Comments on: What Are They Thinking?

By: COACHEP » Blog Archive » Posts about Stop Cap and Trade as of July 8, 2009

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 04:17:38 +0000

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By: mtraven

mtraven — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 01:44:47 +0000

In the US, the nuclear industry is (partially) insulated from risk by the Price-Anderson Act. It has been alleged that without this, nuclear plants would not be economcally viable at all due to insurance costs. The Act can be considered a massive government subsidy to the nuclear power industry.

By: sk

sk — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:58:52 +0000

Robin, what’s your opinion on the content of Greenpeace’s opposition?

By: nawitus

nawitus — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 19:19:35 +0000

“1) We have a new generation of super-duper designs that should eliminate costs to an tiny fraction of these old designs.”
In my country the cost of nuclear power can never be an argument, as the government will never build a nuclear plant. The private sector does that, so it’s 100% their money and their risk. I don’t know about the situation in the U.S.

By: Phil Goetz

Phil Goetz — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:34:53 +0000

The
line item 1
line item 2

tags don’t work.

By: Phil Goetz

Phil Goetz — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:33:48 +0000

Two facts, which we have known since 1980, when I looked them up:
A coal power plant produces more nuclear waste than a nuclear power plant, because coal contains some radioactive elements. It just isn’t a waste disposal problem, because it goes up the smokestack and into the air.
Coal power plants cause an estimated 30,000 deaths/year in the US. That’s the same number of deaths that were believed to have been caused by Chernobyl.

Also, AFAIK all US and Russian nuclear plants are based on designs from the 1950s-1960s for submarine nuclear power plants, which are inherently unsafe. This is because environmentalist opposition to nuclear power has prevented development of nuclear power by anyone other than the military. The fact that we have had only 1 nuclear reactor accident in 40 years using these dangerous designs, where “we” actually means the Russians, whose approach to safety can most charitably be described as “more stringent than China’s”, is a powerful argument that, with safer designs, and the discipline to not build nuclear plants on fault zones, we can attain zero accidents per (subjective-time) century.

By: Shae

Shae — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:30:21 +0000

They enriched uranium for use in domestic and foreign commercial power reactors.

By: Doug S.

Doug S. — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 09:04:12 +0000

I’ve heard that there’s an awful lot of thorium around…

By: Douglas Knight

Douglas Knight — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 05:20:12 +0000

Also, France exports electricity. This is evidence that it’s cost-effective, but it’s also a good reason for its neighbors not to worry about whether it really is for France or could be from them, but just to encourage France to expand its capacity.

By: TGGP

TGGP — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 04:46:32 +0000

I thought they produced chemicals rather than energy. As far as I know there have not been any deaths attributed to nuclear power plants in the U.S.