Posted on 02/09/2012 10:22:34 AM PST by kidd
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved licenses to build two new nuclear reactors Thursday
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
“Before anyone starts saying that the free market supports nuclear power.
The plants are being built with the help of a conditional $8.3 billion loan guarantee from the Department of Energy. The loan guarantee is part of DOE’s broader loan program that has been criticized for backing companies like Solyndra, the bankrupt maker of solar panels.
The Southern spokesman said the loan guarantee, combined with other regulatory measures, enable the project to receive cheaper financing that will ultimately save ratepayers $1 billion.”
I agree. If nuclear plants are/were such a great idea why are the taxpayers always put on the hook for them instead of Wall St capitalists funding them? Not one of them has ever been built by private capital. If that doesn’t bother conservatives it darn well should. This is more crony capitalism.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=first-new-nuclear-reactor-in-us-since-1978-approved
Yup! I’d bet long odds on that. Not that I would be disappointed to lose.
They’ll probably find an endangered cockroach or mosquito that needs protecting.
Bingo. I’m sure he is quietly reassuring the environmental-whackos that as soon as he is safely reelected, he’s quietly find a way to kill it.
This is all about attempting to take an issue off the table prior to the election.
At this point I’ve heard nothing about the hand-wringing that goes on constantly about what to do with the spent fuel. It seems no one has figured that out yet, and that we have massive amounts of it stored around the country in temporary situations that are not that safe . . . and now, they plan to create more.
good to know licensing process has changed for the better.
Hm?....Announced just days after the Obama natural born citizenship hearing?
Nothing to see here folks! Move along.
APS has never made a submission to build another one there. Duke may or may not commit to building a new one in Lee Co, SC. Comanche Peak 3/4 are on slo-mo. My contacts there still say it will get built. Crystal River has put their two new units in hibernation, They have bigger fish to fry with the cracked containment buiding on Unit 1 there. There are still rumors that Turkey Point might still commit, but I can’t see that happening until Florida’s economy heats back up.
Nukes still have the lowest operating costs. All that is factored in.
A gas to liquid plant takes about 10 years to come online.
It does not happen "quick".
Fusion has been just 20 years from reality for the last 50 years......
It did go critical. They were in low power physics testing when it was abandoned.
Oh, we’ve figured it out just fine, we just don’t have the political ability to override a Senate Majority Leader. Once that happens, the facility is already built.
That an Obama extremist would vote against it should come as no surprise.
And solar 10 years from reality for the last 40.
Understood. It took Edison over a hundred attempts for his breakthrough. We're 50 years closer, and in this high tech age, hopefully a breakthrough away.
In the meantime, please don't put one of those ticking-time-bomb nuclear fusion disaster-waiting-to-happen plants near me, my loved ones, or any food source any of us might be needing for the next century or so.
Early on in baraq’s rule, he announced that a couple of new nuke plants would be built. Then he shut down Yucca Mountain nuke waste facility.
The Yucca mountain facility is still closed.
When given plans of the Rolls Royce Merlin GM made molds and machined one and had one running in 24 hrs. We are a nation of do-ers.
But given the EPA, the Sierra Club etc yes 10 yrs sounds about right which is damn shame.
Get all the nattering naybobs out of the way and run 24/7 365 how many years whould it take to build then?
We are at war with our own debt and a middle east that really isn't our friend. I don't have the answer in terms of constitutionality and I do not want to destroy the balance of power anymore, but closing the EPA by executive order would work for me...
Make no mistake about it, it WILL NOT be the clean panacea all the ignorami envision. Fusion will produce a tremendous amount of neutrons that will have to be shielded, and guess what the shielding will be? Uranium 238. This shielding will be taken off periodically and processed for plutoniom to make new fuel for fission reactors.
When I was in grad school in the mid-70’s, my advisor, whose PhD thesis was the 2nd most widely cited paper at the time on one aspect of fusion (tokamak) reactor design, said that we needed 20-20 vision to see an operating tokamak. By that, he meant it would be 2020 before it would happen.
While I don’t follow developments in fusion research particularly closely, I don’t think that we are any closer today toward solving some of the fundamental issues than we were 35 or more years ago. The technical issues are formidable.
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