Nuclear power's 'renaissance'?

The Washington Times ^ | June 18, 2006 | Joyce Howard Price

[T Ruth]

The amount of power output from nuclear has increased dramatically even though no new plants have been built.

How?

[BlazingArizona]

I think it's the only nuclear plant in the country that's not adjacent to a lake, a river, or the ocean.

Because of its desert location, the coolant is municipal sewage from Phoenix.

[BlazingArizona]

The amount of power output from nuclear has increased dramatically even though no new plants have been built. How?

Because of improved uptime. The whole problem with the previous generation of nukes has been lack of a standardized design. If every car were handmade to slightly different specifications, how much would it cost to keep a fleet running? Today we have standardized designs, like the AN-1000, with interchangeable parts.

[T Ruth]

Neat post. Thanks.

I agree with most of what you recommend, except that I am in favor of higher taxes on gasoline and oil (offest by reduced taxes on other things, e.g., income). This will skew the development of infrastructure away from oil, and thus reduce demand and price. The reason for the short- to mid-term inelascity of demand for oil is the existence of some 1 billion internal combustion engines worldwide that run on oil.

[mike70]

It's not the deaths or injuries, it's the psychology. The anti-nuclear forces have a much weaker argument in Illinios (for example) if the power plant is in Montana.

[backhoe]

Thanks for looking.

[ProCivitas]

Probably 'uprates' : running the nuclear plants under higher pressure, etc. exceding their design capacity. Probably dangerous. Hard to say why the Nuclear Regulatory Commission allows this crap.

Yankee Vernon (Vernon Vt.) an old early 1970's GE plant owned by Entergy Corp., recently started doing this, running at 20% over design capacity, and had to be shut down a couple of times due to a 'shakes' problem. Of the 103 nuclear power plants in America, how's the one in your region being operated?