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Central New York Nuclear Plants Struggle To Avoid Financial Meltdown
mdsolar writes "As recently as four years ago, nuclear power companies were planning to spend billions of dollars to build a new reactor in Oswego County, alongside three existing nuclear plants. Then the bottom fell out. Natural gas-burning power plants that benefit from a glut of cheap gas produced by hydrofracking cut wholesale electricity prices in half. Now the outlook for nuclear power plants is so bleak that Wall Street analysts say one or more Upstate nuclear plants could go out of business if conditions don't change. Two Upstate nukes in particular — the James A. FitzPatrick Nuclear Power Plant in Oswego County and the R.E. Ginna Nuclear Power Plant in nearby Wayne County — are high on the watch list of plants that industry experts say are at risk of closing for economic reasons."
I see 'Wall Street analysts' and 'meltdown' in the same sentence. I should probably just bend over and subsidize somebody, to get it over with, right?
Who's it going to be this time?
cheap gas produced by hydrofracking cut wholesale electricity prices in half
If this trend holds up, soon we'll have energy too cheap to meter!
Isn't that what the Free Markets are about? The most economically efficient survive and the least economically efficient do not?
And when the gas boom ends - end it will end eventually - then possibly energy prices will be high enough that not only will nuclear become feasible again, but the modern and much safer reactors can be built.
Am I alone in wondering why the cost to the consumer remains the same?
Next up: "Rather Mundane Story Attempts to Get Attention via Sensational Headline"
So what happens when a nuclear plant runs into financial difficulty? You cut your reactor monitoring staff? Drop to the cheap disaster management plan? Postpone the upgrade of the creaky boilers?
What, exactly, is a nuke fanboi?
It worked so well last time we did, didn't it?
I work in Sector 7G! I'll never get paid better anywhere else!
A fanboi for nukes.
Get a coffee: your brain isn't awake yet.
Umm, this article is about 'gas' as in 'natural gas', not as in 'gasoline'.
And, as it happens, one of the things that utilities like about combined cycle gas turbine units is that (by power plant standards) you can knock 'em together extremely quickly and cheaply, and once constructed, you can ramp them up and down very quickly indeed.
It's kind of nuts that natural gas is cheap enough that these things would be competing with base-load units; but natural gas plants have been the peaking-load choice for years.
No.
Corporations are pictures of inefficiency. Ask any employee of one.
You see financial success and assume (for no reason) that that success must be due to a superior product or value.
In America, gaming the system and cheating is now considered S.O.P. for a business....that's **NOT** 'just the free market working'....it's immoral and criminal and we let them get away with it b/c of people like you who look only at the superficial appearance and just assume from there.
Stop labeling all financial gain as 'just the free market' and start looking at what is really happening.
The 'free market' is a concept independent of any ONE economic theory...it's a fundamental aspect of human behavior in **all contexts**...even in Soviet Russia they had a booming black market.
Thank you Dave Raggett
It's someone who disagrees with the parent poster, and therefore needs to be called names.
Two worlds collide :
In order to plan an energy strategy, you need to look 20-30 years ahead.
In order to avoid financial meltdown, you need to make Wall Street happy before next quarter.
Gas companies can still raise prices as high as they want.
Plus, you presented no evidence for your 'quick changeover' claim...for all we know it could be the exact opposite...and there's no logical reason to assume switiching from gas to nuclear would be 'easy' like you describe.
You're finding linguistic faults in my argument b/c that's all you have.....GAS COMPANIES RAISE PRICES AT WILL....nothing you can say is a valid counterpoint to this...
We basically are giving these Gas companies a government subsidy.
Thank you Dave Raggett
If you're concern is global warming and carbon dioxide emissions then the glut of cheap gas due to fracking is actually the more expensive choice in the long run.
What, exactly, is a nuke fanboi?
