GE Nuclear Merges With Hitachi for the "Global Nuclear Renaissance"
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 11.14.06
GE's new Advanced Boiling Water Reactor
There are a lot of reasons for TreeHuggers to be wary of nuclear power, now being touted as "the only existing power technology which could replace coal in base load." We prefer what Bill McDonough said: "I love nuclear energy! It's just that I prefer fusion to fission. And it just so happens that there's an enormous fusion reactor safely banked a few million miles from us. It delivers more than we could ever use in just about 8 minutes." We never understood why GE, which buries its nuclear business on a separate website far away from ecomagination, gets away with this greenwashing- one could cut them slack before and call it a legacy business; Now they admit that “GE’s commitment to its nuclear business, and the overall industry, has never been higher in our 50-year history,” said Andy White, president and CEO of GE Energy’s nuclear business. “Nuclear power remains an integral part of achieving a balanced energy portfolio and one of the many solutions to establishing a more sustainable energy future for the entire world."
Their latest press release (which can actually be found on their main website) says "By combining their resources, the new alliance will create an attractive platform for growth and also signal the beginning of a new era for both companies as they continue to position themselves to compete in what many in the nuclear industry are calling a “global renaissance for nuclear energy.” and goes on...“This nuclear alliance further underscores GE’s commitment to the industry and to doing what is necessary to make us stronger for the next generation of nuclear energy,” said Andy White, president and CEO of GE’s nuclear business, which is based in Wilmington, N.C.
Read this article in the ::Pacific Ecologist for the case against nukes; in it a study by Amory Lovins is quoted: It looked at the costs of nuclear versus improved energy efficiency and found every dollar invested in energy efficiency displaces 6.8 times more carbon than the same investment in nuclear power. “To the extent investments in nuclear power divert funds away from efficiency,” the study concludes, “the pursuit of a nuclear response to greenhouse warming would effectively exacerbate the problem.”
GE is awfully proud of its wind turbines, but as long as they are flogging nukes we have to keep asking what their real commitment to sustainability is. ::GE Press Release
GE hasn't updated their nuclear technology since the 1960's. By partnering with Hitachi they have access to designs from the 1990's.
Nuclear plants are extremely slow to move from concept to prototype to actual plant. They are expensive and time consuming to build. New designs often have teething problems that can take a decade to sort out. Utilities don't want to build an expensive nuclear plant that doesn't work. That's why GE wants Hitachi's newer, but proven, design. There are far better designs out there but probably only Hitachi was willing to strike a deal.
Nukes = insanity
Nuclear fission does not produce any CO2. It does produce some nasty waste, but we have ways to handle that if researched a bit more or fears are over come. I'd rather have a new nuke plant than a new coal plant.
For the most part nuclear power plants have been a safe and clean source of power. The only problem is the waste which I too think a solution will be found. Some of the new reactor designs waste has a much shorter danger period (100's rather that tens of thousands of years).
I'd rather have a nuke plant than a coal buring plant and all the polution that comes from those.
Until Nevada gets an approved waste repository, the only place this JV will get "greenfield" projects is Asia. With Hitachi's local chops, this makes double strategic sense (add in anaon's comment). I might add that China, politically speaking, would not care much about our musings, pro or con, should they decide to sign onto Kyoto II and further accelerate nuclear development
Nuclear fission does not produce any CO2.
Really? It takes no energy to make a nuke plant, extract uranium, etc? No fuel to get workers to and from the plant?
but we have ways to handle that if researched a bit more
And the check's in the mail.
I'd rather have a new nuke plant than a new coal plant.
I'd rather have neither. Stop making false trade-offs.
Really? It takes no energy to make a nuke plant, extract uranium, etc? No fuel to get workers to and from the plant? Wow a troll post...
Of course it does, probably similar to the energy expenditure for coal, iron ore or silicon production.
