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Nuclear plants still come with caveats
Steam billows from the cooling towers at Exelon's nuclear power generating station in Byron, Ill.
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Bill Radke: Utilities that invest in or operate nuclear power plants are meeting this week in Florida. Nuclear power is having a little renaissance. Even some environmental groups saying we're going to have to embrace nuclear power to help combat climate change. The nuclear industry still has a long way to go, though, before it cuts a ribbon on a single new plant, as Marketplace's John Dimsdale reports.
John Dimsdale: The U.S. generates 20 percent of its electricity from nuclear power. Growth in the industry stalled after the meltdown at Three Mile Island 30 years ago.
But now, with climate change a priority, Roger Gale with the consulting firm GF Energy says nuclear is a necessary and clean energy source.
Roger Gale: If we want to sustain the lifestyles we have and aren't ready to reduce our demand and change the way we live, we need nuclear.
U.S. regulators have 22 applications for new nuclear power plants. But the costs are still prohibitive.
Ellen Vanco: We're dealing with $8 [billion] to $10 billion per reactor.
Ellen Vanco at the Union of Concerned Scientists says the private sector isn't ready to risk that much investment in nuclear energy. And she doesn't think the government should subsidize construction of hundreds of new power plants.
Vanco: The industry claims the current generation of reactors is an improvement. And that remains to be seen, they need to build them and they need to demonstrate a few and we need to see how much they're going to cost and whether and what safety issues arise as a result of that.
But nuclear advocates are looking for approval of government loan guarantees early next year. They say that will trigger construction of more than a dozen new nuclear power plants in the U.S.
I'm John Dimsdale for Marketplace.
Nuclear power is a failed experiment. In terms of cost, safety, and sustainability it is much less practical than wind power.
I live near Davis-Besse which just a few years ago came within 1/16th of an inch of melting down and turning Ohio into a radioactive wasteland.
This story was very misleading in that it underestimated new reactor costs by at least a factor of two. One hint that it was biased was that the "anti" nuclear spokeswoman said "They need to build them."
The billions and possibly trillions we have wasted generating radioactive pollution that will cause disease and death for our descendants for the next 20,000 years could have been used to make us completely energy independent with wind, solar, and geothermal technology.
NO NUKES!!!!
We get just as much out of cars when comparing how many cars are on the road (%30 fuel efficiency) and, with the amount of money we have invested in fossil fuel we should be getting a whole lot more. We will never learn how or start producing more from nuclear power until we start using it on a regular basis. The only people who use it on a regular basis now is the military, Navy a lot. With that %5 fuel efficiency they can keep a sub under water for months and have only coming up for food and other supplies, not fuel. The benefits far out weight the bad or any other obstacles that may seem to appear. Also, there are designs on the board, Russia has the only one in operation, for breeder reactors which don't use water, are much more fuel efficient (600-MW). Though it would still take a couple hundred years for the waste to decay like any other technology the more it's used the more you learn how to deal with it. France's biggest problem with Nuclear power is containing the waste, other than that France has the cleanest output of any industrialized nation and has the cheapest energy cost. The way I see it if the enviroment is in so much peril then this would be a viable alternative but, every time it comes up, fear, Three Mile Island (which is one of the most pollution free areas today), cost (even though fuel is costing us a war, dependence on people who are our allies just because of greed and necessity and a fossil fuel plant hasn't been built in about 15 years) get in the way. If we want to be serious about change we need to start and this is a good place to start. How to process and get rid of nuclear waste is just another job field which, could not just be funded by the U.S but, can receive U.N. funding as well, a stimulant to any economy.
People forget to count the massive fossil fuel investment it takes to construct a nuclear plant.
While I agree that nuclear overall is less damaging than coal burning it will not truly be a long-term viable alternative in the US until we get rid of our aversion to reprocessing nuclear fuel and using breeder reactors. At present we're only getting about 5% of the energy out of nuclear material, which makes the energy return on investment (EROI) in nuclear less impressive and results in a lot more high-level radioactive waste which has long-term costs.
Now this is smart thinking. Nuclear plants will create jobs for the next ten to twelve years plus, there’s the mining for uranium that will create jobs. The government doesn’t need to borrow money to pay for this new expansion of nuclear plants, just tax gas more with a bill in writing that the tax will only last for so long with so many power plants having been built. Clinton started something similar with cigarette manufactures, and the tax, even to this day, pays for medical coverage I believe. Then there’s the second wave of employment that will also come out of this, shutting down old oil plants. There’s your way to pay for the war because you can always say the extra gas tax is for the nuclear plants and, it would be serious start out of recession. Imagine the wave of IT jobs, plant jobs, OSHA Saftey workers, etc that would need to be hired also, there would be a moderate reduction in car traffic. A nuclear plant is manned 24/7 but, there’s not one in every town they’re in regions and large metropolitan areas. Now, will the government think like this, noooo… but, worse still they won’t listen to the average Joe that has a similar, better or some other reasonable idea and that’s why we’re going down the tubes.