Oppenheimer
Not at all. Of course you can produce energy cheaper by burning fossil fuels than with nuclear, because fossil fuel plants are allowed to externalize most of the costs of energy production, such as pollution. Once these externalities - such as turning every coastal city into a New Orleans - is taken into account, nuclear power is cheapest and safest.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
The long run problem here is that natural gas prices are highly volatile. Prices are super cheap right now because of a big increase in supply while demand doesn't change much and storage costs are big. Prices may stay low for a few years, but nobody knows what will happen later. If we ramp up electricity production through natural gas though, that will increase demand driving up prices again. When natural gas prices go back up, that could be rough on consumers.
Here's a graph highlighting gas prices over the past 40 years.
"Natural gas-burning power plants that benefit from a glut of cheap gas produced by hydrofracking cut wholesale electricity prices in half." ... while retail electricity rates continued to rise...
Viewed superficially, you might appear to have made a contribution to the discussion.
Thank you Dave Raggett
I think we may have found the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field.
Until, of course, you have a situation like Fukushima.
Decentralized renewables are cheapest and safest, when all risks and external costs are factored in.
I would thank you to never use the terms "nuclear plants" and "meltdown" in the same sentence unless you're talking about a LITERAL MELTDOWN.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
nuclear and other power plants should not be allowed construction without adequate consideration of cleanup cost. as it stands, superfund is a joke considering an insolvent or nonexistant subsidiary deprecated after the working lifespan of a reactor just lets the government foot the cleanup bill under the guise that its insolvent or nonexistent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfund
in TFA the James A. FitzPatrick Nuclear Power Plant is arguably at the end of its useable lifespan (30-40 years.) Coincidentally so is the Ginna plant. for those keeping track of the joke that is Nuclear Regulation in america, both have been given a 30 year extension despite having gone from megawatt to gigawatt in their installed versus actual capacity. the reactor cleanup cost would likely go to Entergy...who would either declare bankruptcy or drag the government and mohawk energy (a prior owner) into court over potentially responsible party definition as that would determine who has to clean things up. if Mohawk were to declare themselves insolvent, or the PRP could not be identified in court, the entire site would become an orphan share. that means no one has to clean it up but the taxpayer out of the congressional general fund. its lemon socialism.
Entergy likely understands the cost to litigate its way out of a superfund cleanup is way cheaper than actually cleaning a nuclear site and once its absolved of cleanup, it can focus on investing in the gas fracturing movement, which is likely vastly more lucrative than maintaining 40 year old nuclear sites.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Until, of course, you have a situation like Fukushima.
Decentralized renewables are cheapest and safest, when all risks and external costs are factored in.
You are entitled to your opinions but not your own facts. Do you know how I know you're making up facts completely? Because the fact you've made up is not true.
It's very easy to check: google "deaths per kWh".
Nuclear comes up as the safest even when including Chernobyl and Fukushima. Even safer than decentralized renewables.
The thing with decentralised renewables is that they require construction on a vast scale because renewables are quite diffuse. Construction is inherently dangerous and that leads to more deaths.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
So what happens when a nuclear plant runs into financial difficulty?
It gets decommissioned. Still expensive but less expensive than operating at a significant loss over time. Nuke plants aren't like gas or coal plants where they can be mothballed and then restarted later easily. (I'm sure it's technically possible but apparently very problematic)
...that all the "clean, safe, and cheap" promises were just so much bullshit? And that the hustle still continues now that it's time to pay for cleaning up the mess they made? I am shocked. Shocked, I tell you.
Yup. I live in upstate New York.
I'd rather have a nuke plant a mile away than gas drilling operations commencing anywhere upstream on the Susquehanna, even if I pay more, because with gas I know I'll be paying longterm for the contamination. Nuclear's track record per unit of energy produced is stellar compared to the track record of constant failure and environmental contamination the gas drillers have established so far.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
So where is all the gas coming from?
For those who seek perfection there can be no rest on this side of the grave.
Am I alone in wondering why the cost to the consumer remains the same?