EDITED
LA : Lets not have any flame wars, please- If you read the ecologist article linked in the post, there is a lot of concern about the amount of CO2 generated in the mining of uranium- in fact there are calculations that say it is as much as if they were burning coal. I am in Canada, and for years was very proud of our CANDU reactors that generate about 30% of our power. They almost bankrupted the province, 50 billion dollars written off; on every electric bill I pay there is a "debt recovery charge" to pay for these things.
Of course it does, probably similar to the energy expenditure for coal, iron ore or silicon production.
Really? Do you have hard data on LCA for different energy resources?
EDITED! NO INSULTS!
I await your "learned" insight on this:
http://www.stormsmith.nl/report20050803/Chap_1.pdf
Nuclear or coal are not the answer. There is one hell of a pandora's box that gets opened with nuclear energy. Firstly not 1 single nuclear power plant produced on earth ever has been paid off. Secondly uranium is another finit source of power and from many instances i have read with current consumption we would run out of high grade uranium by around 2050 at which point it would cost more energy to produce refined uranium than you would get from the plant. Thirdly the effects of radiation and its storage have not been fully seen. Look at that reactor in Irland that deals with processing nuclear waste, there are high rates of cancer of down syndrom in the area. Fourthly the the fastest any one of these plants can be constructed is 8 years with an average of 15 years. Even then there are numerous times when the plant is down, and when those things go down they dont come back up for a long time. See ontario/newyork blackout of 2004(around there) . fifthly the a successful terrorist attack on a nuke plant would be the same as another chernobyle
Bottom line: they lose taxpayer money, use a finite fuel source, take forever to build and require special and extremely costly dismantling and waste storage for many thousands of years. Have the potentail to cause environmental and health damage that we dont even understand. is a huge liability to security
EDITED! NO INSULTS!
Then why is the phrase "stop trolling" still up?
LA: You are right. I will take it out.
Alex wrote "Firstly not 1 single nuclear power plant produced on earth ever has been paid off."
Could you please back this up with a factual document. That seems a very wild claim to me.
"terrorist attack on a nuke plant would be the same as another chernobyle"
This shows a lack of understanding in the design of western nuke plants compaired to the Soviet design. Anyone who wants to bring up that accident please research the subject.
http://www.uic.com.au/nip08.htm
We can reuse our nuclear waste too. But currently don't do to terrorism concerns. A lot of the time in construction is due to permits and environmental studies. Those should not be lessened, but perhaps speed up. It's doubtful a terrorist attack on a current nuclear plant would so anything. They are protected by tons of concrete.
Seems kind of silly to actually care about insults now considering all the other crap that has gotten through in the past.
I await your "learned" insight on this: there is an insult to, now that we are complaining.
Lloyd, thanks for stepping in. I wish we could have an intellegent dialog without aggressive attacks. Certain people on this board are constantly insulting people and causing trouble; if you read treehugger you know who I am talking about. I am intensely interested in the subject matter and what people have to say, and I would post more but don't care to have a battle with those don't agree with me. The post by Alex is what I would like to see more of; it addresses the issues, provides facts and makes an argument, then wraps it up. Well done.
LA: Thanks. I am going out to the Worldchanging booklaunch in Toronto and cannot approve any more comments tonight; you guys are on your own.
People pushing conservation really need to look at the real world and not fantasy. There is a small amount of energy savings that can be made today, but most people simply don't care - and you won't be able to change that. Power consumption is growing at extremely high rates in all parts of the world, and power production needs to keep up with it.
You have very few choices in power production these days: coal, nuclear, gas, and "renewables". Coal is abundant but has all the CO2 problems. Gas is cleaner, but the supply has major disruptions any time Iran decides to play around (and therefore skyrocking prices at the moment). Renewables such as dams are pretty much everywhere they can be, while wind and solar will always be whether dependant - would you like the stock market to be closed because its cloudy, or the traffic lights to turn off because its a calm day out?
That leads us to the arguement for nuclear - and go ahead and research the FACTS if you'd like, instead of most of the anti-nuclear whinning that is not based on fact.
