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US To Build Nuclear Power Plants
An anonymous reader writes "President Barack Obama has announced more than $8bn in federal loan guarantees to begin building the first US nuclear power stations in 30 years. Two new plants are to be constructed in the state of Georgia by US electricity firm Southern Company."
>> 1/Nuclear energy does not make economic sense. http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50308 (translation: it is expensive)
>> 2/Having to store waste for over 100000 years is not what someone with any common sense would call 'green'.
>> 3/limited liability. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act
>> 4/fuel-dependency
5/If we don't use nuclear we'll be using *coal*, not wind or solar or unicorn farts. Those techs must be, and are being developed but we need power _today_.
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Facts? It would be a surprise to the 67 utilities operating 103 nuclear reactors in the US that nuclear energy isn't economical. Spent nuclear fuel decays. Coal ash is forever. The Price Anderson coverage kicks in after the utilities insurance pool of several hundred million dollars. It's never been used, even after Three Mile Island. Fuel dependency? The US is the Middle East of uranium! We buy it from other countries because it's been cheaper, but it's all over the mid-West and even Virginia.
Ok, everyone complains about nuclear waste storage. But has anyone considered how convenient it is that we actually have the OPTION of storing it-- that it comes prepackaged in nice containers, rather than being spewed into the atmosphere where its a heck of a lot more difficult to get at (as with coal)?
Plus, unlike coal emissions, we can actually USE the waste material and reduce it by reusing it in reactors-- if it is radioactive, that means it is emitting radiation, which can either be used in additional reactors, or worst case in radioisotope thermoelectric generators (not very efficient, but its an option). With smog and CO2 emissions, we can do....what again? Bury it so that it can leak back into the atmosphere after a while?
Seems to me, if youre going to have a fuel source that has a waste product, the BEST thing you can ask for is that it deliver it in a prepackaged, stable, reusable form rather than as a useless aerosol.
Read this.
http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/sustainable/book/tex/sewtha.pdf
Seriously.
Actually read it.
It looks at all the options in a realistic manner.
Not quite true. One of the most storied, protested nuclear power plants is Seabrook Station in New Hampshire. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seabrook_Station_Nuclear_Power_Plant
The first permit was granted in 1976. It took 14 years to get to full power, due to a lot of red tape and a ton of protests. I can recall being in high school at the time construction was nearing an end and there were a ton of protests even then, mostly centered around the evacuation plan or lack thereof.
So the date will probably be 2025, given that it will take at least 10 years to build the thing.
This post brought to you by your friendly neighborhood MBA.
There is no ban on building nuclear power plants. Where did you get that?
The problem is companies can't get loans from banks because it costs lots of money to build a nuclear power plant and loans that were provided were defaulted. That's why the US says it will guarantee them.
I've spent several hundred hours researching this issue. Frankly, you're wron.g
>>1/Nuclear energy does not make economic sense. http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50308 (translation: it is expensive)
The actual cost of the plants they're building in the south are half this. And a lot of the cost has to do with NIMBYs and (ironically enough) environmentalists, who ought to all be very pro-nuclear. The actual cost of nuclear per KWH is the only source comparable to coal. Dirty coal. CC Coal Plants are 2x to 3x the cost per KWH of dirty coal.
You want to know what doesn't make economic sense? Anything that costs more than double or triple the current cost of energy. Guess what that includes? All green technologies. Solar costs roughly 6x to 150x the cost of coal.
Look up the costs yourself, and become educated. This is a mix of government, industry, and hippie cost estimates:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/electricity.html
http://bravenewclimate.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/eiaenergy2016.png
http://climateprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/nuclear-costs-2009.pdf
http://www.energy.ca.gov/2007publications/CEC-200-2007-011/CEC-200-2007-011-SD.PDF
http://des.nh.gov/organization/divisions/water/wmb/coastal/ocean_policy/documents/te_workshop_cost_compare.pdf
>>2/Having to store waste for over 100000 years is not what someone with any common sense would call 'green'.
The waste problem is a social construct, not a technical one.
>>3/limited liability. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act
It's a good thing. Because of idiot movies like the China Syndrome, people think that nuclear power is dangerous, when nuclear plants are actually quite safe. Even left-wing France produces the lion's share of its power through nuclear, and has done so very safely for the last 30 years. Compare this with the huge numbers of people killed every year in coal mining accidents and indirectly through the radiation released into the atmosphere by coal.
>>4/fuel-dependency
There's plenty.
And a loan guarantee simply means that a company can get a lower interest rate because investors know that in the event of default, the government will take over servicing the bond.
However, the actual value of such a guarantee is far, far less than the principal value of those bonds. In fact, it can be treated as a put option on the assets of the firm that is being financed with the bonds (calculating that value required making a number of assumptions about those assets and their value to another firm, their alternative uses, ongoing income generation capabilities and so on).
The value of this guarantee in this case is probably no more than a few hundred million dollars (i.e. a few percentage points of the principal amount). You can also simply estimate it by looking at the difference between the interest a similar firm would pay and what a government bond would pay, since that reflects the market's valuation of the default risk inherent in a firm like this.
This is a drop in the bucket from a stimulus perspective, and a drop in the bucket of our nation's energy infrastructure.