Posted on 09/22/2020 5:53:55 AM PDT by karpov
Here’s a fun game. Ask an environmentalist about his top plan of action to fight climate change. You’ll likely get a quick answer urging a carbon-neutral or net-zero-emission clean-energy economy, usually by 2050, echoing the Paris climate agreement. OK, now ask if he’s for nuclear power, which has zero carbon emissions, at which point he’ll usually stare at his shoes and mumble something about high costs.
“The biggest problem with nuclear power,” activist Bill McKibben of 350.org told Techonomy, is that “it’s really expensive.” Al Gore, who sounds more and more like a revivalist preacher, told Reuters last month, “They’ve priced themselves out of the market. Electricity from nuclear power plants is by far the most expensive in the world,” while the cost of renewables “is continuing to go down.”
That’s funny, because in 1994 the Clinton-Gore administration canceled research funding for the Integral Fast Reactor, which sure could have helped us down the learning curve to lower-cost carbon-free electricity today. The U.S. has constructed a tiny handful of new nuclear plants in the past four decades. Yes, the same folks who fought nuclear energy tooth and nail are now complaining that it’s too expensive—like saying they’re orphans after killing their parents.
I mention all this now because earlier this month, and almost miraculously, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved the design and issued a final safety evaluation report for a Small Modular Reactor, or SMR, by NuScale based in Portland, Ore. NuScale’s design, funded by engineering firm Fluor and the U.S. Energy Department, joins six older federally approved designs. But it’s the first that looks as if it can scale and reduce costs.
In most nuclear fission reactors, uranium pellets are sealed in metal tubes known as fuel rods.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Nuclear power would go a long way in solving energy shortages. But the Rats torpedoed the nuclear waste dump in Nevada after billions were spent. There’s no way in hell that the nuclear waste would affect that God forsaken desert. Unless the radiation would produce a giant scorpion.
I didn’t know ANYTHING was “too expensive” for liberals. This is a bolt of lightning!
A friend is building Nuclear plants in the UAE. They are making major updates there
I am not a fan of nuclear, but for the liberals to state nuclear is too expensive then plan to destroy the entire economy with the green new deal is suspicious.
Yeah, we Californians really enjoyed the rolling blackouts during the last heatwave a couple of weeks ago - where temps topped 120 in some parts of the SV Valley - because of an outdated, patched up power grid and the state’s mandate for “green energy” which cannot meet demans.
I live in a city that has its own power generators and sells excess power to Los Angeles, so no threat - didn’t help.
My brother recently went solar to “get off the grid” and I think we’re going to head that way too. I expect it will also increase the value of my home.
The AlGores of the world ARE NOT about green energy. They are all about bankrupting our country so they can control it using green energy as their excuse.
Check out Iron Edison. Www.ironedison.com
What do you have against nuclear?
There are new designs. Check out the Gen IV design.
The laugh about that is that the repository was to be built in Yucca Mountain, which is right next to Yucca Flats.
Yucca Flats is the US's underground bomb testing area, where a large number of actual fission and fusion bombs have been detonated underground, producing far more "in-ground" radioactivity than any possible storage in Yucca Moutain.
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The protest against Yucca Mountain had one motive. To kill nuclear power. The claims were false and the hysteria was similar to “fracking will ruin the groundwater supply”.
Nuclear energy has been and will remain the best option where sufficient hydro-power is not available. It is clean, plentiful, controllable, scalable, and most efficient.
Nuclear Power Now.
Nuclear energy is possible in an ice age.
And good practice to use for exploring the stars.
“I expect it will also increase the value of my home.”
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Not when you consider the de-commissioning costs of the toxic waste in the spent panels.
I know this all too well. I was in grad school getting a PhD in analytical chemistry with a minor in nuclear chemistry when the anti-nuke propaganda wars began back in the early 1970's.
I watched the whole sad fiasco play out basically from the start.
Sorry, but this is the same kind of "anti" propaganda meme that was implemented against nuclear power. The materials in solar cells are highly valuable and WILL be totally recycled.
I read a lot about it and followed it from afar. The best litmus test of how honest an “environmentalist” is today is their stance on nuclear power.
I was hopeful that Trump would push a nuclear renaissance program through the DOE. As a business person he has to understand the numbers. However, he surprisingly continued the ethanol scam so there must be a political calculation in there somewhere.
Forget going to Mars.... I would rather see that money spent on nuclear power. He needs to phase out the ethanol program as well.... it has been and continues to be a government funded boondoggle.
“The materials in solar cells are highly valuable and WILL be totally recycled.”
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In other words, you have no facts of the ‘valuable’ materials, can’t name a solar panel recycler, and ‘WILL be’ is not news, it’s wishful non-thinking that likely means a public subsidy by the taxpayers down the line.
As a chemist, I know what the chemical composition of solar cells is, and every one is highly valuable. Virtually pure silicon for the most part. Prime material for recycling compared to production from raw material. And the aluminum of the frames is already being recycled on a wide scale.
And a quick Google search quickly turns up several recyclers. <> Try again...........
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