1) Nuclear plants don't emit CO2. There may be some CO2 from Uranium mining, but thats a far cry less then was advertised by an earlier comment (though in fact it may be significant).
2)The waste that is produced can be reduced to less then 4% of current volume if reprocessed (Carter took it off the table for the US, though France and others do reprocess). This was linked to terrorist and proliferation concerns, but more people are coming to realize that that isn't truthfully a valid concern in the US and most western countries because of high security.
3) There was recently a mock terrorist attack staged at a New York nuclear plant in which a number of improbable things were allowed to happen: terrorists winning, a complete communication blackout for hours, breach of containment, and a release of radiation from the reactor. All of these factors that are almost impossible on their own, let alone together, resulted in about 20 estimated deaths - or less then a terrorist or two rampaging around with a machine gun, or even just running over people with a car.
Go ahead and check the facts for yourself, but I really am tired of people that don't understand the extreme distances nuclear power goes to provide safety for people as well as being economically affordable (if they weren't, no private company would think of purchasing them). Yes, I'd love to have nuclear fusion, but you can't have it without the nuclear background - hey, we had to build airplanes before the space shuttle, right? Go look at the real facts and you'll see the immense benefits to nuclear and realize that it is truthfully the only way that we can cut down on carbon emissions.
I agree with Tim, this is almost certainly targeted toward the Chica market. The US market is far too slow to build and costly to be profitable.
It's too bad they aren't building a newer generation, breeder or pebble bed. Safer, and somewhat faster decaying waste.
Nice post.
And Alex had a well thought out post, but it dealt little in fact.
Union of Concerned Scientists article (2006):
Improving Government Oversight
Unlearned Lessons from Year-plus Reactor Outages
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) seems to be following the script of the movie Groundhog Day, reliving the same bad event again and again. This event—an outage at a nuclear power plant that lasts more than a year—has happened 51 times at 41 different reactors around the United States and shows no signs of stopping.
Butterfly links
Full Report (PDF 1.5 KB)
Factsheet
Questions & Answers
Quotes from Reviewers
Map of Reactor Sites
Looking But Not Seeing: the Federal Nuclear Power Plant Inspection Program (1978, PDF 1.6 MB)
offsite
GAO's NRC Report
These long shutdowns are a sign of widespread safety problems at the reactors. Each such occurrence results from a violation of federal regulations that require plant owners to find and fix safety problems in a timely, effective manner, coupled with the NRC's inability to detect those violations (allowing problems to multiply and worsen as a result). The accident at Three Mile Island might have been prevented had the NRC broken this cycle.
Since the nuclear power industry is unable to script Hollywood-style happy endings once events have begun to spin out of control, Congress must compel the NRC to be a more aggressive enforcer of federal safety regulations. Otherwise, declining safety performance could result in a nuclear disaster rather than a costly year-plus outage.
In Walking a Nuclear Tightrope: Unlearned Lessons of Year-plus Reactor Outages, the Union of Concerned Scientists identifies common themes among extended outages and steps the NRC must take to end these costly and avoidable threats to public health and the U.S. economy.
Nuclear Tightrope echoes concerns voiced nearly 30 years ago by another UCS report, Looking But Not Seeing: the Federal Nuclear Power Plant Inspection Program. This December 1978 report foresaw many of the safety problems now chronicled in Nuclear Tightrope and described steps needed to resolve them. Sadly, those warnings went largely unheeded—one reactor meltdown and 45 year-plus reactor outages to restore safety levels have occurred since Looking But Not Seeing was published. For safety and economic reasons, we must stop the nuclear groundhog day.
And UCS's viewpoint is neither isolated nor outdated. The U.S. Government Accountability Office released a report titled Nuclear Regulatory Commission: Oversight of Nuclear Power Plant Safety Has Improved, but Refinements Are Needed on September 27, 2006, that reinforces UCS's conclusions. GAO concluded that "NRC has improved its oversight process in various areas, but it has been slow to act on needed improvement, particularly in improving the agency's ability to identify and address early indications of declining safety performance."
