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California Will Close Its Last Nuclear Power Plant (sfchronicle.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the San Francisco Chronicle:
California's last nuclear power plant -- Diablo Canyon, whose contentious birth helped shape the modern environmental movement -- will close in 2025, state utility regulators decided Thursday. The unanimous vote by the California Public Utilities Commission will likely bring an end to nuclear energy's long history in the state. State law forbids building more nuclear plants in California until the federal government creates a long-term solution for dealing with their waste, a goal that remains elusive despite decades of effort.
The decision comes even as California expands its fight against global warming. Owned by Pacific Gas and Electric Co., Diablo Canyon is the state's largest power plant, supplying 9 percent of California's electricity while producing no greenhouse gases. "With this decision, we chart a new energy future by phasing out nuclear power here in California," said commission President Michael Picker. "We've looked hard at all the arguments, and we agree the time has come."
The decision comes even as California expands its fight against global warming. Owned by Pacific Gas and Electric Co., Diablo Canyon is the state's largest power plant, supplying 9 percent of California's electricity while producing no greenhouse gases. "With this decision, we chart a new energy future by phasing out nuclear power here in California," said commission President Michael Picker. "We've looked hard at all the arguments, and we agree the time has come."
Do we have any rails coming in from West Virginia?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
California is run by morons.
No way are they going to be able to replace all of the energy lost from that plant from renewables. It's going to come from some other state, spewing coal and sulfur... or possibly they simply will increase the brownouts, but it's OK because all of the large cash cows have learned to have their own generation facilities for anything important.
Nuclear energy is the cheapest form above all the others, it's a shame to see the world fold this away even as they scream the Earth needs saving. You were saving it friend, and now you are letting it go.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Natural Gas is still a lot safer
Natural gas plants leak methane like a motherfucker. And methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. After a few decades it decomposes into water and... CO2, but in the meantime it helps wrecking havoc of climate.
I much prefer nuclear power to natural gas. It's safer for the planet.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
The red state vs. blue state comparison is flawed because there are no purely red or blue states. What there is instead are urban and rural parts of the country. Urban areas are deeply blue and rural is deeply red.
To see the truth of this, just look at an election map by precinct for your state. Compare it to a map of urban vs. rural.
To truly compare, you need to cut across geographical boundaries. The Pew Research Center did that by correlating political party to food stamp usage. Democrats are TWICE as likely as Republicans to have taken food stamps.
Source: http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...
This makes good common sense, too. Democrats in the urban core are obviously much more supportive of a large, active government, and Republicans in rural areas want smaller government.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Yes, nuclear power in theory, can be perfectly safe. But in practice, it is not possible to reduce the risk level to zero. And a non-zero risk level with nuclear power means that once in some period of time, be it 50 or 100 or 200 years, there is a chance of a serious problem. With any other technology, the possible severity of a serious incident is limited by the nature of the technology, where nuclear is not as limited. It was thought the Titanic couldn't sink. it was thought the o-rings on the Challenger were sufficient. The original Tacoma Narrows Bridge was designed at a time when engineers were unaware of the potential of aeroelastic flutter. It was thought that Fukushima could withstand the earthquake it was hit with and wouldn't be compounded with associated events. Risk assessment is an estimate of things that often can't be accurately quantified, and compound risks exist in all but the simplest risk calculations. Ultimately, evaluations of acceptable risk must include the magnitude of worst-case events, and not presume they can be avoided entirely.