Energy Secretary: Obama Still Wants New Nuclear Plants

If Obama is still for new nuclear power plants, will the republicans change course and oppose them just to keep their opposition record intact?

Around 20 percent of U.S. electricity is currently generated by nuclear power, which produces almost no greenhouse gases.
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Nice framing in the last part of the sentence. You forgot to mention the byproducts produced that have to be stored virtually forever.
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And the fact that, if things go south as in Japan, you can’t just scrape off the existing plant and start over, using the same piece of real estate.
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But… if things NEVER go badly – no floods, no accidents, no “operator error”… and NO EARTHQUAKES – and plant operations are ALWAYS as rosy and bullet-proof as the marketing and PR people from the operator/manufacturer lead us to believe, we can count on several millenia of nice clean safe electricty.
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Color me skeptical…

I still say Fukushima is 1) old 2) battling a once in a millenia event and 3) Coal kills everyday. If wind and sun could provide enough energy fine, but I kind of doubt it. It’s really too bad the plant was not decomissioned as scheduled in Feb.

There is a risk/reward scenario in everything. There are great dangers associated with nuclear power, but I also have serious doubts that wind and solar power can come anywhere close to supplying our energy needs. If we’re going to end our energy dependence we have to keep everything on the table. I’m not one of those people who support nuclear power but say “Not in my backyard”. There’s a nuclear power plant 30 miles from here and it’s OLD.

I have no issue with nuclear power. I do have issues with building them using 60s-70s technology and putting them on active quakes zones where they might get hit with a tsunami as well.

The Japanese reactors survived the quake, they did not survive the tsunami.

I’m curious. Would a larger number of smaller plants be more or less safe.We don’t think twice about our reactor powered Carriers and Submarines.

It’s nice to know the Democrats never ever oppose anything especially spending and government control

Just curious. Did you also recently read an article about mini-nuclear reactors?

Well I am not so sure about that. I do not think there has been any credible reports that indicate just what has happened yet.

I prefer socialist, but democrat works too.

A rational question. I guess it depends on “safe”. Smaller plants would require less radioactive material which would lessen the effect of any leak but it is doubtful that structurally smaller vs larger would make a significant difference.
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Smaller would also mean incrementally higher costs to build.

I am thinking that it is a short term solution with a long term problem.
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At the cost and the risk I wonder if there isn’t a better short term solution.

It is harder to tell the difference anymore.

OMG I agree with freep!!!! Has hell frozen over????

I will add, it seems inconceivably short sited to put six at one site.

We dress worse and have better senses of humor.

But statistically, the risk has to be miniscule. It’s just very loud. The media is making me nuts right now. This is all very bad for Japan, and bad, in particular, locally to the plant, but people are freaking out as though this one plant will destroy the world, which is simply not true.

Me too. Never heard a peep. I guess I’ve been to near nukes all my life to be too afraid. My dad showed me a minuteman when I was a wee girl. I guess to me, it is to be respected, used correctly, and underscores the need for excellent, educated and well staffed facilities.

freeinpa, I just read an article a few days ago that says they’re projected to costs about 100 million each but will likely be built elsewhere at first because of the red tape here to get approval.

“and underscores the need for excellent, educated and well staffed facilities.”
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So…we’re talking about staffing them with immigrants?

They didn’t survive the extended-duration “loss of power”… WHATEVER the reason.
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Primary power failed (understandable); backup generators didn’t work when tried(?); and, finally, the backup batteries did work but weren’t good past 8 hours – those generators were supposed to be working by that point?
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Now… the sh*t has hit the proverbial “fan”… power for the cooling pumps is the least of their worries at this point.

@sacred at the rate we are going…apparently.

1.4 FTW

I hear you, but has there been any plants decommissioned yet, or are we going to run them until they fail?
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I am afraid that the public just hasn’t been properly informed. No surprise there.

Lesson: back up power should be at least as much a primary concern as anything. I suspect it was not at the time installed. (I have to say, what was GE thinking? The Japanese *invented* the word tsunami for a reason.)