For Nuclear Tightrope, UCS prepared a case study for each year-plus reactor outage. To open a PDF of an individual case study, click on the reactor unit name listed below:
Reactor Unit State Outage Began Outage Ended
Browns Ferry Unit 1 AL 03/22/75 09/24/76
Browns Ferry Unit 1 AL 03/19/85 n/a
Browns Ferry Unit 2 AL 03/22/75 09/10/76
Browns Ferry Unit 2 AL 09/15/84 05/24/91
Browns Ferry Unit 3 AL 09/07/83 11/28/84
Browns Ferry Unit 3 AL 03/09/85 11/19/95
Brunswick Unit 1 NC 04/21/92 02/11/94
Brunswick Unit 2 NC 04/21/92 05/15/93
Calvert Cliffs Unit 1 MD 05/05/89 10/04/90
Calvert Cliffs Unit 2 MD 03/17/89 05/04/91
Clinton IL 09/05/96 05/27/99
Crystal River Unit 3 FL 09/02/96 02/06/98
D.C. Cook Unit 1 MI 09/09/97 12/21/00
D.C. Cook Unit 2 MI 09/09/97 06/25/00
Davis-Besse OH 06/09/85 12/24/86
Davis-Besse OH 02/16/02 03/16/04
Fermi Unit 1 MI 10/05/66 07/18/70
Fermi Unit 2 MI 12/25/93 01/18/95
FitzPatrick NY 11/27/91 01/23/93
Fort St. Vrain CO 06/13/84 04/11/86
Indian Point Unit 3 NY 03/25/82 06/08/83
Indian Point Unit 3 NY 02/27/93 07/02/95
LaSalle Unit 1 IL 09/22/96 08/13/98
LaSalle Unit 2 IL 09/20/96 04/11/99
Maine Yankee ME 01/14/95 01/18/96
Millstone Unit 2 CT 02/20/96 05/11/99
Millstone Unit 3 CT 03/30/96 07/01/98
Nine Mile Point Unit 1 NY 03/20/82 07/05/83
Nine Mile Point Unit 1 NY 12/19/87 08/12/90
Oyster Creek NJ 02/12/83 11/01/84
Palisades MI 08/11/73 10/01/74
Palo Verde Unit 1 AZ 03/05/89 07/05/90
Peach Bottom Unit 2 PA 04/28/84 07/13/85
Peach Bottom Unit 2 PA 03/31/87 05/22/89
Peach Bottom Unit 3 PA 03/31/87 12/11/89
Pilgrim MA 12/10/83 12/30/84
Pilgrim MA 04/11/86 06/15/89
Rancho Seco CA 12/26/85 04/11/88
Salem Unit 1 NJ 05/16/95 04/20/98
Salem Unit 2 NJ 06/07/95 08/30/97
San Onofre Unit 1 CA 02/26/82 11/28/84
Sequoyah Unit 1 TN 08/22/85 11/10/88
Sequoyah Unit 1 TN 03/02/93 04/20/94
Sequoyah Unit 2 TN 08/22/85 05/13/88
South Texas Project
Unit 1 TX 02/04/93 02/25/94
South Texas Project
Unit 2 TX 02/03/93 05/22/94
St. Lucie Unit 1 FL 02/26/83 05/16/84
Surry Unit 2 VA 02/04/79 08/19/80
Surry Unit 2 VA 09/10/88 09/19/89
Three Mile Island
Unit 1 PA 02/17/79 10/09/85
Turkey Point Unit 3 FL 02/11/81 04/11/82
Standard demeaning arguments from the pro-nuke crowd, railing as always that others "need to do their research", all the while their references come from pro-nuke sources.
What I am sick and tired of hearing are the simple-minded "logical arguments" which dictate nuclear as "necessary". Any time I hear that, I imagine a person so rigid in their thinking as to deny all human creativity.
