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Nation's Biggest Nuclear Firm Makes a Play For Carbon Credit Cash
tomhath writes with this story that may shake up the nuclear industry. "The biggest player in the beleaguered nuclear power industry wants a place alongside solar, wind and hydroelectric power collecting extra money for producing carbon-free electricity. Exelon Corp., operator of the largest fleet of U.S. nuclear plants, says it could have to close three of them if Illinois rejects the company's pitch to let it recoup more from consumers since the plants do not produce greenhouse gases. Exelon and other around-the-clock plants sometimes take losses when wind turbines produce too much electricity for the system. Under the system, electric suppliers would have to buy credits from carbon-free energy producers. Exelon says the plan would benefit nuclear plants, hydroelectric dams, and other solar and wind projects."
Considering that nuclear power is the safest form of power the world has ever known, I'd say it's worthy of recognition for offsetting carbon more than anything else. To borrow a phrase, "It's the energy density, stupid."
There's a reason why China has 30 nuclear plants under construction, while the US just approved its first new plant in 30 years.
Okay so then we will also do the same for all the radioactive impurities in coal power too. I mean burning it and letting spread across the land is just fine. How about the coal ask ponds that are already busting and polluting water and land.
You don't want to pay the full cost of the power you use. You are just happy to ignore the costs while pointing at nuclear and saying look at all that toxic waste. Except the amount is miniscule compared to traditional power sources. The problem is all the FUD related to nuclear power prevents and one from even considering to build a safe disposal location. Doesn't matter if it is 100 miles from anyone people still don't want THAT waste there. They are happy to have fraking fluids in their water and coal ash in their rivers, but forget putting that radioactive waste inside a mountain a 100 miles from me.
...what is very little recognized worldwide, is that nuclear energy gets a free lunch at the expense of the taxpayers, as regards risk insurance.
It is the most damned uninsured thing in developed countries and when one of these plants goes bust, you know what happens, ref. Fukusima.
If nuclear industry wishes to operate on-par terms with other forms of green technologies, please, bring the actuarial scientists in, to do all the math!
For the record, I am not against nuclear energy as a source of energy per se, however its use is not entirely rationalized on the basis of risk and cost to handle it.
Try to imagine what's the insurance cost of Catenom plant in north east France and add it in the operational costs and you will get the idea.
And this is before discussing about the overall lifetime (gasp) risks with spent nuclear fuel etc.
Rather the point. If they want to claim the special benefit credits they need to take full responsibility along with it.
it's easy to spot since he calls one of the political party's out by name. There's still some weight to the NIMBY folks though. The trouble with nuclear, at least in America, is that it's damn near impossible to keep it safe. Sooner or later some venture capital firm notices how much money's being spent on safety and moves in with promises of "efficiency", takes over the plant operation and starts cutting back. That's really what the NIMBY crowd worries about, they're just not allowed to talk about it because those same venture capitalists are our ruling class. It's pretty much the same thing that happened in Japan. They knew the plants weren't safe but didn't want to spend the money. Big disaster, lots will die of cancers and the like, but nobody important go in trouble.
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Payment in advance please.
Already paid, at least in the US. The US has been accumulating funds via taxes to do exactly as you demand since early days of Nuclear power. The nuclear industry, it's rate payers and their governments have already set the precedent you demand and paid the taxes you demand.
Nuclear waste is not a finance problem or a physics problem. It's a political problem, and the political problem comes from hysterical, low-information anti-nooks coupled with anti-energy, anti-prosperity libtards.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
It's ludicrous for the Nuclear Industry to call itself carbon neutral when tens of thousands of tons of ore has to be crushed and refined with carbon based energy sources. The enrichment of the fuel at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant uses two brown coal power plants to run it. Then there is the massive cabon sink from the concrete to build the thing in the first place.
Even after that you have the CFC114 from the enrichment process which the EPA reports as the single largest contributor of greenhouse gasses. In all they are bogus claims suggesting the Nuclear industry is "carbon-free" because clearly it is not.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
You've already answered that the ash is not spread around the land with the mention of those ash ponds (dams really, since they are not small).
Alex Gabbard's stupid "but coal ash is nuclear waste too so why restrict nuclear waste" propaganda is still doing damage to minds. I suggest finding the numbers for the most radioactive coal on the planet and calculating how many hundreds of thousands of tons you need of it to get a banana dose to correct the mental damage.
Coal use has a lot of problems, many of which kill people, so I suggest focusing on what is real instead of failed 1970s nuclear propaganda from a guy mostly known by his NASCAR books.
I suggest you look at the Harford web site to learn about turning waste back into fuel to get a bit more of an understanding of the situation. Steel pipes that have been exposed to enough neutrons to become radioactive themselves are not something you want near people for example - by volume the vast majority of nuclear waste is not fuel rods.
Oversimplifying the situation into "it can all be used as fuel" is counterproductive if you want to see any of it used as fuel.
In Japan, they found at one point that there was a possibility of it *seriously* going to hell in a hand basket.
If the wind had been really wrong, it would have put serious fallout over Tokyo; which would have been really, really, really bad. While few people would have died, the economic disruption would have been (without any hyperbole) unbelievably stupendous.
http://world.time.com/2012/02/...
You can tell me all you want that this kind of accident can never happen, but I just don't believe it. We have no reason to think that Chernobyl or Fukushima were the worse cases, nor that these kinds of failures cannot happen again worse.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"