That’s a good question. I am assuming there have been.

No , but it’s got everyone thinking about the 50-year-old nuclear “dinosaurs” operating down the road from them, wondering about all of the natural disasters that seem to be happening with increasing frequency and ferocity, and concerned if they are as safe as they’ve been led to believe.
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Because those 100 or 1000-year natural disastters seem to be occurring with increasing frequency.
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Thr Japanese had the reputation for having their “sh*t” together regarding technology and it’s really eye-opening to watch them struggle with this.
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Throw in the general corporate reputation for being somewhat less that “honest” or open when passing out information adverse to their cause and people are wondering who (and when) to trust what they are being told.
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Too many “agendas” (hidden and otherwise) going on…

“Because those 100 or 1000-year natural disastters seem to be occurring with increasing frequency.”
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We’ve had 3-4 “50 or 100 year” floods here in the last 20 years.

Here is a site that list decommissioned or shut down plants in the US.
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If I read it correctly some of these plants have been shut down for over 30 years and are still in the decommissioning phase.
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http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/decommissioning.html

“but will likely be built elsewhere at first because of the red tape here to get approval.”
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And this will likely double the costs and time frame to build.

To be acceptable, decommissioning must be completed within 60 years of the plant ceasing operations. A time beyond that would be considered only when necessary to protect public health and safety in accordance with NRC regulations.

The same with financial crisis 100 year events are now 3-4 yr in the financial world. The price of progress?

It might also give us a chance to work the kinks out in somebody else’s country. Just a silver lining.

The price of progress? No I think it is the price of ignoring the risks.

but has there been any plants decommissioned yet, or are we going to run them until they fail?
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allthings,
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Think about it… decommissioning a “perfectly functional” nuclear plant simply because its past its “shelf life” probably means higher long-term electricity rates for those affected. Unless they’ve already built another plant just for this eventuality.
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IMHO, leaders will continue to “roll the dice” on keeping the plant operational, hoping that it’ll last at least one more “election cycle”.
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Plants will be decommissioned when they OVERTLY fail or someone can bring the locals in, point to a massive crack or flaw (severe deterioration, for example) that CAN’T BE FIXED and tell them that they HAVE to “shut it down” or face having the thing make the landscape (and THEM with it) glow like a Halloween mask in a couple of years.
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When the affected population can see that a plant failure will impact them in some personal way, then decommissioning becomes less of a problem for the politicians and administrators.

If I read it correctly some of these plants have been shut down for over 30 years and are still in the decommissioning phase.
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I can believe that.
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How much of the “decommissioning process” means cleaning up the massive amounts of contamination that occurred BEFORE they knew that it was unacceptable to dump certain products and wastes into the ground and in landfills?
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At our local plant, there are barrels of nuclear waste that they have to be special teams in here just to MOVE, let alone process.
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They’ve been in place so long that corrosion and degradation of the containers is a real problem.
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The major industry at the plant right now is cleanup from the previous operations.

I’m heading out for the day, but I have a final thought. Earthquakes, tsunamis, the unrest peaking in the Arab world…way to busy for me. I’d much rather be bored.

AFG,
It all adds up to a problem that doesn’t go away.

I wonder if every nuclear plant in the world is looking behind their file cabinets and inside the janitor’s closet for spent fuel rods. Who knew you could put them in a pool in the corner for 50,000 years of worry free storage?
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That’s been the sticking point for many. It’s not “What if there is an earthquake in New York?” it’s “how are they going to store the contaminated refuse of the plant operation on-site, when are they going to transport it off-site, who’s road are they going to drive down, and who’s back yard are they going to use as a radioactive pile for the next five dozen millennia?” … oh, and nuclear meltdowns.
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We can budget all the money for all the loan assistance we want but if a large part of Japan becomes a wasteland folks will pitch in for a neighborhood wind turbine and all its limitations before they agree to nuclear.