The pro-nuke arguments haven't changed in 50 years. It's a dead technology which the market rejects.
would you like the stock market to be closed because its cloudy, or the traffic lights to turn off because its a calm day out?
Please indicate the last recorded time the entire continent was dark and windless. Also indicate how energy storage technologies don't exist and how demand doesn't drop precipitously when the sun isn't out.
G'head.
This is the part of the pro-nuke argument I have a problem with
"People pushing conservation really need to look at the real world and not fantasy. There is a small amount of energy savings that can be made today, but most people simply don't care - and you won't be able to change that. Power consumption is growing at extremely high rates in all parts of the world, and power production needs to keep up with it."
Well, if you provide technologies that give the consumer the illusion that energy supply is limitless, then of course they are going to treat it as such. Unfortunately I don't think human greed, or 'need' as it is often marketed has an upper limit, so we could all find things to use more energy on - bigger houses, bigger cars, bigger boats, bigger tvs etc. and we could still be unhappy. Human nature, yes - but seeing as humans make the technology I find it a pathetic view to say we should just give up on reducing demand.
Nuclear power has done a great job on safety, but when it does go wrong....
Standard demeaning arguments from the pro-nuke crowd, railing as always that others "need to do their research", all the while their references come from pro-nuke sources.
What I am sick and tired of hearing are the simple-minded "logical arguments" which dictate nuclear as "necessary". Any time I hear that, I imagine a person so rigid in their thinking as to deny all human creativity.
The pro-nuke arguments haven't changed in 50 years. It's a dead technology which the market rejects.
It's the same for the non-nuke crowd, same tired arguments, same telling people to do their research and same references from non-nuke sources. Same arguments about waste, and that sun and wind are our savior. And the arguments have not changed in 50 years either. It's not a dead technology, but I agree the market rejects it, for ignorant reasons.
Nuclear power has done a great job on safety, but when it does go wrong....
When it goes wrong what?
I find it a pathetic view to say we should just give up on reducing demand.
I agree, we shouldn't give up on conservation. But demand won't decrease for long, especially if EV's take off.
Actually, jiltedcitizen, the list of the reactor outages comes right from the NRC. That's hardly a non-nuke source. (http://www.nrc.gov)
Here are more.
An excellent example of how much time and money is needed to decommission one single reactor. The Trojan Nuclear Plant in Portland, the first plant in the US scheduled to be completely decommissioned, had its cooling tower demolished in May of this year - 13 years after they shut the reactor down for the last time. The plant was only considered to be "radologically decommissioned" (free of nuclear contamination) as of last year. So it took 12 years just for that important step...and even then the radioactive stuff was just put in other places. The spent fuel is still on-site in a special containment building. It will be another 17 years before the final shipment of spent fuel is shipped off-site, by their timeline. That's 30 years between shutdown and the removal of the final fuel rod from on-site. Then they'll still have a job of removing the storage facility that held that fuel for several decades. So add a few more decades. Full timeline and other info in the link below. This link is definitely not a non-nuke source!
http://www.portlandgeneral.com/about_pge/current_issues/trojan/images/issues_in_perspective.pdf
Here's an excellent write-up on decommissioning costs (skyrocketing) from a company that contracts to power companies to dismantle their plants. Hardly any bias here, they make their money from the nuke companies. http://www.tlgservices.com/corprate/trends.htm
Life span of all nukes decommissioned in the US to date: 13.4 years. Some didn't even last a year, after taking a decade to build. That's from the first to last days they produced electricity. All but one has been sitting in-situ ever since. See appendix B of this link: http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/staff/sr1350/v18/sr1350v18.pdf
It isn't hard to find nuke-friendly sources that supports the anti-nuke arguments.
