Posted on 06/22/2005 9:56:33 AM PDT by Tumbleweed_Connection
"There is a growing consensus that more nuclear power will lead to a cleaner and safer nation," President Bush said on Wednesday during a trip to a nuclear power plant in Maryland.
"It is time for this country to start building nuclear power plants again," he said to applause at the Calvert Cliffs plant.
"We're taking practical steps to encourage construction of new plants, Bush said, as he pressed Congress to send him an energy bill by August.
President Bush joked that he didn't understand all the buttons and dials in the control room of the Calvert Cliffs plant -- but he said he does know that when the people of Maryland flip a switch and see their lights come on, they need to thank the people working at the nuclear plant.
He said nuclear power is the one energy source that is "completely domestic, plentiful in quantity, environmentally friendly, and able to generate massive amounts of electricity."
The 103 nuclear power plants currently operating in America produce about 20 percent of the nation's electricity, Bush noted, without producing a single pound of air pollution or greenhouse gases.
In terms of safety, times have changed since the 1970s, Bush said. Advances in technology have made nuclear plants far safer than they were before. Yet no new plants have been built in the U.S. since the 1970s.
In his speech, President Bush noted that Americans are using energy faster they they're producing it. "We really haven't confronted this problem," he said, noting that he's been asking Congress to send him an energy bill for the past four years. All he's gotten is debate and politics but no results, he said. "So now's the time...for Cognress to stop the debate, stop the inaction, and pass an energy bill."
The House has passed an energy bill and the Senate needs to do so, the president said -- before the Senate's August recess.
President Bush said gasoline prices will not drop when he signs a bill. But making the nation less dependent on foreign oil will make life better for future generations, he said.
One of the problems is that we don't have a free market in energy. Its regulated monopolies. And those monopolies get a set return on investment.
So every company wants to find ways to increase its costs. Which is why the companies were all for the heavy regulatory burden, and each one designing special plants. As it allowed them to get the sweet above market guarunteed return on capital.. on more capital.
Of course with everything ran as a monopoly price rises over time. Unlike anything on the free market where price decreases over time.
I completely agree, my wife and I are "Full Time" RV'ers, and we love being mobile. (Head away from trouble, although we did not head far enough inland from Ivan.)
Correct.
I saw 36 states and Mexico. Eeek, Ivan ... did you sustain much damage?
Not really, the current environmental safeguards on mining practices are effective (at least out west), and there is plenty of low-sulfur coal production in the numerous mines in wide-open Wyoming. Yes, WY mines are primarily strip mines, but the reclamation laws insure that all the land will be eventually returned to a natural state, which on the WY plains is grassland and easily replicated in a short time. IIRC, CO mines are underground. As to the air, previously passed requirements of coal scrubbers on all new plants, combined with the use of low-sulfur coal, pretty much shoot down the air quality arguments against building new plants.
While I agree that nuclear is the cleanest, and Yucca Mtn a good solution for waste disposal, a terrorist attack on a coal plant doesn't run the risk of a massive radiation release. A nuke plant does, albeit a remote risk, hence I would be against building any more plants in heavily urbanized areas. 100 miles out of town? Sure, let's build those.
Seeing how it's naturally occuring (U-238), my panties aren't getting into a wad.
A train traveling through a town is riskier to the population than a nuclear station. If the station can meet its evacuation requirements (i.e. the current regulations now and with projected growth), there should be no limit to the distance a station is built from a city.
(I am dismissing apocolyptic nuclear fetishists supposing a wasted area comparable to that produced by Chernobyl.)
Risk is a probability x consequence.
This is true. They even opposed Fred Flintstone's car until he decided not to hitch a dinosaur to the front and chose to propel it himself.
Joking aside, you are right on the money.
That's a big step to solving the problem.
OK, Fuel costs. That makes a lot more sense. Thanks. I hear that as of late gas fired generation fuel costs are nearly 5 cents per kwhr. Wind fuel costs are obviously free. The price per kwhr goes up a lot when running a nuke that is build at today's prices. Most of the nukes are 20ish years old and have been paid for for a long time.
I live fairly near one too and am not afraid of it. I just don't like something the radioactive fuel and waste issue. It is downplayed just like highway deaths are downplayed.
If the reactor reprocessed fuel, as does every other country who has nuclear power, there would be virtually no radio active waste. The aleged reason we do not reprocess is that the waste from the Uranium process is plutonium and could alegedly be stolen by terrorists to make boms. How this is an argument to leave it in pools outside Nuclear facilities I do not know it seems far wiser to process it until it is no longer a threatening material. My only guess is we intend to pack it into war heads should the need arrise.
Pick one (given we no longer have the engineering talent on short to design one ourselves) and go.
"short" = shore
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