Slashdot Mirror
McCain Backs Nuclear Power
bagsc writes "Senator John McCain set out another branch of his energy policy agenda today, with a key point: 45 new nuclear power plants by 2030." So it finally appears that this discussion is back on the table. I'm curious how Nevada feels about this, as well as the Obama campaign. All it took was $4/gallon gas I guess. When it hits $5, I figure one of the campaigns will start to promote Perpetual Motion.
Nuclear is the best option. Equating it with perpetual motion shows YOUR ignorance. Hate makes you stupid.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
So why does $4 gas == need for nuclear power?
Oil burning plants were eliminated after Carter's oil crisis.
If we want cheap gas we need to do what Mexico does (for their $2 gas). Regulation and forbid speculation on a "critical" national resource.
(Or just get an ebike!)
are 45 backyards in which to build them.
Seriously, the NIMBY (not in my nackyard) and BANANA (build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything) mentalities have held back nuclear power as much as anything else, especially after TMI. Getting local communities to agree to construction will be no small task.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
I'm so sick to death of this "$4 for a gallon", my heart fucking bleeds.
Come live in the UK for a while.
Nuclear seems to be working pretty well for various foreign countries. It takes a while to get a reactor on-line, and it's not a perfect solution... But it's better in many ways than the fossil fuel options.
Wind and solar are great, and I support them also. But, $4 gas or not, all energy options should be on the table. And they should've been for about the last 30 years.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
Last couple of days he has been pushing hard for oil and energy independance. I was pretty dissapointed with the party's nomination choice a few months back, but McCain is proving he can step up and fight the conservative battles to move this country in the right direction.
We need to be drilling in Anwar, we need to be drilling offshore, and we need more nuclear energy. These factors will help us last until something like Fusion power is ready.
You can not think global warming is both human caused and a genuine threat and not be for nuclear power. Yes nuclear power has its own problems, but far better than the purported consequences of global warming. Keep your eyes open for "environmentalists" that are against nuclear power. Those people have other interests in mind. "Environmentalism" is just their tool.
Seriously, one of the more classic political tricks is to promise something way ahead in time, something that would have to be achieved by someone other than you.
It is just more obvious because of McCain's age. Don't get me wrong, nuclear is currently the safest, greenest option that is economically viable, but promising things 20+ years into the future is pretty bad.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Yeah what a great guy. Interesting that he is pushing for a "solution" that only works with massive amounts of very centralized investment. I mean why would anyone want to encourage a wide range of smaller but much safer and more sustainable solutions? Solar, Wind, Geo, are only held back by the standard economic factors. Government intervention that leads to increased usage and production could solve that problem and reduce those costs almost overnight and the consumer wouldn't then have to be slave to yet another(or the same) energy masters.
Yea, because Carter, the only president to have ever had any formal training in any sort of nuclear technology, and also the only president ever involved in the cleanup after a nuclear accident, is all irrational and uninformed where nuclear power is concerned.
The 70's were a different world. Nuclear power meant nuclear weapons, and the public opposition then to nuclear power is hard to even imagine today. Don't blame Carter for the hysteria of the day.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
...to start reversing the DEPLORABLE conditions started by Jimmy "I'm a fucking moron" Carter.
You know - the guy who thought that if the US didn't RECYCLE nuclear waste back into fuel (which would SOLVE the "nuclear waste storage" issue) it would be an "example" to tin-pot dictatorships and insane genocidal religious nations like North Korea, Pakistan, India, Iran, Syria, China... and they wouldn't try to get nuclear weapons. Yeah, how'd that work out for us?
The guy who coddled so-called "environmentalists" to the point where we haven't built SAFE, CLEAN electrical power generation anywhere because nobody can get past the permits process and NIMBY enviro-wacko whining.
Think about it - even the founder of Greenpeace (who long ago left the organization when it became obvious the commies and inmates were running the asylum and not interested in real, rational discussion) says we need nuclear energy because so-called "renewable" sources are inherently (a) unreliable and (b) limited in the scope of what we can do with them.
I already have. Where I live in Michigan there are two (up and running) nuclear reactors within 30 miles of me. Those two plants supply most of the power to southwest Michigan and northern Indiana. I went to college at Purdue, one of many college campuses that have operational reactors on site (granted it's a small one) and that didn't bother me one bit - even though it was housed in the basement of the building I spent most of my time in. I'm all for it.