Power utilities are regulated and the prices they charge to consumers are typically regulated as well. Since in most areas they are a monopoly you should expect them to charge the highest amount permitted by the local regulating body and not a penny less. Not like you can go anywhere else. Where I live I have precisely one option for electricity and one option for natural gas. The power company knows this and behaves accordingly. Even in areas where there is more than one option they basically are an oligopoly which isn't much different from a pricing standpoint. They all know there is little incentive to compete.
I used to live a half hour from the Oswego county plant and now I live a half hour from the Wayne county plant. I've heard people bitch and moan about fracking, wind farms and even hydro in the area but never once have I heard a complaint about nuclear like you hear elsewhere.
If every nuclear story needs 'meltdown' in the title, I propose every natural gas story gets 'explode'. This will help remind us of the thousands of people blown up in oil and gas accidents.
Natural gas, the explosive financial opportunity.
Decentralized renewables are cheapest and safest, when all risks and external costs are factored in.
Huh? Problem with renewables is that they are hugely expensive to field on industrial scale. Not to mention that their environmental impacts are usually way under estimated. Somebody declares some system "Green" and presto, it's somehow devoid of environmental impact? Nothing is further from the truth. Not to mention that renewables are usually not reliable. We don't know when the sun will shine or how fast the wind will blow, at least not with enough certainty to know how much power we can count on getting from that wind farm or solar array. Electricity is extremely difficult to store efficiently so we have to generate it the instant we use it. What happens when the wind stops or a cloud drifts over at the wrong time? (Can you say blackouts..) So you have to *overbuild* renewables by 1 or 2 times capacity, which adds to it's already too high costs and environmental impacts but you won't here proponents of "Green" technology talking about that little problem...
Green technologies still have environmental impact and significant costs over the long term. Most folks thinking they are "going green" don't get this and the folks taking your money don't offer the information. However, for most of these "green" power sources, when you include the costs of producing and maintaining the equipment and the environmental impact of all this activity, there are few renewable sources which are cost effective. Further it's not even close to being a positive ROI on just the money you spend. Further, many technologies are as destructive (or more so) to the environment they are supposed to protect.
One such example is the hybrid car. Over the long haul, if you consider the added costs of including the batteries and the environmental impact of producing and dealing with them as waste there is a negative benefit. Sure, you may burn less gasoline while you own it, but building and disposing of the thing creates a huge environmental mess over the non hybrid version of the same car. If it makes you feel better to spend more money over the life of the car, I guess that's up to you, but don't fool yourself into thinking you are being "green" by doing so. Don't count on the salesman to tell you all this, he just wants you to spend the extra $15-20K on the car.
Now if you want to go all electric, walk, bike or take public transportation, THEN you can pat yourself on the back for being Green, but how many *actually* would take a car only capable of going 50 miles between 6 hour charges or want to get on a buss?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Deaths per kWh is very interesting and informative, though I would point out the person you replied to seems to have had a larger scope of cleanup costs in mind. I wonder how the facts stack up on that. I tried to google some of those, but didn't have much luck finding something that summarized it. There are plenty of sources discussing the costs of individual clean ups.
You misspelled "Teller".
You're right about Obama not having any direct influence... but you'd be incorrect in saying that gas prices are 100% controlled by the gas companies. Get gas in Binghamton, NY and then jump the border to Pennsylvania for gas, just a few miles away, and you'll find the price is roughly $0.20/gal cheaper. The difference has almost nothing to do with gas companies and everything to do with state taxes. A lot of times, if gas prices make a sudden jump up or down, it's because of a change in the state tax rather than a gas company decision.
So sure, gas companies can change prices at will, but if they raise it too much, people will stop buying as much and look to alternatives. We've seen it every time there's been a spike in the price of crude. Likewise, gas companies are not the only thing affecting what the consumer pays for gas... around 10 to 20 percent of it goes to the state.
Also, you're kind of reaching here just to rant about something that's off-topic. Gasoline isn't really used in power plants.
Edward Teller
I bought this house and you know I'm boss
Ain't no h'aint gonna run me off
Nuclear power has had a magnificent run of externalizing most of its costs (federal liability insurance, all of their basic research costs, uranium mining and refining costs and financial subsidies for construction).
