appropriations Committee in the deep night of
January 27. It would provide $50 billion in loan guarantees for
‘eligible technologies’ that would technically include renewable
sources and electric transmission. But the handout is clearly directed
at nukes and ‘clean coal.’”
Now, this is in the Senate section. What do you think of this?
REP. MARCY KAPTUR: Well, I have not read the Senate bill. They’ve just
been drafting that. I can tell you, in the House bill, we have $114.5
billion for green energy: for solar, for wind, for geothermal, for
biofuels.
Oh, surprise, surprise - leftist envirowacko democrat proposes using
technologies that aren't ready yet.
These are all industries we are bringing up here in our
region.
Wind is the only one that is remotely viable, but won't be a large percentage
of the power generation for years, if ever. Solar? Not in Marcy Kaptur's
Ohio. If you've ever lived in the midwest, you become acquainted with the term
"overcast" very quickly. Geothermal? Seriously not ready yet. If Google
actually gets anywhere with powering its server farms with a really deep well
that taps the earth's heat pretty much anywhere they decide to drill, then they
will have done something. But when? 10 years? 20 years? Biofuels? They're
building another alcohol distillery near Fostoria, Ohio - part of M. Kaptur's
area of interest, but... the fueling station that was recently opened in
Washington, DC was selling E85 at $1.57 a gallon. Hint: That;s BAAAD! To see
why it's bad, download the EPA's fuel economy guide and see what the mileage is
for E85 vehicles when you use E85. I saw one at 10 - 13 mpg, which was waaaay
lower than the gasoline mileage for that vehicle. An E-85 owner is going to be
paying maybe double the cents per mile to run the thing on E85. I predict a
really poor sales experience for E85 once the public catches on...
I happen to represent the nuclear power plant that in the last twenty
years has had more accidents than any other one in the country. And
so, my own view is—and, in fact, there was a brownout a couple years
ago because of this particular—the system this particular plant is
attached to. And my feeling is, until we can actually assure ourselves
that these plants are operated safely, I don’t know why we would want
to reward this industry. I would be very concerned about that, based
on our own living history of what has happened here. This is a very
dangerous technology and one that we have to exercise extraordinary
responsibility. So I was—that was not in the House version, to my
knowledge, and I haven’t read the Senate language.
Yeah, its so dangerous of a technology that nobody has been killed by it in the
USA, not even at 3 mile island. And here we go again - same old stuff - the
envirowacko telling us what not to use (nuclear) and promoting an array of
things that aren't technologically viable (solar, wind, geothermal.) The
pattern is going to repeat... and repeat... and repeat... and in the end, there
is only envrowacko noise, and no solution.- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -
It can't even insure itself! I would look at the health (life and
death) at the Navaho nation!:
http://scienceblogs.com/islandofdoubt/2009/02/nuclear_power_industry_reaches.php
Nuclear power industry reaches for another piece of the pie
Category: climate • technology
Posted on: February 2, 2009 9:59 AM, by James Hrynyshyn
The dominant subject among climate change campaigners these days is
economics. One could consider this good news, insofar as we've moved
on from debating the science of global warming to the debate over how
to deal with it. The bad news is most of what passes for debate in
economics makes little sense, even to many an economist. For example,
I certainly don't feel competent to pass judgment the relative merits
of a carbon tax and cap-and-trade. But we can't ignore the issues, can
we? So it is with some trepidation that I turn your attention to the
U.S. economic stimulus package now making its way through Congress.
The stimulus bill is designed primarily to make the current recession
as brief as possible. But Barack Obama has convinced those drafting
the legislation to focus a significant portion, some $52 billion,
depending on who's counting, of the expenditures involved on green
jobs, conservation and energy efficiency. Some environmental
campaigners say that's not enough. And that argument will continue
even after Obama signs whatever Congress passes.
It would be nice if it were politically possible for most, if not all,
of the $900 billion (and counting) would be spent on projects that are
at least mindful of climate concerns. That's not going to happen, as
there are many constituencies more weddd to the status quo that need
mollifying. But it seems fair to question whether it makes any sense
at all to spend just as much on expensive technologies that won't
create any jobs for a decade.
I refer to the fact that last week
the Senate Appropriations Committee voted to increase nuclear loan
guarantees by $50 billion in the economic recovery package (S. 336).
This staggering sum "would more than double the current loan guarantee
cap of $38 billion" for "clean energy" technology.
This we learn from Climate Progress, which picked it up from the Wonk
Room, which in turn picked up the story from Friends of the Earth.
Wonk Room explains it best:
In contrast, the committee allocated only $9.5 billion exclusively for
"standard renewable energy projects." Although the loan guarantee
program covers nuclear technology, carbon capture and sequestration
for coal plants, as well as renewable energy, the vast bulk of
requested loans -- $122 billion -- are for new nuclear power plants.
This $50 billion nuclear throwaway nearly matches the total allocation
for genuinely clean energy in the House version of the stimulus
package: only $52 billion in total for smart grid, renewable energy,
and energy efficiency investments.
Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with funding projects that aim
to develop sources of electricity that produce next to no greenhouses
gases. But the prevailing consensus of the business community is that
nuclear power is too expensive without significant government support.
The same is true of most renewables, of course. But nuclear power is a
60-year-old technology that still can't cover it's own insurance
costs.
There are some interesting alternative approaches to harnessing
radioactivity, the "Generation IV" technologies. My favorite is the
liquid flouride thorium reactor. But none of those will be available
before 2030, so can't play a serious role in stabilizing greenhouse
gases in the near-term. And it's the near-term that we're most
interested in, because if we don't start bringing down emissions
before 2012 or 2015, it's looking increasingly like we will have
missed our last opportunity to avoid catastrophic climate change. So
say more and more climatologists.
That leaves us with the question of which technologies can produce the
fastest results in terms of emissions reductions. As even existing
nuclear plants take upwards of 15 years to come on line, it would seem
that $50 billion in loan guarantees for the industry isn't the most
effective way to spend that money. If genuninely renewable
technologies such as wind, solar and geothermal, do offer much faster
schedules for contributing to a clean energy grid, as many have
aruged, then we can expect Obama to face considerable pressure to
reject any bill that includes such generous support for nukes.
That's my attempt at turning an economics question into something more
related to the real world.
-----------
Yea from a science blog!
.
- References:
- Say no to Nuke Plants
- From: chatnoir
- Re: Say no to Nuke Plants
- From: Dave Head
- Say no to Nuke Plants
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