Nuclear power and bureaucracy
 

I'm a bit irked.

We have the largest nuclear power plant in the US (used to be in the world, but I'm not sure about that anymore) on the outskirts of Phoenix - Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station.

They are about to undergo a 700 million dollar project to boost power output.

I'm all for progress, right? But the projected boost of power output? 3%.

I'm thinking this sounds a bit pricey. What does a new nuclear plant cost? So I did a bit of looking around.

A new plant being built in Finland (which gets 27% of their power from nuclear plants) is projected to cost between 1.75 and 2.25 billion Euros. 2.25 billion Euros comes to just under 2.8 billion US dollars, or about 4 times the cost of the expansion at Palo Verde.

The reason they are doing this is because they can't build a new one. Government won't allow it. But they will allow expansion of the facility. I am glad that there are plans to start constructing a new one for use in 2010, but only one?

We only get around 20% of our electricity from nuclear power. Even with waste issues it is by far the least polluting option for electricity. New designs are Chernobyl proof. I cannot understand why we will construct new plants for North Korea but not for ourselves.

It is time to start catching up to (gak! I hate to say it) France in this department, as they get about 75% of their power from nuclear plants.

Hahahaha. The French RULE! ;)

There's nothing I love more than the absurdity of government decision making. It seems the our government is unable to take a look at the big picture and make good decisions accordingly. This is a perfect example, Leo. I worked for local government for 10 years and I can cite a million examples of a similar nature - though not quite as groosly stupid as this one.

The driving factor here - fear. Politicians fearing a backlash from their constituency and a public that has an uninformed fear of nuclear energy.

Having actually worked at a Nuc plant, I'm also an advocate for nuclear power. Unfortunately, it's unpopularity contributes to making it so costly. Instead of having a national reserve for storing high level waste, spent fuel is just being stockpiled at each site - transforming a safe solution into a more dangerous one.

Each energy source has a downside. I've been to "clean" coal burning plants, but even there the smell of coal dust permeates the air, solar cells manufacturing process creates plenty of carcinogens, and wind power is often dismissed as unsightly and a bane to migratory birds.

My personal preference is a diversity of energy sources to spread the risk of any real or imagined shortages - but nuclear could definately be a bigger part of the mix.

Next time one of those Asteriods come close to the Earth we should tie a line to it and connect that line to a generator.....then as the Asteriod pulls the line.....bam. Free elecricity(yes, I do have too much time on my hands :) )


:D

Um....ok, sleepy. Go back to sleep. ;)

Exceptionally cool. Engineer?

LOL - nope, records and compliance. But it's nice to know me and Homer have something in common.

Besides beer and donuts?;):D

Ick. I am so freakin' sick of bureaucracy like that. I program stuff for government contractor, and since Enron, so much stuff has been passed to prevent fraud that I now spend around 40% of my time on bureaucratic record keeping. It's enough to make look for other employment (well, almost).

Be careful. That's whaat pays the bills around here. ;)

Nope. Think wind.

Although, I have heard people opposing wind power because it polutes our surroundings with those eyesore windmills. Also, so much more space is needed to generate the same amount of electricity put out by a nuc plant. But, I agree, on a general waste production level, it generates the least.

I wonder how much of that is offset by operations necessities when looked at from a per kilowatt perspective. With the vast discrepancy between the amount of power output of wind vs. nuclear, as well as the physical size, I wouldn't be surprised if the amount of polution caused by things like maintanance vehicles (which, due to the expansive fields of wind generators would need to do a lot of driving) as a proportion of the amount of electricity produced actually aproaches the proportion of waste to energy that a nuclear plant produces. I could be wrong, but soemthing tells me the gap isn't quite as big, or easy to quantify, as one might think.

I've also read that certain environmental groups are up in tizzy regarding wind power because the wind farms have a tendency to kill thousands of birds annually.

heh heh - yup that's my bread and butter. Thanks to those guys at Enron I get to tell my CEO how I keep him and the rest of the execs out of jail in my elevator spiel.

Yes, so I suppose to heaps of dead migratory birds (carrying avian flu?) might be considered "waste."

Having worked in nuclear power in the Navy, (nothing fancy I was just a Radiological Gage Calibration Technician for the Subs in Pearl Harbor 1990 -1994) I have long thought the use of nuclear power was our best choice for the majority of our power needs. What bothers me is the staling of the storage facility in Nevada. Don’t people know where it is being stored in the mean time? How come we can not just call it a 10,000 year temporary storage, and give science a crack at an improved disposal process between now and then.

Wendybeth may have heard of her, but the former head of the US nuclear regulatory commission and former governor of Washington State - one Dixie Lee Ray (no longer living) - had some really interesting theories and scientific data regarding disposal of nuclear waste. Anyone interested can read the book "trashing the planet".

My mom used to be very active in politics (she worked for Tom Foley and Scoop Jackson) and knew Dixie very well.

Hmmm, I wonder if wind plants make attractive targets for terrorism? Or if coal facilities go practically unprotected against attack?




Get my drift about why nuclear power is unsafe in today's climate, for different reasons than it was in yesterday's climate? In 20 years, it will be unacceptably dangerous for a different reason. Something which has the power to destroy life in such a calamatous manner will NEVER be safe.

The way I see it is that so much vital stuff in the US is unprotected any power plant is just another target. I know only a bit about how they work, but they cannot be bombed into melt down, though I am certain some radiation could be leaked. Looking at the limits of the explosives the terrorists have at their disposal, however, I have seen no evidence they have enough power to create an explosion large enough to do that.

If we want to talk about scary terrorist targets that are unprotected, let's talk water supply. There is simply no physical way to protect it, and a coordinated attack with the right stuff in the right places could be more crippling than anything else I can imagine.

I can't say about the wind plants, but the coal facilities certainly have had their security beefed up post 9/11. They may lack the gun towers, automatic weapons, and body armour, but they do have armed gaurds patroling the grounds, manning the various check points, and doing thorough vehicle inspections - interior, truck space, engin compartment and under the car.