article: Plug-in Hybrid

"New nuclear plants appear too pricey"
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/special_packages/yucca/6073891.htm
"The last five U.S. nuclear power plants cost 11 times as much to build
per kilowatt produced as do current natural-gas plants. Even if new
next-generation nuclear plants can be built much more cheaply, their
construction costs still are likely to be two to four times higher than
natural gas, coal or wind plants, according to the U.S. Energy
Information Administration."

There's lots of people in the Yucca Mountain area who
feel differently.

"Yucca Mountain"
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/10/23/60minutes/main579696.shtml
"... the battle is far from over, and the state of Nevada is in
full-scale revolt. A coalition of elected officials, environmentalists
and businessmen is waging a guerrilla war to kill a project they believe
has been shoved down their throats."

"The Impacts of Sabotage and Terrorism on Nuclear Waste Shipments: A
Critique of the U. S. Department of Energy's Draft Environmental Impact
Statement (DOE/EIS-0250D) for the Proposed Yucca Mountain, Nevada,
Geological Repository"
http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/eis/yucca/ballard01.htm
"if one makes a cursory review of NRC’s Safeguards Summary Event List
(SSEL) it becomes clear that sabotage is a much more common practice in
nuclear related facilities than the public would assume and clearly a
known factor transportation planners should address."

"Yucca radiation limits unveiled"
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2005/Aug-10-Wed-2005/news/27026244.html
"Never in our wildest nightmares would we have anticipated such a
ridiculous standard," Gov. Kenny Guinn said. "This is junk science at
its worst."

"YUCCA MOUNTAIN: 'Monkey wrench'"
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2005/Aug-13-Sat-2005/news/27043079.html
"Thousands of fuel assemblies containing radioactive nuclear waste are
expected to arrive damaged at Yucca Mountain, including some with
undetected leaks and cracks, posing potential risks to workers and the
public, according to a report prepared for the government."

"Report says repository to bite county budget"
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2005/Aug-17-Wed-2005/news/27062800.html
" The transportation of high-level nuclear waste to the planned Yucca
Mountain repository could have a devastating effect on local government
finances, according to a report accepted by Clark County commissioners
Tuesday."

My point is: It is inconsistent to say it is safe unless
you personally are willing to have you and those you care
about live near it.

So far I've heard a lot of "in a perfect world it would
be okay".

 

ok, let's keep this simple.

1. reprocessed means useful material is recovered, not left languishing
in big blue containers all over the country.

2. reprocessed means non-useful high level material is held inert in a
form such as borosilicate glass that bears minimal risk of chemical
issues and can be safely stored. this includes irradiated material as
well as fission product.

3. low level waste can be processed & concentrated or stored.

so we can't be trusted to non-proliferate our own plutonium??? that's a
crock. it's simply political fear.

on the contrary, reprocessing is highly profitable.

if the overall cost of nuclear, including reprocessing &
decommissioning, is still on a par with gross polluters like coal, and
it is, i fail to understand the inconsistency. agreed, there's an
incredible amount of crackpot fear-mongering misinformation on the web
on this subject, but if nuclear power can be just as cheap as fossil,
doesn't pollute & can be done safely, i don't get the problem.

fear that the french have been operating nuclear plants and storing
waste without incident since the 70's? they don't have remote desert
repositories in france either.

eh? the fact that we live with background radiation, sometimes at high
levels, is not valid grounds on which to throw perspective on the
radiation levels in a power station?

who's an advocate of religious fervor??? there's many grounds on which
nuclear power makes a lot of sense when analyzed rationally. that's
just a fact. there's no fervor or religion involved. now, if you want
to get all frothed up about ensuring operation oversight is independant
and competent, be my guest, but don't let that cloud the reality of any
deployment decision.

 

Not necessarily.

Why read further if you can't accurately reflect even the simple?

You're on a religious mission, not a scientific one.

 

Huh? What are your arguments/postions on what jb said? Sounds like pot calling
kettle black, to me.

 

Chemical plants often have ACCIDENTS;releases of toxic chemicals.
Remember Bhopal,India?
And trains derail and spill LOTs of chemical tanker loads.

The enviros tend to overloook or ignore the deaths and harm done by mining
coal and producing oil,it's just a fear of things nuclear.