Have been thinking about the reactor in Japan and Chernobyl… was watching the reports about the aborted helicopter water drop to cool it.
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Anyone remember what it FINALLY took to bring Chernobyl under control?
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A Russian helicopter pilot, Anatoly Grishchenko, along with a number of other Soviet pilots, knowing they were signing their own death warrants by doing so, flew in numerous loads of concrete mix and dumped it on the reactor core, sealing it in.
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Grishchenko died of leukemia in 1990 in a Seattle cancer treatment facility, where he had come for a bone-marrow transplant. His marrow donor was a French woman.

“Nice framing in the last part of the sentence. You forgot to mention the byproducts produced that have to be stored virtually forever.”
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Not to mention, uranium must be mined and processed which, 1) kills people directly, 2) pollutes the ground and water and 3) releases lots of greenhouse gases.
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http://www.deseretnews.com/article/250010691/Uranium-mining-left-a-legacy-of-death.html

Alas, the Yucca Mountain waste storage project in Nevada was a horrible idea (though it’s not yet 100% dead): just over an hour’s drive from Las Vegas and the site’s literally straddling a minor fault line. Then again, it was right next door to the ol’ atom bomb test sites.

Big salt dome, if I recall. They bury the canisters there and leave them in a “moisture-free” environment for the next 100k years (give or take a decade or two).
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Salt corrodes the crap out of most things over time. Get water seepage, and it gets REALLY interesting.
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Question, what happens when those canisters start to leak and there’s enough material for them to start to interact like fuel rods do… to burn?
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Was the REAL plan that, by the time they do reach that point, some old storage sites will be the least of mankind’s worries?
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That we will have invented new and increasingly more creative ways to f*ck over our environment by that point?
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Anyway, it won’t be OUR problem any more… we’ll be DEAD and gone…

but has there been any plants decommissioned yet

Yes, there have been nuclear plants decommissioned in the U.S. You can check out the list here:
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_reactors
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You can search for more information with the name of the decommissioned plant if you like.

The Commander and Chief of Fence Post Sitting remains pat on nuclear energy. Surprise, surprise.
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Coal, Gas and Oil, not much risk involved comparatively to nuclear fission.
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I am so damn happy Obama is our President. He is so intelligent. So smart. So with it when it comes to anything.
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Golf anyone??

“Golf anyone??”
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Maybe after I finish my NCAA brackets

Coal, Gas and Oil, not much risk involved comparatively to nuclear fission.
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Let’s see… “sludge pond” collapses, mountain-top removal and stream destruction, Massey Energy, BP, “blowouts”, shoreline contamination, chemical dispersants of unknown composition and toxicity.
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Yeah, what could possibly go wrong there?

“Let’s see… “sludge pond” collapses, mountain-top removal and stream destruction, Massey Energy, BP, “blowouts”, shoreline contamination, chemical dispersants of unknown composition and toxicity.”

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Yea, as opposed to being immediately dead from nuclear radiation, that makes sense to me.

Name your “poison”, Rusty…

Maybe your ideal future nation looks like the scenery from “Blade Runner”, perhaps?
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Or a country composed just one big “moonscape” of strip mines, oil derricks, and sludgy beaches?
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Funny, I was hoping for something a bit better than that for my kids and grandkids…

The curse goes like this: “may you live in interesting times.”

Actually one of the problems with coal is all the radioactive materials it contains and the concentration of that material in the ash after the coal is burned.
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http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste
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In the western US coal deposits are one of the things used to search for uranium.

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There is a trade off for everything and in my mind nuclear seems the safest and over the long run the less costly. It’s also true however that the resources of existing uranium are limited, but with modern recycling methods a lot of the fuel rods can be reused over and over again. Which also cuts down on the waste left over. It’s a far from perfect program, but being worked on with increasing efficiency. The French seem to be the leaders in this.

