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US Panel Extends Nuclear Power Tax Credit (thehill.com)
Slashdot reader mdsolar quotes The Hill:
The House Ways and Means Committee voted Wednesday to remove a key deadline for a nuclear power plant tax credit... The credit was first enacted in 2005 to spur construction of new nuclear plants, but it has gone completely unused because no new plants have come online since then...
It would likely benefit two reactors under construction at Southern Co.'s Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Georgia and another two at Virgil C. Summer Nuclear Generating Station in South Carolina. Both projects are at risk of missing the 2020 deadline... "When Congress passed the 2005 act, it could not have contemplated the effort it would take to get a nuclear plant designed and licensed," said representative Tom Rice (R-S.C.).
Although one Democrat criticized the extension by arguing that nuclear power "does better in a socialist economy than in a capitalist one, because nuclear energy prefers to have the public do the cleanup, do the insurance, cover all of the losses and it only wants the profits."
It would likely benefit two reactors under construction at Southern Co.'s Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Georgia and another two at Virgil C. Summer Nuclear Generating Station in South Carolina. Both projects are at risk of missing the 2020 deadline... "When Congress passed the 2005 act, it could not have contemplated the effort it would take to get a nuclear plant designed and licensed," said representative Tom Rice (R-S.C.).
Although one Democrat criticized the extension by arguing that nuclear power "does better in a socialist economy than in a capitalist one, because nuclear energy prefers to have the public do the cleanup, do the insurance, cover all of the losses and it only wants the profits."
Can't survive without subsidies. Like the buggy whip industry....
Let it succeed or fail on it's own merits. Instead of doing everything you can to block it based on irrational and unscientific fear.
Not that I'm disagreeing with him/her. I don't like Nuclear because America doesn't have the balls to properly regulate and punish businessmen who flaunt safety. The risks are too great. It's not NIMBY. Make it public run or show me you're willing to throw people responsible for lesser disasters like oil spills in jail for 10-20 years and we'll talk. Until then it'll be like always: privatize the profits, socialize the losses.
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> Although one Democrat criticized the extension by arguing that nuclear power
If you can claim someone said it, you must surely know who it was. So, who said it?
Fuck everyone.
nuclear power "does better in a socialist economy than in a capitalist one, because nuclear energy prefers to have the public do the cleanup, do the insurance, cover all of the losses and it only wants the profits."
As opposed to coal fired power where you just shit raw sewage continuously into the air and expect your great grandchildren to clean it up?
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Three Mile Island was the only major commercial nuclear accident in U.S. history. Nuclear power in the U.S. has generated 24,196,167 GWh between 1971-2015. At an average price of 12 cents/kWh, that's $2.90354 trillion. So the approx $3.4 billion in cleanup and lossses from TMI is 0.117% of that. Or in other words, at a retail price of 12 cents/kWh, the historical cost of cleaning up nuclear accidents in the U.S. is 0.014 cents per kWh.
In contrast, subsidies for different energy sources are 23.1 cents/kWh for solar, 3.5 cents/kWh for wind, and 0.2 cents/kWh for nuclear. (Tables ES4 and ES4. Solar received $4.393 billion in subsidies while generating 19,000 GWh. Wind received $5.936 billion while generating 5,936 GWh, and nuclear received $1.66 billion while generating 789,000 GWh.) That's right. The subsidy for solar is 1650x more expensive than cleaning up nuclear accidents. The subsidy for wind is 250x more expensive.
Nuclear decommissioning costs are already paid for by the NRC's Financial Assurance fund. A portion of the revenue from electricity sales are placed into this fund.
The problem with insuring nuclear plants is just a quirk of statistics. The more times you roll the dice, the narrower the bell curve becomes and the more predictable the average outcome. e.g. A 1d100 has an equal chance to produce any result between 1 and 100 - the probability distribution function is a straight line. 2d50 produces a triangular PDF, with the values in the middle tending to be more likely. 10d10 produces an even more compact PDF - a narrow normal curve with results in the middle much more likely than the extremes. And 100d0.5 will always produce 50 - its PDF is just a single peak in the middle.
