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Obama Budget To Triple Nuclear Power Loan Guarantees
Hugh Pickens writes "When President Obama said in his State of the Union address on Wednesday that the country should build 'a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants,' it was one of the few times he got bipartisan applause. Now the NY Times reports that administration officials have confirmed their 2011 federal budget request next week will raise potential loan guarantees for nuclear projects to more than $54 billion, from $18.5 billion, and a new Energy Department panel will examine a vastly expanded list of options for nuclear waste, including a new kind of nuclear reactor that would use some of it. The Energy Department appears to be getting close to offering its first nuclear loan guarantee. Earlier this week, Southern Co. Chief Executive David Ratcliffe said the company expects to finalize an application for a loan guarantee 'within the next couple months,' while Scana Corp., which has also applied, is 'a couple months behind Southern' and is hopeful of receiving a conditional award 'sometime in the next months.'"
research funding for nuclear research such as thorium reactors or pebble bed reactors?
to increase safety and/or move onto other nuclear fuels
It is apparently not cheaper than coal, which is the fuel we fall back to every time a nuclear, or renewable project doesn't happen (which are also apparently not cheaper than coal.) If you're ok with coal then you should oppose all subsidies including "loan guarantee" subsidies.
If you're not ok with coal, though, and your goal is to move US energy infrastructure away from an economic minimax position to another position with non-economic benefits, then you have to pay for the move somehow.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
It is easy to determine whether nuclear power on a watt for watt basis is cheaper to produce than a similar coal plant, but the total cost must take into account factors such as total pollution, cost and risk of mining unrenewable resources, as well as the geopolitical problems in relaying on such resources.
If you take only the CO2 output as a single factor, the cost of nuclear energy is far lower than any coal plant could ever be. So yes, it is more expensive to produce the energy, but it is far lower in total cost overall when all factors are taken into account.
Oil power plants are even worse. They rely on importation of resources from the Middle East, a region far from stable due to the influence of extremist religions and backwards cultures of nomadic races. Nuclear power will break us free of that (to some extent, we still have longstanding obligations to Israel which ought to be rethought, IMO) and will make us instead beholden to Australia and its uranium mines. But I feel much more comfortable dealing with the Aussies as a culture which is similar to our own and a people much like us.
This is incorrect. Nuclear is actually cheaper than coal. The problem is that NO ONE will loan billions upon billions to build said nuclear power plant and mortgage that power plant on a *Fixed* 4% amortization for 50 years.
Secondly, banks cannot really foreclose on a nuclear power plant. Where do they sell it? Flea-market?
This is exactly the point of the loan guarantees. And I'm certain you all realize "loan guarantee" is not the same as a "subsidy"?
Because a nuclear plant has high initial costs. You need an investment of billions of dollars and then you need to wait years for construction before the thing can power itself on and start generating energy. That doesn't mean that nuclear is nonviable - it's very cheap once the plant is built - but it does provide a very high barrier to entry that, without loans, only the rich oil companies (who really don't care for competition) are capable of crossing.
We don't have more of a nuclear program for two reasons right now:
#1 - Every time someone starts trying to get the permits together to build a new reactor, the environmental wack-job crowd start staging protests and throwing lawyers at the situation.
#2 - Ever since Jimmy Carter's dunderheaded executive order (in which he said the US will not reprocess spent nuclear fuel back into usable fuel, because it would set an "example" to other nations not to reprocess anything that could be weapons grade... nincompoop), we haven't refined our spent fuel. As a result, we have a "nuclear waste problem", despite the fact that with proper recycling methods, greater than 95% of our stock of "nuclear waste" could be turned back into usable fuel.
Probably the only thing I agree with Obama on is that we need a serious conversion of our energy supply to use as much Nuclear as possible (solar/wind/geothermal too but they have severe limitations and can't meet our needs by themselves... solar, for instance, produces immense amounts of toxic waste and currently requires polysilicon substrates as a base for the panels, plus the most common silica sources are currently strip-mined). That being said, his bit about loans is only a half measure, if he was really serious he'd rescind Carter's dumbass executive order and get us down the path of recycling to deal with the "nuclear waste" issue.
Google it before you assume it is just like the nuclear reactors that have caused all the nuclear waste problems.
They are a "new" technology that has been proven for decades. They are smaller, safer, and tons more efficient than the currently used technology. They don't produce nuclear waste, they consume it. We could take all of what we currently consider "waste" and use it as fuel for hundreds of years. The current technology only uses less than 5% of the energy that is actually in the fuel. Fast Breeder Reactors use almost all of it. They keep recycling the fuel until there is almost no radioactivity left. They can also use plutonium as fuel so the can be used to actually reduce the weapons stockpiles.
I also think the thorium reactors might be cool too. However there are some concerns as to what extracting all that thorium out of seawater might do to the environment. Not that the oceans need the thorium, but the processing might not be so kind to everything living in the seawater. On the other hand, the processing could also be done in a way that cleans up the garbage patch at the same time.
Bottom line. Don't assume everything you think you know about nuclear power is everything there is to know.
I'll wager what credibility I have on it.
You do realize your nick is drinkypoo, right?
Radiation has to come from somewhere, like when an atom breaks apart. Elements with the shortest half lives are breaking apart fastest, so they give off the most radiation.
For a simple analogy, think of a battery. If you use more electricity from it, it will run out faster. Conversely, if you barely use any, it will last for a long time.