In spite of all of these subsidies and benefits, it still is not "economic". The nuclear power has a negative learning curve when the cost of plants has been rising for years... unlike most industries such as solar and wind where the costs have been dropping dramatically.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
I think that this could be good for energy industry because it could open the door to other means for producing energy. Nuclear reactor operators have opposed technologies that improve our energy grid because of the costs associated with running nuclear reactors. But they may have lost the battle anyways.
I think our energy policy that demands big massive producers are they only source of energy is wrong. And its strategically dangerous as well.
For the record, I'm not opposed to nuclear energy. I just don't believe an energy policy solely relying on big business is in the consumers nor countries best interest.
I've always said English was my second language. Had Romeo and Juliet been written in C, I might have understood it.
When someone comes to me with free pollution free energy with zero transition costs and it can be online in about a week the Greens will moan it's still a terrible idea, somehow.
Part of the reason why nuclear plant costs rise exponentially is because of all the security and safeguards that have to be taken because
1) The reaction can runaway into a meltdown if it is not kept under constant control, or if the primary and backup cooling systems were to experience catastrophic failure. This means, in the grand American engineering scheme, you create backup systems for backup systems.
2) The end product of the cycle is (a) extremely radioactive and hazardous to life, and (b) a weapons-grade product that can be easily turned into a nuclear device.
Add to this the requirement for nuclear plants to store their waste material on site until such time as a central depot is established that can house this material for the next 10,000 years or so until it is no longer radioactive. And this is because a decision was made by the government back in the late 50's and early 60's to not create a separate civilian nuclear program based on Thorium LFTR plant designs in favor of Uranium cycle plants so the military could weaponize the fuel byproduct.
The biggest benefits of Thorium LFTR plants is that:
1) By design, if anything goes wrong, the nuclear reaction is not self-sustaining, so in the absence of any control or cooling, the reaction STOPS. This means we don't have to have redundant backups or worry about failsafe scram procedures to avoid a meltdown in the face of catastrophes (i.e., Fukushima, Three Mile Island).
2) Thorium is extremely abundant as a fuel source, and does not require extensive refining procedures like Uranium. In fact, we could mine the tailings left by other heavy metal mining and recover quite a bit of Thorium fuel.
3) The quantity of radioactive end-product is 10 times less than what is generated by Uranium-cycle plants, only has a half-life of a few centuries, and is not a weapons-grade material.
While solar and wind may be more "green" in the end, they are not always reliable. Nuclear power has the benefit of always being sustainable without adding carbon into the atmosphere. Thorium LFTR plants give us the safety and sustainability that a civilian nuclear program needs that is currently not affordable using Uranium-cycle plants designed in the 60's.
Considering we don't yet know all the costs of clean up and impact for Chernobyl OR Fukushima, I'm not sure how you can state that nuclear is the cheapest.
Like how long until Japan can fish in the seas to the east of them?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
"nuclear power is cheapest and safest."
Not even close. Nuke power never includes the decommisioning costs and the US and most nations with Nukes still don't have a long term plan to deal with Spent Fuel Rods. Many reactors sites now have 30 years of spent fuel rods on site, Most of these spent fuel pools contains more material than all of the active Nuke Weapons in the world. ALL it takes is would mistake to make a 500 mile radius inhabitable for thousands of years. Most of the reactors are located near heavily populated regions or major water ways (for cooling). Even a lost of one Spent Fuel Pool would mean the displacement of 10 milllion or more people in most regions.
As fossil fuels become very expensive it will be impossible deal with decommission of Nuke Plant and we face a catastrophic crisis when we lose the ability to maintain them.
As far as global warming:
1. Most of the damage is occuring in India and China, as they build a New Coal fired Plant about once a month. The US economy is in terminal decline as most manufacturing occurs in Asia, and the US is insolvent from the enormous amount of private and public debt.