This is a problem for insuring nuclear plants - because they produce so much energy you don't need very many of them. Whereas there are thousands of coal plants, and (potentially) millions of solar installations, there are only operating 100 nuclear plants in the U.S. So insuring a nuclear plant represents a greater risk for the insurer. Even though the mean outcome will be that there is 1 accident every 30 years, the chance of a 2nd or 3rd accident is still significant and the amount the insurer has to pay out may easily surpass how much they've collected in premiums if they assume the statistically most likely outcome of a single accident.
The insurance company's response is to increase the premium to also cover that 2nd or 3rd event even though they're unlikely. In contrast, with thousands of coal plants they can be much more confident that there will be (say) only 10 accidents every 30 years, and 20 or 30 accidents is extraordinarily unlikely. So the premiums can be lower, even if the average risk (mean) is exactly the same. If there were some way to build thousands of small-scale nuclear plants instead of 100 large ones, private insurance wouldn't be a problem. You get around this problem by creating the largest insurance pool possible, which in this case would be nationalized insurance covering all 100 nuclear power plants.
Statistically, per unit of energy generated, nuclear power is the safest power source man has invented.
This topic is filled with people who think they are experts...
From reading a sample of posts, it is clear that the majority of people here have no idea whatsoever about what they are talking about.
What is sad, is that most of these people vote in their respective nations.
and the public is going to bail it out then either a) let it fail and then step in to blunt any damage (e.g. let the too big to fail banks go and then prop up the economy with subsidies) or b) if it's too big/risky necessary for human civilization don't privatize it in the first place.
What I'm sick and fucking tired of is paying $$$ in taxes every year and getting bugger all for it. I'm a socialist, not a kleptocrate. Don't just hand billions (trillions?) of infrastructure to somebody's brother in law under the thin guise of "Private industry is always more efficient". Public infrastructure should be just that: public.
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if we weren't about to elect Donald Trump & Mike Pence to the highest office in the land. Trump's already said his first order of business is to roll back the tighter rules Obama put through for the FDA and food safety. There was 8 years of constant outbreaks that more or less stopped when those rules went in. But they're bad for business so out they go.
Americans don't like experts. We don't like people telling us what to do and how to do it. I'm sorry, but that's just a fact. A study just showed that white Americans a. Blamed the weak job market on the gov't and b. Felt the gov't needed to do more to help them. These folks aren't thinking, they're feeling. So you'll forgive me if I don't want something like a nuke plant with a 50 year life cycle in my neck of the woods when I've got to worry about a few changes in political winds undoing all those regulations...
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part of the problem is a combo of NIMBY and wanting cubic meters of docs to prove that the tech being used is
99.9999999999% safe.
if they "simply" used the same protocols that the US Navy uses for its reactors then it would be safe enough (build the things as more or less sealed units that need a chunky crane to remove so that in 20 years when the fuel is expended you just get a crane yoink the HOT bits out and replace).
Challenge for those folks that would rather have a Supermax Prison than a nuclear power plant:
Name (with verifiable proof from 3 independent sources) all of the nuclear reactor accidents that did not involve
1 something getting shot at (or other wartime action)
2 brasshat squids mucking about
3 deliberate sabotage
and don't count things like missiles getting lost or fuel getting lost those are not reactor accidents
Solar and wind can't survive without subsidies, government mandates and market intervention giving them priority on the grid. Per unit of energy produced, they receive outrageously lavish subsidies, and their preferential treatment is pushing all reliable generators out of the market, not just nuclear. It is the pinnacle of hypocrisy to criticize nuclear, which receives virtually no help. Nuclear advocates don’t even want subsidies; they want a fair marketplace and rational technology-neutral regulation. Go ahead: eliminate all subsidies. Technologies with real potential don’t need subsidies, only an environment free of insurmountable obstacles.
Why should nuclear bear the considerable cost of integrating unreliable and destabilizing energy sources into the grid? Shifting the cost onto a competing clean energy source is extremely unfair, and nuclear itself is far from mature. Conventional reactors don't even scratch the surface of the design space, and the nuclear supply chain and construction industries have wasted away. If ever there were a technology deserving of subsidies, this is it. In terms of fuel efficiency and waste production, the potential improvements are more than a hundred-fold, and these can be realized in a LFTR, with unparalleled economics, safety, and a minimal environmental footprint.
