6 Reasons Why Nuclear Power Can't Save Us

[LC EFA]

DUmmie garybeck posts some completely idiotic commentary on nuclear energy...

garybeck  Donating Member  (1000+ posts) Sun Jan-04-09 02:57 AM
Original message
6 Reasons Why Nuclear Power Can't Save Us
   
A new book shows that it is not just the cost of nuke plants and their deadly waste that is the energy source's only problems.

The following is an excerpt from The Transition Handbook: From oil dependency to local resilience by Rob Hopkins

1. Length of time to come on stream

Commissioning and building new plants is a time-consuming business (at least twenty years), so they would have little or no impact on cutting emissions over the next twenty years, nor build any resilience in the face of peak oil.

2. Insurance

The insurance industry refuses to underwrite nuclear power, a gap it looks like the government will have to fill, resulting in a huge invisible subsidy for nuclear power.

3. Waste

Nuclear waste is a huge problem. The UK alone has 10,000 tons of nuclear waste, a pile which will increase 25-fold when the existing plants are decommissioned, with no solution in sight other than deep burial. The disposal of nuclear waste requires a great deal of embodied energy, including that in the materials used to maintain the disposal facilities (i.e. concrete and steel). It is often said that nuclear waste has a half-life of 100,000 years…it is worth remembering that Stonehenge was built only 4,000 years ago.

A society in energy descent, dependent on local, lower embodied energy building materials, will struggle to maintain nuclear waste sites with cob blocks and straw bales.

4. Cost

A new programme of nuclear power would be staggeringly expensive. Amory Lovins has calculated that 10 cents invested in nuclear energy could generate 1kwh of nuclear energy, 1.2- 1.7kwh wind-power, 2.2-6.5kwh small co-generation, or 10kwh of energy efficiency. Also, having sufficient money to invest so unwisely assumes an economy which is still growing, an increasingly unlikely prospect.

5. Peak Uranium

At the moment, there are about 60 years’ worth of uranium left. However, if electricity generation from nuclear grows steadily, this figure will fall, to the point where if all the world’s electricity were generated with nuclear, we’d have around 3 years supply left.

6. Carbon Emissions

Nuclear is often said to be a carbon-free way of generating electricity. While that may be true for the actual generation, it is not when the entire process is looked at. The mining, processing, enrichment, treatment and disposal all have significant impacts, equivalent to around one-third those of a conventional- sized gas-fired generating plant.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x181599

Normally I'd think to address some of these points, but believe it or not the primitives do a good enough job on their own.

The OP then proceeds to get totally ripped to shreds. I love it.

Best Response

Pigwidgeon  Donating Member  (1000+ posts) 
Response to Original message
17. Number Seven   Updated at 4:21 PM
   
#7: Most musicians, actors, and aging counterculturists (a.k.a. "plastic hippies") don't like nuclear energy.

It can't save us because, doggone it, we don't LIKE it! And what we don't like must not be permitted!

--p!
We're so sincere, we CAN'T be wrong!

Now that had to leave a mark. 

[NHSparky]

After (quite literally) over 20 years in the nuclear industry, both Navy and commerical, the idiocy of people when dealing with nuclear power never ceases to amaze me.

For example, the 20 year claim--why, pray tell, does it take 20 years for a plant to come on line?  It's not construction.  It's the regulation, or should I say, OVER-regulation created by people who know nothing of engineering and less about nuclear power.  In reality, where I work was initially designed to be constructed from ground-breaking to hot testing in FIVE years, and generating within 15-18 months after that.  It ended up taking 20 not because it wasn't ready, not because it wasn't safe, but because tree-huggers had no effin clue what they were talking about.   Even now they still play their little games.

[MrsSmith]

I don't know much about nuclear plants...except that ours works great, and our electric bill is always reasonable.  I like it fine!   

[USA4ME]

Pigwidgeon

#7: Most musicians, actors, and aging counterculturists (a.k.a. "plastic hippies") don't like nuclear energy.

It can't save us because, doggone it, we don't LIKE it! And what we don't like must not be permitted!

--p!
We're so sincere, we CAN'T be wrong!

That statement is true of virtually 100% of the things they "don't like."

.

[franksolich]

A little "background" on the Vermontese garybeck primitive.

He's the guy with the solar-powered school bus who roams around championing the cause of election reform.

Unfortunately, or for some odd reason, the solar bust primitive never shows up in Chicago or Boston or Cleveland or Buffalo or Philadelphia or Detroit or Lost Angeles or Seattle or Milwaukee or New Orleans or Miami or Washington, D.C. or Minneapolis or Seattle or San Francisco or Memphis or New Jersey or wherever else there's a corrupt Republican party machine running a big city.

I dunno why that is.

The solar bust primitive gives hints that he's concerned about the environment.

Well, good and fine.

The fragile ecosystem of Nevada's been battered the past 60 years, by nuclear testing, and while it's severely damaged, it's not irretrievably lost.

I've always suggested that since Vermont is already permanently ruined, and nothing can be done about it--Vermont's gone--we shift our nuclear testing and nuclear wastes to over there, and let Nevada recover.