2. Global carbon emissions are going to peak soon as the cost of Oil becomes very expensive and shutdowns the global economy. The Global economy is built upon cheap oil. Without Cheap oil to move everything, the economy will crater and global carbon emissions will collapse with it. Even if we started to switch to electric based transportation today it going to take many decades to covert it all. By the time any progress has been made, fossil fuels will become too expensive to complete the transistion. We are already past the age of cheap oil and it now just a matter of time before the big crunch begins.
3. The real worry is a Major nuclear conflict as major industrial powers fight over the dwindling resources, and the US isn't helping by destabilizing the Middle East.
The hybrid car is not such a thing. If that were the case than the cost of the car would be much higher.
You can get a hybrid for $15k-$20k, which is the same as many other cars. You want to talk about wasteful look at cars that cost that much or more and don't save gas.
Since France has extensive network of nuke plants - does anyone know what'f the cost of the electricity in France?
I'm not sure how you can state that nuclear is the cheapest.
I stated it was the safest. My reply didn't include anything about cleanest. That is far more hard to determine.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
You are incorrect. Amory Lovins has done the detailed analysis on this. Large scale renewables with extensive transmission is the absolute cheapest possible system. He prefers more local generation for (esthetic) efficiency and robustness in the face of certain natural disasters and enemy attacks. But, moneywise, big renewbles are the cheapest generating system. http://www.rmi.org/reinventingfire
So eating irradiated seafood, for possibly decades, is counted in that 'safest' statistic?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Why didn't the consumers see any of this? My rates keep going up, up, up....
Except that Nuclear power would not exist at all but for its ability to externalize costs. Nobody will fund those things without a tax payer back loan guarantee. Because no investor wants to run the risk of getting wiped out if something goes wrong and the plant has to be shutter prematurely. Which could happen if cracks develop in the reactor casing etc. Then there is the possibility of a disaster that could easily get as big as the BP oil blowout in scale, during the plants life time, and even well after it no longer produces revenue if things go badly with its storage of spent fuel and decommissioning.
Nuclear power is not the magic source of cheap abundant energy we promised, sixty years ago. Its just not and if you increase the number of power stations you will increase the number of incidents and the likelihood of a serious one. I am not say we should not build more Nuclear power infrastructure, but the comparison to other options is not simple, and it isn't always clear as to favorability.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
It is kilowatts times hours, not divided by hours. Converting euros to dollars gives $0.1646/kwh which is higher than in New York based on your figures. Don't think you've got the whole picture though.
Mothballing a nuclear plant shouldn't be an issue at all, many plants have stayed offline for a year or more due to regulatory problems, if they can be kept offline for one year I can't see why they can't be kept offline for 5
There are a lot of costs with keeping them offline. Personnel, servicing, inspections, security, and lots of other high fixed costs that don't go away just because the plant is not producing electricity. For a relatively short time it might make sense to bear these costs but for periods of more than 1-2 years the economics start to look really bad. Nuke plants have huge operating expenses and they generate not a dime of profit unless they are producing electricity. Would you shut down your business for 5 years while still paying a lot of money in the uncertain hope that it might be profitable someday?
Virtually every nuke plant is unique and there is a LOT of institutional knowledge that goes into operating each one. Shut down for several years and a lot of those people are going to move on to other things. Do you really want to keep paying staff for 5 years for them to do essentially nothing even if they are willing? Hard to justify doing that to company shareholders.
So eating irradiated seafood, for possibly decades, is counted in that 'safest' statistic?
If you actually looked at the deaths per kWh figures you would see that they include deaths due to externalities like pollution from the various power sources if applicable.
The thing is nuclear is exceptioinally safe. Nuclear provides 12% of the entire electricity needs of the earth and there have been a handful of incidents. Of those a particularly notabli incident is Three Mile Island which despite being a severe accident resulting in a meltdown released almost nothing into the environment.