After decades of intense investment, renewables still contribute very little in terms of useful energy or avoided CO2 emissions. What they have achieved is sharply increasing energy costs wherever deployed. Proponents trumpet their supposed low cost, but experience tells another story. Germany has some of the highest electricity rates, and far from decarbonizing, they are constructing new coal plants. Even the Germans are correcting course now, and people should confirm the facts and reflect on them. Sadly, when faced with facts and reason, the human instinct is to doubled down on stupid, so it will require effort.
Tony Blair et Gordon Brown. Face à eux, Jeremy Corbyn, 67 ans, propose un virage à gauche toute. Longtemps député marginal sans audience, il propose la nationalisation des chemins de fer, le désarmement nucléaire unilatéral et un plan de relance économique de 500 milliards de livres sterling (sur dix ans) sans expliquer son financement. Ce virage politique, doublé de la personnalité très intègre du leader, n’ayant jamais compromis ses principes, a provoqué un mouvement populaire de fond. Le nombre d’adhérents a triplé, à 540 000 personnes.Les députés seraient sans doute prêts à lui pardonner si Jeremy Corbyn emportait l’adhésion du grand public. Mais sa cote de popularité est catastrophique. Les sondages donnent 40% aux conservateurs, dix point de plus que les travaillistes. Beaucoup pensent l’actuel patron du parti inéligible. Neil Kinnock, ancien leader des travaillistes, âgé de 74 ans, estime qu’il est improbable qu’il revoit un gouvernement travailliste de (son) vivant nike tn 2016 .
Here's one. Good work socialists!
"does better in a socialist economy than in a capitalist one, because nuclear energy prefers to have the public do the cleanup, do the insurance, cover all of the losses and it only wants the profits."
This is precisely why the calls for "A free and open market with big government off our backs." is disastrous. In addition to little things like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... just think what it would be like if there were no regulation of meat, fuel, roads, drugs, doctors, chemical manufacturing, transport, storage, access, and I could go on and on.
The point being that if we want democracy, there has to be some way for limiting those stronger, richer, with more friends from becoming an issue for the less rich, less powerful, less popular. A society without limits is one with warlords and thugs running it.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
Isn't it funny how hopeless nuclear fanboys kept insisting that the government was against nuclear power the entire time despite things like this going on?
You can blame government, hippies or whoever but the reality is that US nuclear companies just do not have their shit together which is why when the UK went shopping for nukes they went to the Chinese. Say whatever you like about the Chinese nuclear industry but they do not have the current mode of failure of Westinghouse etc of spending far more on public relations than they have on research and development.
So does every industry. That's why the US government subsidizes industries it doesn't even use: Such as the mohair industry and the whaling industry; actually 3 'whaling industry' states and the appropriations commissioner's state. President Madison thought that rule by self-interest groups would be naturally unstable: He didn't foresee the country splitting into conservative and ultra-conservative factions; nor the government pandering to industries that don't produce 'anything'.
Nuclear energy likes a socialist economy because that government has more power to regulate industries, quelling dissent and enforcing safety protocols known to work.
France USED breeders and then shut them down apart from a tiny research reactor.
A bit of background: In 1968 it looked as if high grade Uranium ore was going to run out since a long list of countries even including Egypt were planning to build reactors. The price of Uranium rose as a consequence.
The French response to that was to plan some fast breeders, build them, run them for decades and then shut them down. They have not built new ones because high grade Uranium ore is no longer a rarity and the demand is not high (there is about a centuries worth in a single mine in Australia and quite a lot in other places).
Various green groups claimed credit for the old reactors shutting down but the reality is something designed in 1968 and built very shortly after was just too worn out in so many components that it was not worth running any longer - especially since the French weapons program no longer needed the material and the competing reactor designs are much cheaper to use.
No, the new nuclear reactor designs still are not fully proven. Don't buy a beta unit...
There are several nuclear reactor designs on the market now: The EPR, and AP1000 are the most mature of the gen 3+ reactors to date. Construction on the first EPR began in Finland in 2005. It is still under construction, and it turns out there are flaws in the EPR design (whoops). The AP1000 has a few reactors under construction in China, and the United States.
Russia has its evolved VVER-1200 nuclear reactor, and it appears it was connected to the grid a little while ago. South Korea is trying to develop its nuclear industry, and its APR-1400 reactor, and it looks like it was also recently connected to the electric grid. China is trying to develop its own nuclear reactor.