I fail to see what the point of the reactor outages is. Don't power plants shut down to do maintenance? And decommissioning costs are usually built into the nuclear energy price. How did we get to price? Even with all this cost nuclear energy is still competitive. I don't think we should stop conservation or wind, solar or wave energy, nor nuclear. I think it can be used in a manageable way and it's better than coal. If/when we get to the point where nuclear plants are not needed great, but until then i think it's a good idea to still research them as a viable energy source.
Nuclear, solar and modern wind have been around for roughly the same amount of time. Why aren't wind and solar more prolific?
All of your links are broke, it seems they were cut off by the text box.
It's the same for the non-nuke crowd, same tired arguments, same telling people to do their research and same references from non-nuke sources.
In summary, "I know you are, but what am I?" Solid.
Same arguments about waste
Silly people, thinking about waste...
and that sun and wind are our savior
They've worked much longer than nuclear has. And of course there are other technologies and approaches, but again you create false choices.
And the arguments have not changed in 50 years either.
That's utterly absurd. The whole notion of demand-side management emerged first in the late 70s and is only now in full swing. That's just one example.
It's not a dead technology
Without massive subsidy, it sure is.
but I agree the market rejects it, for ignorant reasons.
Oh, so you're a communist? The market is ignorant? All those millioonaires and billionaires on Wall Street are ignorant? Right - but you're enlightened.
Thanks as always for the laugh break.
Keep in mind the youngest nuke plants in the US are based on a design from 35 years ago. TMI caused too much push back for any new nuke plants to be built in the US. I feel it's short sighted to assume that the new reactor design is going to have all the problems of the old reactor designs.
Putting the souce aside we will probably need the same or more electrical power in the future. If electric cars and plug-in hybrids become common that's more overall demand right there. I would hope the message of conservation sinks in more and more and serves to shrink overall demand.
I conserve electricity with many choices, a smaller home, CF lighting, when I replace my TV (when it breaks not because I want a new one) it will be a LCD as they use less power than plasma and less materals than a tube. Turn down the heat and put on a sweater, turn off lights when I'm not in a room. Above all I conserver energy by not buying all the crap that advertisers want to convince us we need.
I fail to see what the point of the reactor outages is.
Yet somehow you like the "what do we do when the wind doesn't blow or the sun doesn't shine" arguments. You say such things are part of "great posts".
And decommissioning costs are usually built into the nuclear energy price.
Yet, again, the market thinks otherwise. Why aren't they built? They're certainly not illegal. Try again.
How did we get to price?
You don't care about price? Funny, you always talk about your limited budget and how this or that technology is not affordable, now all of a sudden the market and prices are not relevant. This is very socialist of you.
I think it can be used in a manageable way and it's better than coal.
Unfortunately, you're wrong.
Nuclear, solar and modern wind have been around for roughly the same amount of time.
Uh, no, wind and solar have been around since the dawn of time. To say "modern wind" is to make a nonsensical semantic distinction for the sake of create a logical agreement. Modern automobiles and iPods have been around for roughly the same amount of time. See how meaningless it is to put those kinds of qualifiers on?
Why aren't wind and solar more prolific?
Why are both of them growing at incredible rates and nuclear has been abandoned in the US for 25 years? You're getting back to the notion of "meaningless" costs.
Year+ outages mean that much more non-productive time for ultra-expensive plants to sit idle. It also puts holes in arguments that nukes last for decades. If they "operate" for 20 years but are inoperable for 3 years in-between, that 15% down-time is significant. Power companies don't tolerate year-long outages from their coal-fired plants.
No, the total cost to build/mine/run/decommission a plant is not built into the price. The nuke industry gets billions in tax subsidies to survive. See the 2005 energy bill as just one example.
Nuclear has been around for 50 years. The first commercial reactor went live in 1957 if I remember right. Solar has been around for around 25 years, and even then not in a commercial plant environment, only in scattered specialized uses (satellites and remote cabins). Not sure on the timeline for wind. Bottom line, nukes are only so prolific because they have been around for so long, and have spent so much for lobbyists.
If you copy my post above to Word you can then copy the links properly. The last link needs to be stitched together to work properly, it was chopped in half by treehugger.
