Nuclear Power: Lighting the Future

Townhall.com ^ | 7/24/2008 | Rebecca Hagelin

[JohnHuang2]

Radical environmentalists didn’t like it when President Bush decided not to use the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions. And they hated his lifting of the presidential ban on offshore drilling.

But whether they like it or not, our country needs a multi-pronged approach to our energy problems. A big part of any viable solution: Build more nuclear power plants.

That’s still forbidden, as far as many radical environmentalists are concerned. The folks at Greenpeace, for example, dismiss nuclear energy as “another false solution you hear a lot about these days.” Why is it “false”? Because, the group explains on its Web site, bringing a nuclear power plant online could take a number of years, and “we simply don’t have time to wait -- we need global-warming solutions that are ready to go now, like wind and solar.”

No one is claiming that we can have more nuclear power plants up and ready to go overnight. But that’s hardly an argument against building them. Indeed, because we need long-term energy solutions, the fact that it takes time to set up new plants means we should get started right away. Besides, according to Jack Spencer of The Heritage Foundation, we can reduce how long it takes. The current time frame includes four years to get a permit and five years to build the plant. But, Spencer says, once a few plants are built, there’s no reason the permitting time can’t be cut and construction done in four years.

[wolfpat]

You do have a point. The nuts have a lot of resources at their disposal.

The lead intervenor for the plant I was working in requested the records for all the safety related welds in the plant, including the names of the welders. That cost a couple million to provide.

[wolfpat]

Out of curiosity, I checked the STP website. I was wrong. They’re going with the General Electric ABWR design for the new reactors.

When I get home from running errands, I’ll check out Comanche Peak’s site.

[sefarkas]

The NRC does not have the staff or the regulations needed by the staff to evaluate a proposal to site/build a pebble-bed style reactor. It is the same reason that Dominion switched to the GE design for their new reactor once it became clear that the first try with the Canadian design could not be licensed by the NRC in a reasonable time. The AREVA design, e.g., for Calvert Cliffs, is an evolution of the Westinghouse design and is thus more straightforward for the NRC staff to evaluate.

[rlmorel]

I am talking about moving forward.

We do not have a working design right now...nobody really has a working design that could meet the needs we have right now.

But I think we should start right now, and this is something I would not mind seeing my tax dollars being spent on...get money into R&D.

The concept is not difficult. It is solving the technical problems such as the manufacturing of the pebbles.

We should take the initiative on this away from the Chinese, because as it stands, they are likely to do it before us.

We need this technology developed. It is safe by design and can be made modular.

RIght now, build what we can, but we should work towards the next level.

[JDinAustin]

Not pebble bed but the same TRISO fuel type. Burn up the wastes and make a decent profit doing it too. Look at the burnup values 700 GWD/T thats just amazing. This system would solve the Yucca Mt. problem.

http://www.aie.org.au/syd/downloads/DB-MHR%20Presentation.ppt

[stboz]

...you can’t go back to the past without alot of people dying.

That's what they truly want, IMO.