AHC: Atomic America

I can't imagine why people wouldn't want to live near a nuclear power plant in a nation with Three Mile Island, the Valdez, the BP Oil Spill...

No one outside the plant being exposed to radiation detectably higher than background level in the first case and the 2nd and 3rd having nothing to do with nukes at all?

In the incident at Three Mile Island? No. One. Died.
 
Those weren't nuclear, but America (perhaps unjustly given our size) has a history of some enormous environmental disasters, due in part to cost-cutting and inadequate regulations. My point about France was that there, polls show nuclear power is linked to energy independence and the national welfare.

But the cost is the big issue. Coal is cheaper, and we produce tons of it.
 

loughery111

Banned
Those weren't nuclear, but America (perhaps unjustly given our size) has a history of some enormous environmental disasters, due in part to cost-cutting and inadequate regulations. My point about France was that there, polls show nuclear power is linked to energy independence and the national welfare.

But the cost is the big issue. Coal is cheaper, and we produce tons of it.

Coal is cheaper in large (HUGE) part because the regulatory costs associated with coal are nil. As are most of the PR costs. Nuclear, in contrast, requires a company to drag itself through a multi-year, multi-million dollar effort to get a permit and then discover that Greenpeace and associated idiots have turned up and are bitching incessantly to their local representative. (Sorry, I have nothing against the environmental movement as a whole but if I could go back in time and scuttle Amchitka and keep scuttling anything that would conceivably produce a Greenpeace-like organization, I would.)

Also, coal and oil are both subsidized rather heavily by the US government, under the radar. Oil, in particular, requires a yearly government investment of about $100 billion in "foreign aid," military spending, and discounted sales of equipment to keep a logistical train moving from the Middle East.
 
Here is a rather brief, if still highly technical, overview on the economics and EROEI of fission power. However, to quote from the damned thing itself,

We have found the information about the EROI of nuclear power to be mostly as disparate, widespread, idiosyncratic, prejudiced and poorly documented as information about the nuclear power industry itself. Much, perhaps most, of the information that is available seems to have been prepared by someone who has made up his or her mind one-way or another (i.e. a large or trivial supplier of net energy) before the analysis is given.

There are EROEIs quoted ranging from 7:1 (decent, but nothing to crow about; what I was expecting) to 93:1 (exceptional; better than crude oil's been for decades) for the exact same reactor technology depending on the assumptions of the people doing the study.

Interestingly, in terms of subsidies, the overview notes that in the US companies operating nuclear reactors are in large part insured by the government itself and have only limited liability for accidents involving their reactors. I don't know if this is also the case for other types of power plants or not.
 
Locate Seabrook Station elsewhere

The Seabrook, NH nuclear plant was put in a very bad spot, politically, and IMVHO, also practicly. The station looms over some of New Hampshire's beaches, clearly visible to anyone aproaching Hampton Beach (New Hampshire's biggest toursit beach.)

This area is simply not possible to evacuate in a hurry--I live nearby, and have driven the roads--in the summer. A looming hurricane, there's many days notice--a nuclear disaster, there's not necesarily a long lead time. So, regardless of actual risks, the Seabrook station location brought out a LOT of emotion along with the reasoned voices of opposition. It was so bad that only one of the units was ever finished--the second one, half built, was "mothballed," and later on, the containment dome was quietly demolished, and other components sold.

The conspicuous nature of the plant insured that protests got national news. Of course, living not too far away insures that I was in the heart of the controversey.
 

loughery111

Banned
The Seabrook, NH nuclear plant was put in a very bad spot, politically, and IMVHO, also practicly. The station looms over some of New Hampshire's beaches, clearly visible to anyone aproaching Hampton Beach (New Hampshire's biggest toursit beach.)

This area is simply not possible to evacuate in a hurry--I live nearby, and have driven the roads--in the summer. A looming hurricane, there's many days notice--a nuclear disaster, there's not necesarily a long lead time. So, regardless of actual risks, the Seabrook station location brought out a LOT of emotion along with the reasoned voices of opposition. It was so bad that only one of the units was ever finished--the second one, half built, was "mothballed," and later on, the containment dome was quietly demolished, and other components sold.

The conspicuous nature of the plant insured that protests got national news. Of course, living not too far away insures that I was in the heart of the controversey.

The problem is that, whether opposition was reasonable on the bases of practicality and safety here, EVERYONE has the same reaction, regardless of how eminently reasonable the location, safety procedures, etc. Damned NIMBY phenomenon...
 
1) coal has never produced individual disasters like Chernobyl (which latter is irrelevant to the US in a technical sense, but not in a political one), or Windscale (which IS relevant to the US).

One could point out that coal slag piles cause more problems, and that mountaintop mining is massive destructive. One could also (if we're looking at PODs here) have said energy crisis result in coal being used for synthetic fuel programs (everyone forgets that the US INVENTED the Fischer-Tropsch process), thus causing demand coal to rise dramatically, making the economics of nuclear reactors more appealing.