 

Costs are high because of the ridiculous opperssive regulations forced upon
the nuclear industry by enviro-extremists.

Purely NIMBY.

The stuff HAS to go somewhere;and nobody came up with any better site.
Under a mountain in the middle of a vast empty land seems about right.

This would be an argument FOR Yucca Mtn. Having the present wastes located
allover the country in MUCH less secure sites than Yucca makes NO sense.
Transportation is a short-term window of "opportunity" that is difficult to
attempt with any chance of success.

It's OK because it's far better than what we have now.

 

Yes, quite well. It was horrible. So was Chernobyl.

My point is: rather than suggest we should trade one
bad situation for another bad situation, wouldn't it
be better to put effort into cleaning things up?

 

Reprocessing is also expensive. Mining/enrichment of uranium remains far

General Electric spent a lot of time and money trying to
build a reprocessing plant. At first it was going to
make lots of money. Then, well it would make some money.
Then, at least we can break even. Then finally they
gave up.

http://www.nei.org/index.asp?catnum=3&catid=583

"General Electric built a large reprocessing facility in Morris, Ill.
The plant, which never operated, now stores used nuclear fuel."

"Nuclear Fuel Services, while a subsidiary of Getty Oil, built and
operated a small reprocessing facility in West Valley, N.Y. The high
cost of meeting new regulations in the mid-1970s forced the company to
close the plant."

"Allied General Nuclear Services, an Allied Chemical and General Atomics
joint venture, invested more than $500 million dollars in a new
reprocessing plant in Barnwell, S.C. The Carter administration’s
reprocessing ban—coupled with costly new regulatory requirements—ensured
that it, too, never operated."

"In 1994, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
issued a study that concluded total life-cycle costs are virtually the
same for reprocessing and eventual disposal or direct disposal of used
fuel."

 

Ever heard of the nuclear waste problem?

So, back to my question: do you want a nuclear
waste dump in YOUR town?

We need to stop producing it. We are passing on a problem
that has to be dealt with for 10,000+ years.

The people living in Nevada don't see it as a vast empty
land. They live there.

Okay, so you want to move it into someone else's
backyard. Isn't that the very NIMBY you mention?

If nuclear power is so wonderful let the people who
benefit from it live near it's waste. Don't shove it
down someone else's throat.

 

What do you think needs to be done? Do you have any idea why petro-chem
industry releases the toxics that they do? Do you have any idea what it
would take to make them clean and safe to the degree that the nuclear
industry already is? You make it sound like a weekend "pick up the garbage
project" but it is much more complex than this.

Leonard

 

What happened at Bhopal was no accident; it was deliberate sabotage by
somebody who knew how to do the most damage. And what happened at Chernobyl
is not possible at commercial power plants; Chernobyl was an uncontained
graphite moderated reactor and the graphite caught fire when an ill-advised
experiment went very wrong and fractured the fuel rods. Three Mile Island is
a better example of a terrible accident at a fairly modern nuclear power
plant - complete meltdown of the core and nobody injured, no contamination
outside the containment.

In the electric company I've worked for the past 21 years, there have been a
few fatalities from electric accidents, one fatality from steam at a coal
plant, and one serious injury from a transformer explosion at another coal
plant. In the entire US there has never been an injury from the nuclear side
of power production.

Mike

 

so how come it's done in all these other places? charity?

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf69.htm

 

Jim
E

Good ones. A more recent citation (this past month) is in the same vein:
---
The four witnesses at this [Congressional] hearing [on July 12] were very
cautious about the prospects for reprocessing (see
http://www.house.gov/science/hearings/energy05/july%2012/index.htm.) Richard
K. Lester of MIT testified that reprocessing would work against the
expansion of nuclear energy because of the higher cost that it would impose.
It would be "extremely unlikely" that within the next few decades
reprocessing and mining/enriching costs would be roughly equal. Lester
pointed to a MIT study that concluded reprocessing would not be attractive
for at least fifty years. Donald W. Jones of RCF Economic and Financial
Consulting, Inc. estimated that after the construction of the first few
power plants, nuclear energy could be competitive with fossil fuels,
particularly if carbon sequestration was required at fossil fuel plants.
Steve Fetter of the University of Maryland concluded that it was extremely
unlikely that the cost of uranium would be competitive with reprocessing,
and commercial operators of utility plants would be unlikely to embrace it.
Marvin Fertel of the Nuclear Energy Institute called for an additional five
to ten years of R&D, after which another decade would be required to
establish a reprocessing facility. Fertel predicted that it would require "a
couple of decades to honestly deploy the facilities that you want, assuming
that they are economic."