So yes when you take into account all the externalities including direct deaths, construction and pollution, nuclear is still the safest in terms of number of deaths per unit of energy generated.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Well, the Japanese do eat a lot of raw fish. The radiation should help kill bacteria. :P
Again, since you seem to miss the point, you can't actually calculate that when there's an entire generation that could be eating irradiated seafood. In the future.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Interesting table from Forbes, but they don't include error bars, which I imagine are pretty huge for nuclear (rare events, high impact), but not so much for the smaller scale renewables. I would conclude from their table that wind and nuclear energy are equally unlikely to kill people, compared to other technologies, but that the deaths from wind energy are more likely to be predictable, hence potentially preventable through increasing safe practices in construction (which are fairly well-understood), whereas catestrophic failures of nuclear plants are always going to happen and likely to be injurious to human health. In conclusion I don't think we can conclude that nuclear is safest, I think wind looks safer from those Forbes figures.
Korma: Good
And reduce the efficacy of the poison in puffer fish!
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Why not urge your representatives to pass legislation to require Indian Point to close before any others?
Hopefully at most they are talking about scaling back or mothballing, not completely shutting down plants. This glut of natural gas can't last long (a decade or so at most). If they can't bring these plants back online after that happens energy prices will skyrocket, which sadly is probably what some people hope for.
What is really needed is to have NEW reactors available to replace the old ones. To replace nuclear power with Nat. Gas or wind/solar is a horrible mistake. By putting in place a number of small reactors (300 MW size) that were built in factories and shipped to on-site, this can lower the price of nuke energy. But, what is also needed are reactors that can burn up the on-site stored 'waste'. It is long past time for CONgress to quit playing their fucking games and focus on solving problems: illegals, and energy are but 2 big ones.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
See subject-line: From CNY area too (Syracuse) here - nice to see some folks that are from the same area using this site too (both yourself & the other respondent to your post, SJHillman)!
* :)
* I've also never heard or seen problems with "9 mile" etc. so I am with you on what you stated - heck, my "senior skip day" in 1983-1984 in highschool, I watered ski'd into the beach our class had it at, on the same lake as the "nuke plant", right into the party... was hilarious, & fun! Iirc, it was at "sandy creek" (or some name like that, been too long).
APK
P.S.=> Piece of trivia I uncovered the other day that *might* interest you both: General Keith Alexander of the NSA is also (Syracuse area, Onondaga Hill).. "will wonders NEVER cease"! apk
Again, since you seem to miss the point, you can't actually calculate that when there's an entire generation that could be eating irradiated seafood. In the future.
Science: it works, bitches!
Turns out you can estimate these things. Who knew science had predictive power, eh?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Estimation of a currently unknown problem with a currently unknown scope isn't fucking close to actual science, or mathematics.
It's called guessing.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Compared to the nuclear weapons industry, regulations are quite light. For example, there are large quantities of missing fuel and spent fuel that would never be tolerated under Nunn-Lugar.
I'm not sure I follow your reasoning. He's stating the numbers for now and you are arguing for the numbers of all time? Even then, I'm pretty sure that all the nuclear related deaths ever, past, present and future, are not going to add up to the ravages of coal. I'll even throw you a bone and give you Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Upper range 246,000. Add on the other 5,000 or so radiation deaths. and that's like 250,000 people! To date!
In 2012 Forbes reported that over 300,000 people in China alone died from coal usage.
So yeah, if we had NOTHING but nuclear power, it might catch up to all the other dealths, but really you're being intellectually dishonest by citing vague 'think of the children' arguments and ignoring what the numbers look like right now.
And again, you miss the point that that has been calculated for already. The field you're studiously ignoring is called Statistical Analysis. The only part that is difficult to calculate is how much the cleanup will ultimately cost. The deaths from radiation (whether from exposure in the greater environment or directly at the accident site), the projected damage to the local environment, etc., can all be determined with degrees of accuracy similar to those in the renewable energy field. People have spent a lot of time over the last 100 years looking at these things, and have a pretty good idea of what will happen to a pound of a particular cesium isotope over the next few hundred years.
