Posted on 01/29/2010 11:25:34 PM PST by neverdem
Hip, hip, hooray! President Obama is reportedly about to announce an expansion of the loan guarantee for nuclear plants from $18 billion to $54 billion — probably after hearing that applause, the biggest outburst of the night, when he mentioned nuclear in his State of the Union Address.
I know people are going to say, "Oh, he doesn't mean it" or "It's still a drop in the bucket," but don't be fooled. This is going to get the ball rolling. The thing to recognize is that nuclear already has so much momentum behind it, all it will take is a little push and it will be all downhill from there.
The most humiliating thing about our prima-donna approach to nuclear is that the rest of the world has now steamed ahead without us. There are 54 reactors under construction worldwide, none in the United States. In 2006, the Chinese sent over a delegation of nuclear officials to ask our advice about starting a reactor program. (I happened to meet them while visiting the Idaho National Lab.) They subsequently bought designs both from Westinghouse (now a Japanese company) and Areva, the French giant. Now they've done some reverse-engineering and have 16 reactors of their own design under construction as well. They're not asking our advice anymore. In 20 years, China will be selling mini-reactors at Wal-Mart.
South Korea gets 45 percent of its electricity from nuclear (we're at 19 percent) and has entered the international market. For years they relied on foreign technology. Then in 1995 they took an old blueprint from Combustion Engineering and came up with their own design. They now build their own reactors, operating them at 95 percent annual capacity, the only country that beats our 90 percent. (We're still the best in the world at running reactors, we just aren't allowed to build them anymore.) Last month the Koreans beat out both Areva and Westinghouse for a $20 billion contract to build four new reactors for the United Arab Emirates. The whole world is going nuclear and there's a lot of business out there. We once led the world in the technology. Now we're in last place.
Fortunately, the $54 billion will be a starting gun. There are currently 33 proposals before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, several ready to break ground. If Wall Street doesn't fund them, some foreign government will. The problem is the NRC, which hasn't issued a license in 30 years. Two of the seats on the five-member commission are now vacant and deliberations proceed at a glacial pace. When Chairman Gregory Jasko took over as chairman last May, he said he hoped to issue at least one license before his term ends in 2013. That may be optimistic. When the British government recently announced plans for ten new reactors, it gave its NEC equivalent one year to deny or approve the licenses. We could use that kind of dispatch here.
Reactors now cost at least $5 billion apiece and $18 billion wasn't going to get us very far. But $54 billion will get at least ten projects out the door. Then if all goes smoothly — i.e., if nuclear opponents don't tie them up for a decade in court — other companies will jump in. The rewards are too enticing. The average nuclear reactor in this country is now making $1 million a day.
And don't worry about that so-called problem of "nuclear waste." The French have already solved it for us. The amount of highly radioactive material that can't be recycled is so small that the French store all their waste from 30 years of producing 75 percent of their electricity with nuclear beneath the floor of one room at Le Hague. Areva now wants to build a reprocessing center here as well.
In the past ten years, the rest of the world has sprinted ahead of us on nuclear. Now at last we're ready to join the race.
Which were nothing by Envirowackjob propaganda to justify Jimmy Carter killing the program. The French have had such a breeder reactor to recycle spent fuel for 50 years and never had any such problem.
It would be easier for terrorist or a rouge state to steal a working nuke then it would for them to "make off" with the concentrated fuel.
He plans to use these plants as payoffs to more of his special interests using tax dollars.
Will these be private or govr owned? If private I would agree. But. I bet dollars to donuts he plans to take them over or incorporate them into the federal govt.
It didn't happen? I saw it on TV not the internet.
Because he and all his White House cronies stand to make a bundle of money. Read this entire long article and see that they are already knee deep in nuclear power business.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2438337/posts
Do not forget.... the Democrat party is a criminal enterprise
No I haven’t invested :) Still I’ve been following this company closely and don’t see the red flags I have seen with others who make this kind of claim.
They say that today’s experiment will demonstrate that more energy comes out of their device than goes in.
Supposedly through the month of February, the public will be invited to come and measure their devices with their own instruments if they wish.
I understand the skepticism, but in my judgement this is worth taking a look at.
I veiw it as a meaty bone; tossed over the fence for the watchdog to chew on, while the burglar slips in and steals the family jewels.
I seem to recall — fellow Freepers will correct me if I’m wrong — but reprocessing was banned under the Carter administration ( might have been before then), due to a fear at that time of nuclear proliferation of enriched fuel.
No. Just no.
Words to live by. (requires sound)
That is correct, and unfortunately no one to follow has seen fit to overturn the Carter EO.
It talkes a good 10 to 12 years to get one Nuclear Plant underway. With so much Red Tape and law suits from environmental wacos, Obama will be long gone before he sees the light from any of his new plants.
Drill, baby..Drill.
Just like a nuclear reactor!
As with the high speed rail, the permits will be decades of Court challenges.
Lots of billions spread around to the pols, nothing that will ever create a single job. Except for the lawyers, of course.
All talk.
Thanks for the ping!
I dare you to put your money where your mouth is. I already made money betting that Dr. Arata’s experiment would be replicated in a peer-reviewed, scientific journal. So, feel free to take this sucker’s money.
I know you won’t do it, because you have a big mouth. Call me when your $5B Tokomak reactor breaks even and achieves full ignition. Heck, I’ll even give you one better: call me when our hot fusion reactors generate more Joules than the cold fusion reactors have demonstrated.
Your lack of discernment is disconcerting, but only because you have a big mouth and you won’t put your money where that big, ignorant mouth is so that I can make money off of your ignorance.
I forced myself to listen to as much of that speech as I could endure. I was shocked when I heard that.
The DUers must be beside themselves.
I’ll believe it when I see it.
Exactly.
I’ll think there is something to cold-fusion when I see one in operation powering one LED handed over to the Scientists and Physicists in the Smithsonian, MIT, or DARPA for them to pour over, until then it’s relegated to perpetual motion machines, fun to look at some garage mechanics latest brake through, but of no scientific significance.
Pebble based gas reactors are inherently safe, they cannot melt down and they are a nightmare to produce weapons grade byproducts.
We had pebble reactor tech in the 50s and GE and US government opted for water based Rod controlled core reactors that produce weapons grade plutonium as a byproduct. This was done by design to supply our nuclear bomb program, and pebble reactors were left by the wayside.
Also it was Westinghouse that had the pebble tech and now the Japanese own it. But that doesn’t mean we can’t resurrect it because the tech is far past its patent protection period.
Of course if we had gone with pebbles after Three-Mile Island we could be far less dependent on foreign petroleum and we would have a reliable non-polluting power infrastructure with low rate costs and plenty of capacity to charge plugin cars.
And yet our nuclear program is primed to carry on with water cased reactors, why? Because the old suppliers are still there, namely GE.
Why can’t we be smart about this? Because everything political in America is local, and only large corporations (GE) can forge time consuming costly agreements in communities.
But there is a solution; give grant money to a capable local power plant operator to build a pebble reactor on a fasttrack schedule and support and promote them, make them a positive example, then point to the GE retards and their influence peddlers in Washington and say they are NOT the way forward!
Otherwise we are left with GE backed operators and water-based reactors and all their safety problems and costs. And down the road we will be looking at high rate power to consumers and all manner of safety hearings etc.
When in the alternative all we have to do is embrace pebble based nuclear reactors, which was ours, invented right here in the USA, in an era when America held all the cards and a spirit of innovation.
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