http://www.aip.org/fyi/2005/118.html
---

 

Chernobyl was rare,chem plants OFTEN have toxic spills,with OFTEN
disastrous results.
Same for oil refineries or storage.
Nuclear power has a MUCH better safety record,and MUCH cleaner for the
environment.

 

So,AGAIN;not RELEVANT,as one picks the safest,best-suited place to locate
the storage facility.

And it's STILL a vast empty land.
Most of it is owned by the Federal Government,too.

No,it's based on science and logic,not emotion.

Some time in the future,we ALL will be benefitting from it.
It's time to plan for that NOW,so face reality.

 

Doesn't bother me, but then, i used to work at a nuclear reprocessing
facility...

 

Hello,
Those facts don't matter to the greenies. They just want to close down
nuclear power plants. There was a protest at the local nuclear power plant
about 15 years ago. I drove by the plant very early in the morning and saw
about a dozen really expensive cars and motor homes. I later watched the
nightly news shows and saw several famous actors being interviewed. I
realized that those expensive cars and motor homes belonged to those rich
actors and other rich people that drove from their million dollar homes in
Hollywood. They used lots of gasoline to travel to my small town and only
God knows how much wood
was used to make their million dollar homes. I would NEVER donate money to
any greenie group.
Jason

 

In some respects the "greenies" may be our own worst enemies. For example
look at the debacle they've created in California. Poor Californians have
had to screw around with special "California Emissions" vehicles for over
20 years. The vehicles cost incrementally more and are hard to sell
outside of California. They also require special additives in their
gasoline, making theirs the most expensive fuwl in the contiguous 48
states, more than 50¢ gallon higher than some states.

During the California "energy crisis" a few years ago my employer tried to
build a clean, natural gas-fired electric generating plant in Simi Valley
but couldn't get the damn thing licensed in Calif. because of the absurd
regulations and punitive licensing fees.

Californians did this to themselves and the same group 9or rather same
mindset) is now trying to do it everywhere.

Blocking the long term storage of spent fuel rods at Yucca Mountain has
effectively shut down *ALL* future nuclear powered elect generating
stations. Why? Because your Federal Govt enacted legislation that says you
cannot get a license to build a nuke plant if you don't have available
storage for spent fuel rods. Of course you can store them on site at the
nuke station itself but then that means having a nuclear waste site at
every new generating station and we know the greenies will never stand for
that.

 

Hello,
You made some great points. I live in California. Several years ago the
greenies worked together to get a law passed that required oil companies
to place some sort of new additive in gasoline. Several years later, it
was discovered that the additive was causing people to get cancer. In
addition, various gas stations had defective tanks and the gasoline leaked
into the ground water. People living near those gas stations came down
with cancer. The oil companies were sued. I read several news report about
those cases and none of the liberal reporters ever mentioned that the
greenies were to blame for causing the cancer causing additive to be
placed in the gas. I realize the oil companies should not have allowed the
gas tanks under the ground to leak. However, the greenies should also have
been sued because they were the ones to blame for causing the additive to
be in the gasoline.
Jason

 

dude, you have that totally ass-over-tip. the additive is mtbe. it was
sold to the california state legislature as an "oxygenate" designed to
reduce emissions, much like ethanol is being used today. it's since
been banned because it contaminates ground water supplies with a taste
like turpentine. now, here's the real rub: mtbe was mandated after
lobbying by arco, whose refining process just happens to produce a lot
of mtbe, much more than they could otherwise use. the hook they used
was "oxygenation" being better for emissions - something that's not
necessary with a fuel injected vehicle, the vast majority of vehicles on
the road. speculation is that the real reason arco wanted mtbe mandated
for all gasoline was not only to get rid of their excess mtbe
production, but also to reduce mpg, therefore increase gas sales. and
they succeeded. but guess whose wife was on the board of arco at the
time this mandate found it's was through the state assembly? go on,
guess...