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
If nuclear is so exceptionally safe, why does the US need the Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act to socialize the risks of a plant? Why don't they let the invisible hand of the free market determine proper rates for insurance coverage through bidding from competing reinsurers? Surely such an exceptionally safe industry will have no problem finding multiple insurers, right? And it will be so cheap that it won't materially affect consumers' electric rate, right?
And what do you think spewing CO2 all over the place will do for future generations? Or can we suddenly calculate that one?
Actually, yes we can calculate both...
I think wind looks safer from those Forbes figures
I really can't see how: there is a LOT of nuclear energy out there. It accounts for 16% of the entire electricity generating capacity of the world, as opposed to less than 1% for wind. There have been a few major accidents and a number of much more minor ones. Given the scale I'd say that it's well enough understood.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
... whereas catestrophic failures of nuclear plants are always going to happen and likely to be injurious to human health. In conclusion I don't think we can conclude that nuclear is safest, I think wind looks safer from those Forbes figures.
Baloney.
Fukushima: Built in the late 60s and early 70s.
Chernobyl: Began operation in the 70s.
Three Mile Island: Constructed in the late 60s and early 70s.
We have far newer designs for nuclear reactors for which it would be physically impossible for them to melt down or fail catastrophically. 40+ years experience in how to do something better can count for an awful lot. For example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_modular_reactor
I think your stats on number of accidents reinforce the point I was making - there have been very few nuclear accidents over a long period, so the mean rate of accidents is very poorly understood (the estimate of the mean rate we have so far has very large error bars). Not the same with wind is my guess, where accidents are likely to be much more frequent but less costly in lives.
Korma: Good
Seems like the USA needs to introduce a carbon tax or similar whereby companies need to pay some number of $ per ton of carbon (in the form of carbon dioxide or carbon monoxide) that gets spewed up into the atmosphere.
That'll soon change the equations and attractiveness of these "cheap" gas plants.
But for that to happen, American politics would need to not be corrupt. So this will never happen.
Check the book out from the library if you can't afford it. It is better than just babbling when someone has already done the work. You should remember that wind power is the reason one of the other nukes closed. So, it is not just natural gas that is cheaper than nuclear power.
Strangely, you can get real Coke made with sugar from Mexico. There are lots of places in the world to do nuclear experiments, China, India, Iran.... When they get it figured out, we can buy it from them. For now, it does not seem to be economical here.
you definitely just proved my point for me!
to continue your analogy, in dairy/oil world: cows cost $10Million dollars, the same entity owns the cows, farmland, milking plant, cheese factory, milk bottling factory, & owns the stores that sell it
there is no 'competition' in that environment or in the oil industry...it's a very well understood concept...OLIGOPOLY
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligopoly
so that's your reward for proving me right: i teach you about oligopolies ;)
Thank you Dave Raggett
So eating irradiated seafood, for possibly decades, is counted in that 'safest' statistic?
I don't think that word means what you think it does.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_irradiation
Actually, at least in the US, nuclear *ALWAYS* includes the decommissioning costs, and there has been a long term plan to deal with spent fuel rods since before ground broke on construction of the first commercial reactor. What has stopped it is the irrational, uniformed fear of folks like yourself who think that nuclear is out to eat your children and pets, but coal (which releases more radioactive waste into the atmosphere every year than the worst decade on record for nuclear power plants) is made of puppies and sunshine.
OK, who is eating irradiated seafood? Where's the pictures of all the dead and mutated fish?
You do realize that we're all living in a universe filled with radiation don't you? It's been that way since the big bang. Cosmic rays, radon gas, bananas, pottery... all of it is radioactive to some extent. The radioactive water that went into the Pacific from Fukushima was so diluted by the ocean it won't hurt anyone. Yes, it can be measured, but it doesn't make a damn bit of difference to you or anyone else's lives.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
Economics must of put nuclear out business then! Solar and storage for the win!
Nuclear plants only have to bide their time. Sooner or later their electricity will be needed to run the desalinization plants needed to provide fresh water for those whose wells are polluted by the stupid fracking chemicals!!!
My karma is bad. Don't get too close!!!