Comments about ‘New nuclear plants signal future power generation’

Quite the insightful title....

It would be nice if we could have a comprehensive energy plan, especially one where the oil and gas industries didn't have their obscene lobbying involved. It's time to look to the future and free ourselves from the bonds of the past. We can be innovative and create a whole new world of economic opportunity if we moved in a new direction.

"...governments should be careful not to saddle taxpayers with the cost of outrageous subsidies for construction and operation."

Nuclear power is the most highly subsidized of all energy sources, with the socialist counties of France and Japan leading the world on its use and government support. Given that many conservatives advocate nuclear power, I've always found their support baffling and paradoxical from a rational economics perspective.

This editorial illustrates the maddening inconsistencies shown by conservatives. When wind and solar power are helped along by government subsidies we hear the political right whine and complain that the socialist feds are "picking winners" and distorting the "free market", but when billions of dollars of loan guarantees and subsidies are given to nuclear power companies they turn 180 degrees, and advocate government involvement. Don't they remember Washington States' 2.5 billion dollar WHOOPS municipal bond default fiasco?

The editorial ignores the the problems of long term nuclear waste. Until problems technical and political, are resolved fission based nuclear energy will not be significant even operational safety is significantly improved. How about it Utah, want those spent nuclear rods stored somewhere in the Utah desert? I don't understand why there isn't a greater effort to develop large scale solar power generation.

Mike in Cedar City,

"I don't understand why there isn't a greater effort to develop large scale solar power generation."

Because you can't just snap your fingers and make it happen. Solar is just not a viable source of power on a large scale. I'd like there to be a cure for cancer, but you just can't MAKE it happen.

liberal larry and Baron Scarpia,

The reason nuclear needs to be subsidized is due to the exorbitant costs of building a plant. The reason it costs so much to build a plant, is due to exorbitant amount of regulations and lawsuits that are the product of the liberal left. The anti-nuke community's strategy is to make it cost so much, that we'll give up building them. It worked for a while, but the realization of needing these plants has finally set in. Green subsidies are frowned upon because taxpayer money is forced into these wind and solar companies when we know that technology is not yet viable.

Esquire,

Like I said above, you just can't force these things.

I'm a liberal environmentalist who thinks that global warming is the most serious problem facing the human race at the moment. That's why I support the construction of nuclear power plants.

barfolomew: I could make the same claim for the nuclear industry. There are intractable technical and safety problems. However, with solar heat storing technology you could produce significant amounts of relatively clean power. With a national mandate there are federal lands that could be designated in the sunbelt states like Arizona, Nevada, Texas, New Mexico and yes Utah that could be made available for Solar Power Power plant construction. It remains to be seen whether or not Solar is a final answer, but it should be be a significant part of any comprehensive energy plan. No one expects that this will happen with a "snap of the fingers". And I take exception with your unsupported assertion that Solar cannot be developed on a large scale. 120 years ago you would have probably been one of those who declared that "if God wanted man to fly he would have given him wings".

It's about time we built nuclear power plants! Over the past 30 years we've built coal plants instead because of opposition to nuclear power, and the effect has been more air pollution. New nuclear plants won't much resemble the old ones because of great advances in science, technology, and engineering. Replacing the old nuclear plants ought to be a high priority, and while we're at it let's replace all the coal-fired plants, too, with nuclear plants.

The next necessary step is to reverse the Obama-Reid administration's stoppage of the Yucca Mountain project to store spent fuel rods in the Nevada Test Site.

Nuclear power plants produce a great deal of energy. However, until we figure out and implement a plan to ensure maximum safety and a realistic plan for disposal of the associated nuclear waste, we are putting the cart before the horse.

Wowzers!
It must be 2012 and the Apolcolypse is upon us.

Liberals and Conservatives in Agreement on something.

About the only thing I disagree with building a Nuclear plant in Utah is that all the electrical power will end up going to California.

Meanwhile --
The plants would be here,
The risks of Chernobyl, 3-Mile Island, and Fukushima would all be here
and all the waste would be here.

And once Energy Solutions makes all their $$$ burying it ---
Who's gonna assure no leaks or maintain the mess for 1,000 years,
and who's gonna provide the Security to keep it from becoming a Dirty Bomb?

My worry is the poor glowing residents of this state years and years from now.

Mike in Cedar City,

"With a national mandate there are federal lands that could be designated in the sunbelt states like Arizona, Nevada, Texas, New Mexico and yes Utah that could be made available for Solar Power Power plant construction."

The fantasy of your proposal is that the environmentalists will let that happen. Besides, there are problems with designing a grid system to transport this power. A typical nuclear power plant will produce approximately 2400 Mw of power from a plant with two reactors on a site that's less than 1 square mile in size. To produce that much solar enrgy, you'd either have to have one big site that would be a hundred square miles or dozens of smaller facilities. Environmentalists will not allow these pristine, open lands to be used in this manner.

And try not to be so offended so fast. I said solar IS not viable on a large scale. I did not say that it CANNOT be viable. Who knows what the future will bring? This whole conversation might become moot in just a few short years. You think I have something against safe, clean, cheap, abundant power generation? Quite the contrary. However, we're just not there yet. What I and most people want is the safest, cleanest, cheapest most abundant power generation we can produce NOW.