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This is again the failure of people to access risk. 10s of thousands of people are dead in Japan, from the earthquake, (An 8.9 which is extremely rare) and the tsunami. There is a chance of people becoming sick and dying from radiation poisoning, but that risk is mostly the people involved with the clean up and a very small number of people. There is a risk of people exposed to the radiation in the larger population developing cancer, but there is that risk also from a lot of other sources and probably on a greater scale.

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If our National energy policy is truly to be free of foreign dependence of energy sources, then nuclear seems to me the safest way to go. Accidents are rare, the waste, while being toxic is concentrated, rather than spewed into the the air like coal and oil, and a lot easier to keep out of the environment. (A lot cheaper too). I would have no qualms about living near a reactor. In SW Florida where I live I stand a much larger chance of being killed from skin cancer from the sun than a nuclear accident.

Hi folks,
Forget about new nuke power stations and plan to close the old ones, as new power systems come online. If the US government does not move fast, the home owners around the present nuke sites or planned new ones will start walking away from their bank loans in serious numbers, as the value of property that is within 100 miles of a nuke station (The downwind distance the USS Reagan turned back from), just took a serious and permanent hit until the reactors are shut down. Those poor people in the next town to a nuke plant, or who can see one from an upstair window, will find their homes near worthless and if your president does not reject more political contributions from the pro nuke lobby and go green, with a serious alternative power program he will be toast at the next election.
Alternative energy projects generate a serious amount of both short and long term jobs, far more than the short term jobs building a new nuke will generate. Solar panels should be on every roof in the South and West and a windfarm in all the fields in the breezy spots.
For the private home owner there must be tax breaks for new installations and most important of all, copy the Germans and Brits with serious feed in tariff subsidies (FIT;s)
President Obama needs to come clean and go green, or he is out for the count at the next election.
Regards JB (Gasbags comedy site 3w airship dot me)

Hi there,
One thing I will say to you pro nuke lobby folks, is ask a serious engineer to run the numbers for a pilot of a new Airbus 380, that decides he wants to win a place in aviation history with the first serious nuclear attack on the US. With near full fuel at 60 degrees dive angle and mach buffet limits for speed, it will bust open any of the US nuke domes and make 9/11 seem like a minor problem. The lunatic fringe are always talking about how big an aircraft the 380 is and Osama bin caveman was an engineer.
The FAA were stupid to allow flight deck doors to be left open and to certify ones that could be kicked open before 9/11 and they are just as stupid today to allow the monster A 380 anywhere near US airspace. EADS were nuts to build such a monster, as it has become the potential new WMD of choice for any new fanatic. They might try for the Whitehouse or another big target, but those are watched and guarded so any idiot can figure the best thing is a nuke power station upwind of a big population density. I warned the FAA years before 9/11 that they should listen to the experts from El Al about flight deck doors, but they knew better. Now please write to them saying, shut the older nukes and ban any overflights by the A380 without a US Air Force escort at max altitude only.
Regards JB (Airship & Blimp Consultant 3w hybridairship dott net)
PS. I made 5% today on Poly Crystal (PVCS.L) today and alternative energy is the way to go in investment terms.

Anyone care to try and identify the “family” of the specimen posting above?
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Not blogwhore…. not exactly troll…. a completely new species, maybe?

You are a thousand times more likely to slip, fall and die in your bathtub than the scenario you describe with the Airbus. Do you drive? Or ride in a car? You are thousands of more times likely to die that way than from the described scenario. As a matter of fact you are thousands more times likely to choke to death while eating your dinner. BTW on average, more people are killed and injured from accidents involving wind generators in the US than in the nuclear industry. And anyone who comes into contact with electricity has the same chance of being electrocuted no matter what the source of electricity and electrocution kills thousands more people than radiation from nuclear accidents.

. I agree that we should continue to explore things like wind power and solar energy too, along with nuclear power. The more we can do to lessen our reliance on fossil fuels, the better off we will be.

Me? *grin* I’m just your run of the mill Heathen.