2) politics make 'nuke scares' much bigger news. Probably partly in the same way that the very, very few airplane crashes make the news big time, where the daily slaughter of automobile crashes are ignored.

The only reason the Greenies flip out so much over nuclear energy is the problem with the resulting waste, which they oppose putting anywhere. Reprocessing is a no-brainer, and nuclear waste in itself includes very large quantities of uranium in itself. Remove that and you get a substantial amount of fuel that can be re-used. Placing plants properly is important - Seabrook is one of the bad spots. (Diablo Canyon and Shoreham are also in poor spots - the latter became a giant money pit.) IMO, the best solution to this would be a vast reprocessing facility at the Hanford site and doing all of the waste processing and storage there. It's already a mess, so environmental concerns are moot.

3) you do have very real problems with dealing with the waste. True, reprocessing gets rid of some of them - but it introduces others.

This is true. The long-lived actinides and plutonium are a problem, and even if you reprocess the waste, you still have to deal with the problem of the actinides. That said, one should remember that the majority of nuclear waste out of a reactor is uranium in itself, and with heavy-water reactors (like the CANDU) you do not need to enrich the uranium as you do for a boiling water or PWR type reactor.

I don't know if you can get the US to 75% of its power from nuclear reactors - the 20% they get now comes from over 100 operating reactors, so to get 75% you need approximately 350 reactors. Newer units are bigger than older ones, mind you (Yankee Rowe and Big Rock Point were tiny compared to newer units), so you can probably lower that number somewhat. But with fairly abundant hydroelectricity in the US and the vast coal supplies, its a VERY uphill task.
 
Those weren't nuclear, but America (perhaps unjustly given our size) has a history of some enormous environmental disasters, due in part to cost-cutting and inadequate regulations. My point about France was that there, polls show nuclear power is linked to energy independence and the national welfare.

This is quite true, and it should be noted that Three Mile Island wasn't the first monumental fuckup at an American nuclear power plant - accidents of varying severity had occured at several other plants in the years before Three Mile Island - the worst happened at Cooper in Nebraska (partial coolant loss because of electrical faults), Rancho Seco in California (instrument failure resulting in steam generator dryout and low coolant level in reactor), and Davis-Besse in Ohio (which has been written up for problems FIVE TIMES, including twice in a 15-month period, and what could have been a Three Mile Island rival in 2002).

It should also be noted that TMI made the news in the middle of a string of industrial disasters and horror stories, Love Canal being the worst of them. Kinda hard to have much trust in industrial systems after a long list of screwups, and that almost certainly helped the anti-nuclear movement along in America, being that virtually all American nuclear power stations are owned by private firms.
 
Also, coal and oil are both subsidized rather heavily by the US government, under the radar. Oil, in particular, requires a yearly government investment of about $100 billion in "foreign aid," military spending, and discounted sales of equipment to keep a logistical train moving from the Middle East.

Ahh the hiden oil subsidy. I'd love to see what would happen if road users had to pay at the pump for what the USN does to keep the sealanes open
 

loughery111

Banned
Ahh the hiden oil subsidy. I'd love to see what would happen if road users had to pay at the pump for what the USN does to keep the sealanes open

Not to mention the cheap military gear given... I mean sold, SOLD... to the Arabians, the constant low-level conflict even when there are no wars, the infrastructure that is subsidized or built by the government to keep the stuff moving, etc, etc... the list goes on and on and on. And totals a hundred billion or more every year. Which is sad in that the actual cost of the oil we import from the Middle East is something like 100 billion dollars in and of itself. Most of our oil still comes from the US, Canada, and Mexico, with quite a bit from Venezuela and Brazil...
 
I can assure you with US$117 in admin fees to buy 28 planes the US may be cheaper than the Europeans but that doesn't mean cheap cheap. The best place to buy US gear is in the bazaar in Peshawar, you can virtully buy a sqn of B1Bs for $500 there, for cash of course.
 

loughery111

Banned
I can assure you with US$117 in admin fees to buy 28 planes the US may be cheaper than the Europeans but that doesn't mean cheap cheap. The best place to buy US gear is in the bazaar in Peshawar, you can virtully buy a sqn of B1Bs for $500 there, for cash of course.

What do you mean by US$117 for 28 planes? I assume million belongs in there? And that latter tidbit is a bit frightening.
 
Sorry, yes $117 million just for admin fees to buy 4 C17s and 24 F/A18Fs.

I'm exaggerating about the B1s, but you can buy all sorts of classified US military bits and pieces in the Peshawar bazaar; like a laptop with the entire publications set for the Blackhawk helicopter for a couple of grand, cash.
 

loughery111

Banned
Sorry, yes $117 million just for admin fees to buy 4 C17s and 24 F/A18Fs.

I'm exaggerating about the B1s, but you can buy all sorts of classified US military bits and pieces in the Peshawar bazaar; like a laptop with the entire publications set for the Blackhawk helicopter for a couple of grand, cash.

Ah, ok. Also, still frightening.
 
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