:-p )
That said, I too agree that we need to find viable renewable energy resources. Some combination of wind, solar, and geothermal is my current favorite. Barring those, aren't there enough Scientologists we can put on the pyre? (yes that was a troll/gaff, no I don't apologize
I also oppose drilling for our own oil resources. Why the hell should we? Let's use up the oil resources of the people who hate us while it's still relatively cheap, then tap our own resources at $300 a barrel and make them come crawling.
Let's use up the oil resources of the people who hate us while it's still relatively cheap, then tap our own resources at $300 a barrel and make them come crawling.
s/crawling/attacking/
http://blog.nexusuk.org
1) Your country is far smaller than the US, so you need to do less in terms of commuting ,etc,
2) you've had the benefit of years of rational development and land use planning, and
3) you've got extensive and well funded public transportation systems. (yeah, I know NS has been having issues in the last few years - it's light years ahead of the way things are in the US. Most cities here have nothing nearly as good as the trams, busses, and metros of various European cities).
We built up our country stupidly, particularly after WWII. We put extensive, relatively sparse tracts of housing far outside of places where people work and provide only highways for transportation. And we're going to pay the price for that, but we're still in the kicking and screaming tantrum stage, and won't start to deal realistically with the issues till the situation is far worse. Expect our politicians to do nothing to get us to grow the fuck up, either.
This is mixing two separate issues. Oil is not the problem as far as producing electricity, its coal. Coal produces an enormous carbon foot print and is just all around nasty (from other residual waste to the damage to the environment that occurs just getting at it). I grew up in north east Pennsylvania, and I have seen first hand the impact of coal mining, its pretty horrific.
Back to my point. Pushing nuclear energy has relatively very little do with our dependence on gasoline via crude oil. Please lets not confuse the two. There is no chance that there will be cars powered by "under the hood" nuclear reactors in the near future. Wind power will also do nothing for our dependence on oil for gasoline.
Another case of policitians using unrelated events to push policy. Albiet, in poor taste, he is at least using this opportunity to point us to a real solution. I hate to say it, but Wind, Solar, Geothermal, etc. are not ready for deployment today. They eventually will be, but by that time (10+ years), it will take another 20+ years before they even make up a few % of global energy production. By that time Nuclear plants can be rolled out en mass and go a long way to reduce our carbon footprint (but not demand on foreign oil, sorry, thats just a different topic).
20th century Marxism is not progress...
I don't understand why people can not get it through their heads that no one single item is the answer.
Look, we (US) have enjoyed our luxury of cheap single source energy. Now it is time to get with the program. We need ALL options for energy started now. Think of it as a diversified portfolio. So, I say the following:
YES! Drill for more oil and make some more darn refineries
YES! Build some nuclear power plants.
YES! Explore better ways to use coal in existing power plants.
YES! Build huge solar arrays and start larger solar power plants
YES! Build wave generated power plants
YES! Build wind generated power plants
YES! Build electric-based "commuter" vehicles
YES! Explore better ways to make bio-fuel
The government needs to subsidize some of the projects and needs to throw some money at these problems. If we deploy all of these strategies we may not get cheaper energy but we will get stable energy and maybe, just maybe avert major crisis as population and demand increases exponentially over the next 10 years.
Republicans: build 45 new reactors.
Democrats: nationalize the oil industry, price controls on gas.
I'm not going to post which I think is which, but one seems rational and reasonable, the other is pandering to the masses with a policy that is not only short sighted, but dangerous.
-Styopa
Any time you mention the truth about the enviro-nutjob movement, some slashdot troll with a mod point will be there to bury you.
I'm all about SENSIBLE environmental policy. That means we have to balance OUR needs for resources with RESPONSIBLE environmentalism, not turn the entire fucking planet into an off-limits nature preserve.
And yes, it means that there just may need to be a power plant, or a chemical refinery, or any other of a large number of the usual items that trigger "OMGWTFNIMBYAAUGH" reactions from the enviro-nutjobs, NEAR to population centers so that we RESPONSIBLY reduce the transportation and delivery costs (not just monetary but WASTED FUEL ENERGY).