If someone had told me 20 years ago that we'd have the computer and/or mobile technology we have now, I'd have told them they were nuts. But just wanting the technology to solve our problems is not enough. These things must develop and evolve. You just can't force it.

As predicted, Bonneville Power Administration shut off the regionâs wind turbines last night to make room on the grid for all the hydroelectricity coming from Columbia River dams.

Why are we wasting good money on old ideas,
when wind and water are too much for the grid right now?
Sounds more like money should be spent on the infrastructure of the power grid.

Why is America trying to go backward while the rest of the world moves ahead?

LDS Liberal,
Your post, which was a colection of bogus fear-mongering (the Apocalipse, Utah becomeing another Chernobyl/Fukushima, glowing Utah residents, etc)... classic liberal fear-tactics (based on the fear they can generate, not on reality).

Some facts to temper your bogus attempts at fear-mongering...
- The 2012 apocalipse??? Really! That's the best you can do to get people thinking on the fear wavelength?

-Utah becoming the next Chernobyl/Fukushima... Do you know when the Fukushima plant was built? And the technology improvements that have taken place since then. A plant like that could NEVER be built in the United States, especialy not today. And the technology they used in Chernobyl has NEVER been used in the United States and never will. And back to Fukushima... even it's antiquated systems worked perfectly. The plant went offline safely and automatically, without any human intervention when the earthquake happened. The problem started when the human crew thought the risk was over and tried to bring it back online and then the unexpectedly large tsunami bulldozed the plant, knocking out power so they couldn't abort what they were doing and make the core safe again. (hint... tsunami not likely in Utah)

The whole state glowing from a one-square-mile facility in the west-desert, or a plant in Eastern Utah? Really? Not likely.

The fear tactics used on this topic are just so lame.

'The reason it costs so much to build a plant, is due to exorbitant amount of regulations and lawsuits that are the product of the liberal left.' - barfolomew | 8:09 a.m. Feb. 13, 2012

'The Nuclear Regulatory Commission turned heads this week by approving licenses for two new nuclear power reactors in Georgia. These are the first such licenses to be granted in the United States since 1978.' - article

So, the 'liberal left' has been factually DENYING Nuclear power plants...

since 1978?

Show me your evidence.

Please.

Until then, let's not look at projections but rather the problem of Nucler power...

now:

** 'U.S. storage sites overfilled with spent nuclear fuel' - By JONATHAN FAHEY, RAY HENRY - AP - 03/22/11

'The U.S. has 71,862 tons of the waste, according to state-by-state numbers obtained by The Associated Press. But the nation has no place to permanently store the material, which stays dangerous for tens of thousands of years.' - article

Stays dangerous for...

Tens of thousands...

of years.

Solar (and wind) power generation just does not have the capacity to meet the power demands of the U.S. To develop that capacity is just too cost-prohibitive right now and in the near future, and that is why it is not happening.

For example, it is about 624,000 terra-watts of electrical power that is consumed in just one day in the United States. Only about 1% of this demand is produced by wind power and only about 0.04% is generated by solar sources (panels, etc).

That is a whole big bunch of new windmills and solar panels that need to be built to augment the current crop that only generates a little over 1% of today's needed power demand.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission turned heads this week by approving licenses for two new nuclear power reactors. So if nuclear becomes the best clean alternative for generating massive amounts of power, then don't whine when we will store all that nuclear waste in Utah seeing YOU "going green" waco's demand it and don't want to turn loose of the oil your hoarding in the ground there. All the other 104 nuclear plants continue in operation nationwide are spent, out-lived their lifetime almost. Utah's coal ani't helping either with its carbon dioxide emissions. It's drill babt drill time.

Repost/typo error.

No "spell check" on here.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission turned heads this week by approving licenses for two new nuclear power reactors. So if nuclear becomes the best clean alternative for generating massive amounts of power, then don't whine when we will store all that nuclear waste in Utah seeing YOU "going green" waco's demand it and don't want to turn loose of the oil your hoarding in the ground there. All the other 104 nuclear plants continue in operation nationwide are spent, out-lived their lifetime almost. Utah's coal ani't helping either with its carbon dioxide emissions. It's drill baby drill time.

Barfolomew: The implication in your original response was that large scale Solar Power is not viable. You said "you can't make it happen", like a cure for cancer. So, now you admit that the future is not ours to see, and that large scale solar power might eventually available. We didn't get to the moon without a massive effort, and there were those in Utah who prophesied that we would never get there.

Environmentalists are much more likely to go with Solar than Nuclear, and the Grid problems you mention are engineering issues that can be solved. By the way, 40 years ago I predicted our present day micro computer technology. Most people then thought I was just an impractical dreamer. But you see I have a technical background and training and I could easily see that eventually digital devices and micro chips would change everything.

To "Baron Scarpia" you are wrong. The most heavily subsidized energy production industries are solar and wind power.

From the Manhatten Institute article "The U.S. is rapidly running out of fossil fuels, but within ten years, we can replace them with alternative fuels and renewable energies" you can find a table listing the subsides that the various energy producing methods receives.

All of the subsides to nuclear power amount to about $1.59/MWh. Meanwhile solar recieves $24.34/MWh and wind recieves $23.37. Last time I checked my math, wind and solar are receive more in subsidies than nuclear.