Published on Tuesday, February 26, 2008
by The Dallas Morning News
Nuclear Is Not the Right Alternative Energy Source
New plants are risky, costly and unnecessary


by Arjun Makhijani

Luminant Energy, formerly TXU, is proposing to build two Mitsubishi nuclear power reactors at its Comanche Peak site, where two reactors are already in place.

This is part of a national wave of new commercial reactor proposals after a three-decade lapse in new orders - eight in Texas alone. Having failed miserably to deliver on the 1950s promise that nuclear electricity would be “too cheap to meter,” the industry now says it will save us from climate change. If you don’t like coal, you have to take nuclear, goes the nuclear establishment’s hopeful mantra.

That’s a false choice. Replacing coal with nuclear is risky, costly and unnecessary.

Renewable energy sources are quite sufficient to provide ample, reliable electricity. For instance, Texas has greater wind energy potential than its present electricity generation from all sources; it is greater also than the output from all U.S. nuclear power plants combined. And it has barely captured a whisper of its potential.

Wind energy is competitive with or more economical than nuclear energy - about 8 cents per kilowatt-hour in good areas. A recent independent assessment by the Keystone Center, which included industry representatives, estimated nuclear costs at 8 to 11 cents.

Intermittency is not a significant issue until very high levels of penetration. For instance, a 2006 study prepared for the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission found that an increase of just over 2 percent in operating reserves would be sufficient to underpin a 25 percent renewable energy standard supplied by wind.

Meanwhile, Solar energy is somewhat more expensive today, but costs are coming down rapidly. Last December, Nanosolar produced the first solar panels costing less than a dollar a watt at its factory in Silicon Valley.

In January, MidAmerican Energy Holdings, which is owned by Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway, dropped plans to build a nuclear power plant in Idaho, on the grounds that it could not provide reasonably priced energy to its customers.

New nuclear plants would add to the country’s problem of nuclear waste. The federal government has long been in default of its obligations to existing nuclear plant operators to take the waste away from their sites. Nuclear utilities have had to take the government to court to recover added storage expenses, which will cost the taxpayers billions or possibly even tens of billions of dollars over time.

To imagine that the federal government will take charge of waste from new plants where it does not even have contracts is wishful thinking. Much more likely, Texas will be stuck with it.

And then there is the problem of cooling water. The two proposed reactors would consume about 40 million gallons of water per day. Even assuming that the water is available, Texas is risking a less reliable power system, given that droughts are estimated to become more extreme in a warming world.

For instance, last September, a nuclear unit at Browns Ferry belonging to the Tennessee Valley Authority had to be shut down for lack of water. In contrast, solar photovoltaics and wind-generated electricity do not need water.

Luminant’s two reactors are already discharging significant amounts of tritium-contaminated radioactive water into the Squaw Creek reservoir. New reactors would only add to those discharges.

Before proceeding with new reactor proposals, Luminant should at least investigate how it might reduce existing tritium discharges. Tritium is radioactive hydrogen, which displaces ordinary hydrogen in water to form tritiated water, which becomes radioactive as a result.

Go to this link to read entire story:
Nuclear Is Not the Right Alternative Energy SourceNew plants are risky, costly and unnecessary - CommonDreams.org

http://www.oseh.umich.edu/TrainH3.pdf

Tritium water is naturally accuring and can be used to determine how old a body of water is. The radiation caused by Tritium is also so low that it is deemed that "no shielding is required" and the radaition only penetrates <0.007 cm, and doesn't get through the layer of dead skin.

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Set your destination with your heart, get there with your mind.

"The wisest men follow their own direction." - Euripides

I'll say this much:

I would love to use wind power and solar power, but I feel the amount of turbines needed for wind power is rediculous for larger cities and I feel solar power is just going to be the power of the future.

Nuclear is better then coal though.

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Non concupisces domum proximi tui; nec desiderabis uxorem eius, non servum, non ancillam, non bowem, non asinum, nec omnia quae illius sunt.

I support Solar as my primary chioce, followed in the distance by Hydro, than Nuclear third. But solar kicks all their butts.

__________________
Set your destination with your heart, get there with your mind.

"The wisest men follow their own direction." - Euripides

In order...Wind, Hydro, Nuclear, then Solar. Wind is just impractical because larger cities need so many turbines. I just like the idea. So practicality wise I like Hydro, then Nuclear, then Solar.

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Non concupisces domum proximi tui; nec desiderabis uxorem eius, non servum, non ancillam, non bowem, non asinum, nec omnia quae illius sunt.

Nuclear is by far the best. It is easy to make and can power a large city like nothing else, it is by far the smartest way to go. We can armor the plant with the latest protections. The only reason why you leftest don't want nuclear power is that you want to see the global economy go into a depression, so your comrads can over throw all the governments on earth. That is what I see from all this corn fuel "BS" that has sent food prices world wide sky high. We can't drill for Oil for anything, this is yet another good thing about nuclear power. That is we can switch to hyrogen, remember its a energy holder, and with nuclear power we can charge them up. All together nuclear power would work very will.

I don't understand why you people keep fighting for a failed idea. How much death is it worth?

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"We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good." Hillary Clinton, June 2004.


"If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity; it must be known, that we are at all times ready for war" -- George Washington, Fifth Annual Address to Congress, December 13, 1793

At this time, solar is a VERY expensive option . Not very cost effective on a small scale.

Well, when you compare it to the price it was 30 years ago it is 1/5 the cost as it was then, and 1/40 the cost from back in the 50's, so it is making huge progress. And even when you compare it on a large scale, it is only about twice the cost of nuclear (for the same size power plant), which is more than I'd suggest we pay, but it is a possibility in the near future (as in 10-20 years).

__________________
Set your destination with your heart, get there with your mind.

"The wisest men follow their own direction." - Euripides

Did you know that a single little pellet of uranium provides as much power as thousands of pounds of coal and hundreds of gallons of oil?

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"Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states...Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds."



~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

There are several major problems with that article: namely it's dishonest and glossing over issues.


Here's an example:


No, renewable sources are not very efficient. That's actually one of the downsides. Windpower has such a dismal rating of efficiency that it would take hundreds, if not thousands, of giant windmills to equal the actual energh production per land area of a SINGLE nuclear plant.

The "projected" windpower generated is no where near the actual windpower. Those are under "ideal" conditions, which are rarely reality. Nuclear power is actually the cheapest source of energy per kilowatt hour for how realistic it is, more than oil, coal, wind, etc.

To get the same amount of reliable energy from windpower, you would have to devote massive fields to just that: that's a waste of precious land and actually causes more interference with the environment in the process. The goal is to minimize impact, not increase land usage.

Some "alternatives" are only cheaper when you factor in unrealistic conditions or outright ignore reality.

The big cost of nuclear power is the initial physical development, which makes them long-term solutions: not short term ones.



There are ways to store waste safely and an excellent way of minimizing waste output in the first place: sadly, it was made illegal by Carter--Spent Fuel Reprocessing. It makes waste negligible and actually provides useful products to hospitals et al for other uses.

Other sources of energy have their own problems that you aren't factoring into the equation. You are focusing on the "costs" of transport and storage while ignoring the externalities imposed on citizens by the other methods.


Nuclear energy is a clean, green solution with waste that is relatively easily manageable compared to the realistic large sources of energy we have today that pump **** right into the environment: coal, oil, etc.

Windmill advocates often overlook the opportunity costs involved in their "alternative solution." That's not fair. It would take thousands of windmills and many MORE acres of land than a single nuke plant.