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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."
It's failing on its own merits. Even with subsidies, it's too expensive and can't compete.
The UK just approved a new nuclear plant (Hinckley Point 3) which requires consumers to buy power at a price much higher than wind, solar, coal, or anything else.
It was approved in the best traditions of corrupt government... advisers to government had a financial stake in it's approval.
Also, the plant gives the Chinese access to French and UK nuclear technology and control over the plant... a win for everyone except the UK.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
The additional downside to breeder reactors is the increased nuclear waste and higher potential for radiation exposure. These are not marginal concerns, these are quite frankly life altering and life ending concerns.
This isn't supported by the evidence or by reasonable hypotheticals. If the engineers and operators can refrain from doing extremely stupid experimental things (Chernobyl), the danger to human life is clearly much lower than coal and oil. Even using old, moronic designs that went into meltdown mode when they lost power to the machinery, the misery and suffering Fukushima inflicted is clearly lower than the suffering inflicted by coal and oil. I'm talking about both the macro and the micro pictures here. There's bits of ground in Chernobyl that I wouldn't want to go picnicking on, sure, but I wouldn't want to picnic in Centralia, either.
The additional downside to breeder reactors is the increased nuclear waste
A non-issue. I could give you literally ten different reasons as to why this is a non-issue, but my two favorite ones are there shouldn't be so much nuclear waste that you couldn't keep it all on-site, and that no one cares nearly as much about the long term storage of dioxins or other incredibly hazardous but nonradioactive chemicals.
My reasons for opposing nuclear power is not because of the science (I understand the science) my concern is I do not trust corporations to operate in the common good.
Do you trust BP to operate in the common good? Even though they killed a dozen people when Deepwater Horizon exploded? (For those keeping score at home, that's roughly a dozen more than have been killed by commercial nuclear reactors in Amerca.) Even when damn near the entire Gulf of Mexico was darkened with petroleum and they had to spray god knows what on it to get rid of it? What of tanker truck explosions? What of coal mine collapses? What of the thousands of coal seam fires burning around the world today, fires that will keep on burning long after our grandchildren are dead? What of global warming, acid rain decimating vulnerable species, mercury in tuna permanently stunting our childrens' IQs ?
It's not nuclear or nothing. It's nuclear or hydrocarbons. There is no rational safety reason to choose hydrocarbon over nuclear, none whatsoever, except for the possibility (already acknowledged) of proliferation or other nuclear malevolence. I can't give you a decisive argument on that front , but I hope I can at least disabuse you of the notion that the poisons in coal are somehow safer than small, localized bits of radioactive contamination.
As far as the tradeoff of safety and cost goes, I believe that safety reform is needed but in its current state it is completely misguided. The emphasis should be on better and more contingency-proof designs and more durable designs, so that we can more or less set it and forget it. Nuclear reactions are not, at their core, all that complicated. It should not require billions of dollars to idiot-proof, but it does require getting over some of our hysteria and some of the red-tape cruft that doesn't add to safety but does add to the price tag.
Actually, I can give you at least one good argument on the proliferation front, and it addresses your worries (be they valid or not) about breeder reactors: let's downblend our weapons grade fissile materials and use them to power reactors. We've got what, something on the order of 10k warheads? All of them 5x-10x more potent than they need to be for nuclear reactors? Burn 'em. Sign some treaties with Russia and get them to burn theirs, too.
(Most of them, anyway. I'm inclined more towards a minimal effective deterrence philosophy than a total disarmament philosophy.)