Think about it. It costs us at LEAST 25% more fossil fuel energy to turn OUR FOOD SUPPLY into ethanol fuel and deliver it where it needs to go, than we get back. Ethanol has been one of the biggest energy disasters we've ever gotten into. And at the same time we WASTE petroleum trying to do this, the price of food for starving countries is going through the roof because the US, an exporter of corn, is BURNING THE FOOD SUPPLY - LITERALLY.
Think of it this way: would you dump a gallon jug of Jack Daniels in your gas tank? Guess what - YOU JUST DID. Oh, and the reason you constantly have to get your injectors cleaned and serviced and buy injector cleaner to put in your tank? That's right - ethanol is incredibly corrosive to your rubber fuel line!
And yet the enviro-nutjobs keep screaming for ethanol production and refuse to consider how wasteful it is. They refuse to consider the fact that the "renewable" energy sources all have problems too: in order to make an order of solar panels from polysilicon, you create an immense amount of TOXIC WASTE that has to be dealt with. If you run a mirror-based solar farm, you've got to keep the mirrors polished (congratulations, keep a lot of toxic chemicals handy and be prepared to toxify the hell out of the soil) just as a start. And all it takes to lower or cut entirely your generating capacity is a nice cloud or two. Earth seems to be fairly old hat at generating those, somehow. Walk outside and take a quick peek at the sky, chances are there's one around.
Wind farms are INCREDIBLY noisy and disruptive, the power is intermittent at best with very minimal generating capacity for the land area used, and a major killer of endangered birds already.
Geothermal has limited areas in which it can be placed, areas which are invariably tectonically unstable (or worse yet: the "best" places are usually right in the expected lava flow/blast zone of a volcano).
Tidal power has the same problem, you can only do it on a shoreline, and a rise/fall in the shoreline (not due to "global warming" but simply tectonic activity or seasonal changes in large lakes) can kill it quite easily, since the turbines have to be set at the right place to match the incoming/outgoing tides... and even then, they ONLY generate power during the tidal shift.
Biomass is a nice thought, but you get back to the food supply and other effects. Wood chips? Watch the price of particulate board matter of all sorts (the sort likely most of your furniture is made of, especially if it came from Ikea) jack through the roof. Much of the rest is fed to animals or composted to create fertilizer in order to grow more food, which means you'll decrease crop yields and jack food prices up again.
Do I say we shouldn't use these? No. But if we had a SENSIBLE and RESPONSIBLE nuclear policy, including recycling "spent" fuel and refining it back for reuse rather than trying to stash it under a mountain, we could eliminate a LOT more of the oil/natural gas/coal portion of our energy than these sources are ever likely to manage.
Flamebait? More like painful honesty. Carter was a nice guy and obviously very smart, but his energy policies are crippling us. Think of where we might be today if we had 30 years of experience running breeder reactors on a wide-scale basis.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
soem references. And that's not including new genetically enhanced corn varieties or other crop/waste sources that will come along once the industry is established.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
I'm always amazed to hear Europeans try and compare Europe to the United States. Do you have any idea of the scale of the United States? Mass transit simply isn't an option for a vast majority of this country. Most Americans (particularly those in rural areas) have to commute to work, to buy groceries, etc, etc.
For starters, get your fat *ss out of your SUV when going places less than a mile away...Nice way to stereotype but at least half of this country doesn't have ANYTHING within a mile of where they live. Where I grew up it was a four mile drive into town.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Look how long it has taken for any state to accept the toxic nuclear waste. How long before we have to start looking for more dumping grounds for these new active power plants?
One of our biggest poblems, particularly in the US, is the lack of long-range planning when it comes to energy policy. Our entire society has been built on the presumption that oil is and will always be cheap, which considering Hubbert's peak oil predictions in the 50's is remarkably foolish and short-sighted. We really need to look at the long-term implications of nuclear or any other energy source, and start planning now instead of waiting for another crisis to develop.
2. Where there's vast amounts of money, there is fraud.
Near my home in the 1980's a nuclear plant began construction, and it turned out that the contractor was skimming money off the top and not building the plant to spec. When the state finally inspected it, the walls were honeycombed because the contractor was skimping on the concrete! Imagine if that plant had gone online.