No, the total cost to build/mine/run/decommission a plant is not built into the price.
Maybe I guess I got that from http://www.uic.com.au/nip08.htm
Wind has been around for hundreds of years, not sure on the modern wind turbine though.
I hate to jump in the middle of two sides, but there's where I find myself on this issue.
I like Nuclear, I think it's currently one sure way to generate electricity that's plentiful and affordable.
On the other hand, I wouldn't go crazy building them because the waste last so long. Radioactive waste will be dangerous longer than any human society has ever existed. No country anywhere has existed as such for the time the waste would last. Cement will crumble and blow away in the time it takes for waste to neutralize itself.
So, I find myself wanting to push for construction, but not so hard that we go toward a major percentage of nuclear energy production.
Greg, I should point out that I *truly* wish nuclear was the answer. Implement a few uranium mines (far less destructive than the mountain-toppling coal mines), build nukes to supply most of our energy like France, instantly become Kyoto compliant and allow us to thumb our noses at OPEC. It would solve so many problems at one time.
That's the image the nuclear image pushes, too.
It doesn't like to show the "other side of the fence", with all the emmissions (they claim its emission-free), or the expense (they like to say its cheap and forget all the subsidies), or the long-term problem of the waste.
I wish it was the answer, but its not.
It might not be THE answer, but it is part of the answer, just like solar, wind and wave is.
It might not be THE answer, but it is part of the answer
No, it's not. It's just one more problem.
"No, the total cost to build/mine/run/decommission a plant is not built into the price. Maybe I guess I got that from http://www.uic.com.au/nip08.htm" -Anonymous
Mr. Anonymous, that article only proves my points. It bases production costs on the a assumtion that *all* nukes will last 40 to 60 years after they start production. The facts are that the average lifetime of all the nukes that have already been closed is 13 years. Some a year or less. Even adding in nukes that are still in production the number only rises to around 21 years. So the figures in that article are based on a theoretical number that has not and will not be reached. They also ignore the significant down time that nukes have.
The article also mentions the tax subsidies I talked about: "...policy options which would offset investment risks and compensate for first-of-a-kind engineering costs to encourage new nuclear investment, including investment tax breaks, and production tax credits..." Their cost estimates don't include those tax costs. Once you add those costs in it suddenly becomes the most expensive option - ignoring the short lifetime.
Why are both of them growing at incredible rates and nuclear has been abandoned in the US for 25 years? You're getting back to the notion of "meaningless" costs
Wait you just said I made a nonsensical semantic distinction for the sake of create a logical agreement, yet you do the same right after? Nuclear has not been abandoned, many counties are using it more a majority of their power.
Mr. Anonymous, that article only proves my points.
That anonymous was me, the great Treehugger software put it in as anonymous for some reason. I think I tried to use Typekey. Anyways you may be right. Yet all that data is based on 30 year old designs. New designs may fair better, or they may not. We are not trying them out of fear of nuclear. Take the example of the cancellation of the IFR at Argonne. If we went forward with the integral fast reactor there is potential to reduce all the waste we currently have and extend the uranium supply. Current nuclear designs are about 2% efficient or use 2% of the energy they can from uranium. The IFR has a potential of 98% making the waste way less radioactive. Of course we don't have this technology now nor are we researching it anymore. People have a fear of radioactivity. To me saying all nuclear power is wrong is like saying we should use solar or wind energy because it might not be sunny or it might not be windy, or it will kill birds.
I think there are questions for cost for every energy solution see this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_farm#Cost_and_Reliability
Have there been long term studies on wind and solar maintenance costs? How about when it isn't sunny or windy? How does that effect energy production and cost? I suppose I'm pro nuclear because it makes certain sense. And It's cool. If we could get by with out it great. I think wave energy has a huge potential, or the new advances in geothermal. Hell what about having a nuclear reactor in space and beaming down the energy? Just send the waste towards the sun.