So, the lesson is to buy weapons, rockets, and nuclear reactors from Russia?
and disaster films. That's billions of dollars of advertising right there
Solar and wind have not finished producing power that the subsidies supported while nuclear plants are closing but will still draw subsidies for thousands of years without producing more power. The solar and wind subsidies will dilute to a number indistinguishable from zero but nuclear will always be an expensive goverment induced market distortion, a bad choice from start to eternal filthy finish.
Lloyd Alton Doggett II (born October 6, 1946) is a U.S. Representative from Texas. A member of the Democratic Party, he has represented a district based in the state capital, Austin, since 1995
He has been a close ally of Nancy Pelosi. In 2002, Doggett supported Pelosi's successful bid to become the party's House leader over fellow Texan Martin Frost, a more moderate candidate.
The Sunlight Project estimates his average net worth in 2006 was over $13 million.[27] In 2008, the Sunlight Foundation pointed out that among the 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, Doggett has the 11th-highest amount of investment in oil stocks.
In other words, a typical limousine liberal.
Nuclear has had vast subsidies to get started, but it turned out to also need them to opperate, the Price-Anderson subsidy, if eliminated, would close all nuclear power instantly. And, owing to nuclear waste manegement intractability, it will need subsidies long after all power plants close. Nuclear has been a losing proposition from the start, and we can only hope that the irresponsible run-to-failure attitude of some operators won't result in tremendously more public expense.
Canada does its thing with its own design - how is it working out for them?
Otherwise [uninformed personal opinion] I think the problems are with the use of mid-20th century reactor designs - why are they still building that crap? Why is every plant its own unique design built by who ever wins the bid regardless of their lack of experience? For what I know China has a crack team of nuclear power station builders and set designs, and just knock them out one after the other.
Does it cost less, per megawatt hour, to subsidize a nuclear plant or a solar plant?
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Let it succeed or fail on it's own merits. Instead of doing everything you can to block it based on irrational and unscientific fear.
YES! Let them buy liability insurance on commercial market without any taxpayer funded limits and exclusions. Check back next day how many insurance companies lined up to underwrite liability of billions of dollars :/
Although one Democrat criticized the extension by arguing that nuclear power "does better in a socialist economy than in a capitalist one, because nuclear energy prefers to have the public do the cleanup, do the insurance, cover all of the losses and it only wants the profits."
I remember in the beginning how refreshing it was to find Slashdot, where you could quite often find intelligent discourse about technical subjects and where Linux was often portrayed in a positive light at a time when the consensus in the IT industry produced such catchy phrases as "You get what you pay for" and other goodies. It feels quite disappointing to see that we are now becoming little more than a sort tabloid outlet, whose main editorial line is to post anything that stirs up controversy, because that attracts more commentators, who we can sell as potetial eyes that look at our adverts.
I've picked out this particular sentence, not because I feel that socialism needs defending, but because it once again portrays Americans as being stereotypically crude, uninformed and astoundingly stupid. So, is there actually 'one Democrat' that spews out this sort of tripe about socialism? Probably - just as there are Republicans and Americans of any denomination, who tend to hold a similarly uninformed view of the world. And for that matter, people from any nation. I happen to know quite a few Americans - and I have only ever come across 1 in the flesh, who matched the sterotype; to compare, I know loads of Britons that appear to be functionally braindead.
As for the comment on itself: the behaviour desribed matches very closely what we have grown up to expect from businesses, especially big businesses, under glorous Capitalism: acid rain, dead rivers, corrupt companies paying corrupt researchers (they don't really deserve being called scientists) to tweak their results, pollutants poured out in the environment with the excuse that "it hasn't been proven that these chemicals, which cause deformities in frogs are harmful to humans" - and so on. Plus, of course, they do all they can to avoid paying taxes, so who gets to pay the bill for cleaning up the mess for their reckless profiteering? Societies all over the world are still paying the bill for the tobacco industry's profitmaking - they make money from selling a drug that is proven to cause cancer, but they don't pay the expenses for cancer treatments, nor do they compensate for the loss of production or any of the other significant costs associated with their business. All in all, I think it has absolutely nothing to do with socialism when the public has to foot the bill for the mindless greed of Big Capitalism.