It's not so much the technology I'm worried about - it's the greedy motherfuckers who are willing to cut corners for a profit that concern me. I have no interest in helping some CEO finally get that island in the Pacific while my state turns into a Chernobyl site.
I agree with almost everything you say. Coal is much worse; nuclear doesn't replace much of our oil dependence. Transportation makes up about half of our use of oil, mostly going to cars (SUVs!), trucks, desiel semis, etc. The only way I can see nuclear making a difference in our oil consumption is with the combination of electric cars. Right now, I wouldn't consider buying so much as an electric scooter as long as the power plant is coal. But if the grid is nuclear (or some other green power), buying an electric car, motorcycle, etc suddenly makes sense.
Ideally, I'd like to put up enough solar panels and wind turbines to power my house, charge my car, and sell back to the utilities.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Yes, but cars *can* be powered by elecricity. So nuclear energy *does* have something to do with our dependence on gasoline.
That's dumb. As dirty as coal plants are, they are far cleaner than the equivalent power output from internal combustion engines. If it takes n joules to get you from place to place, you're better off using the more efficient method of getting those joules.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Ideally, I'd like to put up enough solar panels and wind turbines to power my house, charge my car, and sell back to the utilities. What's stopping you, then? Unless you live in a neighborhood with covenants restricting such devices, you have all the freedom in the world to do exactly what you suggest. The technology exists. The products exist. What's stopping you?
Ahh...perhaps it's that little thing called "cost?" Independence from the power grid really sounds like a neat idea until you consider how much it costs to do it. Sort of like electric cars, which sound neat until you consider the cost to acquire one versus the utility and flexibility you can extract from it vis-as-vis a gasoline-powered vehicle of similar cost.
I'm not trying to be a downer on such ideas, though. I'm just pointing out the hypocrisy of so many of the wealthy "treehuggers" out there who have the means to do something about their energy consumption yet continue to shuttle around in limos, private jets, and occupy 15,000 sq. ft. mansions with an energy consumption the size of a small town. Environmentalism seems great to folks until you ask them to put their money where their mouth is.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
For starters, get your fat *ss out of your SUV when going places less than a mile away...
What you may not realize is that America is, in general, much more spread out and less densely populated than Europe.
There literally isn't a single business within a mile of my house. I purposely chose my home location to minimize my distance to shopping/work, and we're still talking multiple miles to get to any of the above in different directions. 20-30 mile commutes each way are typical in my area, not exceptional, and I know more than a few people with much longer commutes. Public transportation is poor at best. (It's better in some cities.)
I'm not saying any of this isn't our fault as a country, but the situation in general is a lot different than yours with respect to driving.
We lose a total of 5% in the US due to transmission. I CALL SHENANIGANS. You are either promoting an agenda or simply do not know what you are talking about.
I call ignorance. The reason we have relatively low losses is because we tend not to move power very far. Once you start trying to ship power from the spot in the country that happens to be sunny or windy, losses will go up and by quite a bit. Having power being produced where you want it, and when you want it, has enormous advantages and, up until quite recently, is what separated the industrial world from the third world. Now we'll all be praying to the Wind Gods to come... humanity renders itself helpless again. Hell of a future you got there for us.
This is my sig.
Because the companies ideally placed to take advantage of these changes and really get a strangle hold on the American economy are Oil Companies. The only way for them to really pillage the American Taxpayer is to be able to speculate on building reactors that are of the "approved design" into the future. The only approved designs are all 'once through' fuel cycle so any discussion about breeder reactors ends here and the discussion about the lack of net energy returns from the nuclear fuel cycle begin.
You have to be pragmatic about this, P.U.C.H.A was put in place to stop America going back into a economic depression. Greed is greed, supporting this will enable the legislative framework to gut the American economy and taxpayer of remaining assets for the next 20 to 30 years.
Please America, you are a technological nation, you can solve your energy needs without nuclear power.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Water heated by a nuclear plant won't be radioactive it will just be hot.
>They all have at least one good point though: what do we do with the waste?
Power plant equality, now!
Why not hold all power plants to the same standard?
The mercury from a coal plant doesn't decay. It stays toxic forever.
Vitrifying nuclear waste is already a better solution than the one used for coal plants, which is to dispose of the waste in the downwinders's lungs.