.I know what you mean. I think he is mostly talking a certain point of view trying to encapsulate a whole bunch of that philosophy into to short a format. That and leading with unreasonable fear mongering, especially in the second post. The way we access risk as a culture is a pet peeve of mine and the more spectacular the scenario, the more it tends to grab people at a gut level and makes them fearful without thinking. I prefer to let Al Quida members live in a cave for fear of what might happen to them, than me live in a cave fearing what they could do by flying a plane into a reactor. I have more important things to worry about. Like finding a good job.

Mr. Benjaminand Mr. Sorenson, why not give us a complete report?
Few of our pols want to miss out on that lucrative nuclear industry lobby money.
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http://articles.cnn.com/2011-03-15/politics/nuclear.lobby_1_nuclear-power-nuclear-crisis-nuclear-energy-institute?_s=PM:POLITICS
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Nuclear energy lobbyists scramble on Capitol Hill
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http://www.motherearthnews.com/Renewable-Energy/Nuclear-Power-Lobbyist-Influence.aspx
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Growing support for new nuclear power comes after an extensive decade-long campaign in which companies and unions related to the industry have spent more than $650 million on lobbying and campaign contributions from 1999 through 2008

“Besides the money spent on lobbying and campaign contributions, the industry, led by the NEI (Nuclear Energy Institute), has created a network of allies who give speeches, quote one another approvingly and showcase one another on their websites. The effect is an echo chamber of support for nuclear power.”

Two of the industry’s celebrity spokespeople, former EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman and former Greenpeace activist Patrick Moore, have been stumping around the country, writing op-eds, and appearing on TV to extol the virtues of nuclear power as the co-directors of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition. They rarely, if ever, mention that the NEI created the coalition and is its sole funder.

afguy, thanks for sharing with us a reminder of how brave some can be. Taking that mission on knowing you would die of cancer is particularly brave.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/business/global/16insure.html?src=busln
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Disasters’ Costs to Fall on Japan’s Government
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” Apart from an expected $35 billion in insurance claims from last week’s earthquake, the financial losses in Japan will probably fall most heavily on the Japanese government once it tallies the damage from the tsunami and the nuclear disaster.”
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What exactly is the Republican leadership stance on nuclear energy?

http://ecology.com/features/fossilvsrenewable/fossilvsrenewable.html
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“The sun also provides enough energy that can be stored for use long after the sun sets and even during extended cloudy periods. But making it available is much easier said than done. It would be cost prohibitive to make solar energy mainstream for major world consumption in the near future. The technology is pretty much ready for many business and consumer applications, but it would be way too expensive to replace the current energy infrastructure used for fossil fuel energy. Still, according to the European Photovoltaic Industry Association, solar power could provide energy for more than one billion people by 2020 and 26% percent of global energy needs by 2040.”
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Interesting article comparing energy alternatives.

You know, I’ve mentioned this here before I think, but one of the big components of efficient batteries is lithium and thats a rare metal. I would be interested to know how the known resource plays out against demand for batteries for energy storage. Although we did just discover vast new deposits of it. In Afghanistan.

“I’m just your run of the mill Heathen.”
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I don’t mind being called a Heathen, but run of the mill? Us heathens are seldom run of the mill.

Look up to the sky. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No it is super reactionaries, freeper, newrusty, earljr, textee, paulie, et al. Faster than a bullet. More powerful than a locomotive. They are here to save the world. They will land in Japan and suck up the radiation. They will go to Lybia and toss Ghadafi into outerspace.
Then on to Washington where they will solve all our fiscal problems by taking from the poor and giving to the rich.
No stops in Latin America.
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@10.7 – april2563, you know damn well what the position of the Republican leadership has been on nuclear power ever since it was first invented. They have been for it.
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But, the problem has been people like you. The ill-informed who have stopped the research and funding to improve upon, and make this type of energy efficient, cheap and safe.
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The environmental-terrorists wing of the Democrat Party have done everything and anything shy of blowing up one of the 100+ nuclear reactors in order to stop further development.
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Isn’t that how it really is april2563? Playing dumb just doesn’t suit you april.