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Economy Puts US Nuclear Reactors Back In Doubt
eldavojohn writes "Remember those 30 new nuclear reactors the US was slated to build? Those plans have been halted. A few years ago, it seemed like a really good idea to build a bunch of nuclear reactors. The environmental impacts of other energy production methods were becoming well known and the economy was tanking. Well, natural gas is now much cheaper, and as a result it looks like building a single nuclear reactor in Maryland is such a risky venture that Constellation can't reach an agreement with the federal government for the loans it needs to build that reactor. The government wants Constellation to sign an agreement with a local energy provider to ensure they'll recoup at least some of the money on the loan, but Constellation doesn't like the terms. So, the first of those thirty reactors has officially stalled, with no resolution in sight. It looks like it'd take an economic meltdown to trigger nuclear reactor production in the US."
Yes, but not enough of those people put back to work would have been reliable votes for the Democratic Party. It was much more productive to use that stimulus to give money to Democratic donors (unions and others) who could then plow that money back into the Democratic Party's capmaign coffers and lobby the government to get the government to bail out their pension plans (which are underfunded in part because the unions spent millions of dollars getting Democrats elected rather than in funding their pension plans).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
The Price-Anderson subsidy for nuclear power is much higher than that. Check your homeowners policy for exclusions and then draw a Chernobyl exclusion zone size patch around the poorly run Indian Point reactor and start adding up property value. You'll see that an accident every 40 years comes to about $0.08/kWh.
I do remember that. Enron, Dick Cheney's company, created brownouts intentionally so they could game the electricity market.
So what is the free market solution to nuclear plant meltdowns?
With respect, it is very clear that you really have nowhere near the amount of understanding of the simplest concepts here if you are going to write things like the above. Go look at a fucking picture showing how a power station works and you may get a clue.
A lot of that waste is effectively sand stuck together, and most of the heavy metals end up in the ash dam anyway.
Now your turn, get back onto nukes, although you probably have no clue there either becuase you are not up to date enough to mention synrock which has only been a major contender for dealing with nuclear waste for thirty fucking years.