'All we are saying is give nukes a chance'
xoff
Profuse apologies to John Lennon. But that refrain was in my brain after reading Tom Still's plea that Wisconsin consider nuclear power. "What do we have to lose?" he asks. (More on that later)
Still, president of something called the Wisconsin Technology Council, thinks it's a crying shame that Wisconsin has a moratorium law on the books that won't allow the state to even consider nuclear power as an option.
It will come as a surprise to many -- but not, I suspect, to Tom Still -- to learn that there is no nuclear "moratorium" in effect that bans more nuclear power plants in the state.
What is on the books is a perfectly reasonable law that says if you want to build a new reactor here, there are two requirements that must be met first:
(1) There must be a federal site to dispose of the dangerous, high level radioactive waste the reactors produce, and
(2) The Public Service Commission must find that nuclear power makes economic sense.
That's no ban or moratorium. It merely sets some reasonable requirements. But since the law was passed in 1984 the nuclear industry has not been able to meet those tests. So now it wants to relax the law.
It has been more than 50 years since the US began generating nuclear power -- and nuclear waste. Fifty years and still no way to dispose of the deadly end products, which the Environmental Protection Agency says must be kept away from humans for up to a million years.
If, as the industry would have us believe, a solution is just around the corner, what's wrong with waiting until we turn that corner?
Says Still:
Lifting the moratorium doesn’t mean Wisconsin will be build a new plant tomorrow. But it does mean the state can be ready for the inevitable day that science produces a cleaner, safer and more efficient reactor.
Well, why don't we just wait until that day comes?
In the meantime, just last week a new study found that it would cost taxpayers and ratepayers about $2- to $4-trillion more over the life of 100 new nuclear reactors than it would to generate the same electricity from a combination of more energy efficiency and renewables.
Available renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies are faster, cheaper, safer and cleaner strategies for reducing greenhouse emissions than nuclear power.
If you agree, please sign our online petition here to keep Wisconsin's sensible laws on the books.
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Comments
A Few Points
I'm not an economist, so I will not try and dissect the paper posted. But I will offer some personal opinions.
Currently, all waste that would have to meet that limit (which simulations have pointed to being possible with an uncertainty) is stored at the plants in either wet or dry storage under normal EPA regulations and may very well remain there for a long, long time. The total volume of all waste, in the United States, generated over the past 40-50 years of commercial generation could fit within an American football field stacked short of the goal posts (high density).
______________________
Troy Haskin
Nuclear Engineering Graduate Student
Really?
Companies should be able to build whatever they want without interference from the government?
Do you really think , Troy, that the government has no responsibility to protect public safety? Does that go for not regulating any products -- drugs? automobiles?
What Troy said versus what xoff turned it into.
After about 25 years of Wisconsin's restrictions on new nuclear power plants being described in the press, the legislature and in conversation among people who talk about these things a lot, as a "moratorium," xoff decided to relabel the moratorium as a set of "reasonable requirements." Functionally it remains a moratorium - - the debate is over whether it is "reasonable." Xoff probably wants to relabel the moratorium for rhetorical purposes.
Troy then made a statement that specifically incorporated x'off's phrase "reasonable requirements." Troy said that the "reasonable requirements" (xoff's phrasing) "should be repealed." The fairly obvious meaning of Troy's words is that companies should be free to choose nuclear as an option.
In other words, Troy disagrees as to whether the nuclear moratorium, or what xoff labels the set of "reasonable requirements," are actually "reasonable."
Xoff then sidestepped the context, and most of the content, of Troy's submission and seized and paraphrased a subsequent sentence, out of context, to recast Troy's statement into the absurd proposition that “government has no responsibility to protect public safety.”
Xoff then ridiculed the absurd proposition that he cleverly attributed to Troy.
Troy did not say the thing that xoff ridiculed. Troy's post was to the effect that government should not tell companies what to build by telling them they cannot choose to build nuclear. He specifically said that government should not “single out nuclear power plants.” What Troy advanced is a whole lot different from an abandonment of public regulation. Public regulation still operates if nuclear power plants are built. Public regulation still controls many things by telling companies what specific plants they can build, and how they can build them.
Troy , in fact, referenced NRC regulation as a normal part of the regulatory process associated with nuclear energy.
The technique used by xoff is called the "straw man" method of argumentation. You set up a ridiculous proposition and then attribute it to an opponent so as to make the opponent look unreasonable. I think there are better ways for progressives to show how clever they are.
As shown by the poll on nuclear energy on this site, the anti-nuclear energy message is failing. If it were not failing I doubt that someone of xoff's intelligence would resort to such lame methods of argumentation. That’s my inference, anyway.
If one rationally looks at all the environmental and energy issues, nuclear becomes pretty appealing.
http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/c24/page_161.shtml
http://rethinkingnuclearpower.googlepages.com/
Unsurprisingly, the ranks of pro-nuclear environmentalists are growing as the specter of climate change stimulates people to review the science and the developments in nuclear:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article4836556.ece
am a nuclear engineering
Please allow us to recognize the pro-angle that comes with it as well - I realize it's very difficult to have anything resembling an unbiased opinion if your livelihood depends on the outcome.
Steve Hanson
Uppity Wisconsin
Reasons for being pro-nuclear
Nuclear scientists and engineers are often begrudged their pro-nuclear opinions because they are nuclear scientists and engineers. This notion presumes why someone became a nuclear engineer. It would be fair to say, “of course you want these environmental benefits to be true, you chose nuclear engineering because of reason X and now this is a useful argument that helps you accomplish these other goals,” if reason X were some cause unrelated to the environmental benefits of nuclear power.
I am a nuclear engineering graduate student. I chose the nuclear field because I care about the environment. Nuclear is the only existing, large-scale, reliable electricity generation method that emits no carbon. It is by no means a magic bullet or ultimate solution. But, after learning about all the options, I felt strongly that nuclear will be a necessary part of getting from where we are now (an unsustainable and polluting energy system), to an energy future that is environmentally responsible. I chose my career path based on the pro-nuclear case, not the other way around. It is wrong to discard my arguments for nuclear because I am a nuclear engineer.
As an addition, people do not similarly discount the opinions of environmental activists who are employed by environmental activist organizations. Their livelihoods depend on the anti-nuclear movement and their motives are not questioned.
fault lies with Reid, other promise breakers on the hill
You state: "That's no ban or moratorium. It merely sets some reasonable requirements. But since the law was passed in 1984 the nuclear industry has not been able to meet those tests. So now it wants to relax the law."
In reality, it's people like Senate majority leader Harry Reid who have prevented the first condition from being met, despite promises by the federal government to establish a waste repository. The nuclear power industry, has in fact paid for this repository already through the nuclear waste disposal fund, and the government has comitted to build it. This point seems often forgotten by those who point the finger at the nuclear power industry for the lack of a waste storge site. The fact that the government has likely spent all of this money should not be used to support this bloggers second point, in that estimates of the cost of nuclear energy should not take into account double billing for a repository.
In fact nuclear reactors have responsibly generated energy, paid more taxes and regulatory fees and remained only slightly more expensive than coal generation for the last several decades. The International Energy Agency in the 2008 "Energy Technology Perspectives" estimates the cost of nuclear at 3-5 cents / kw-hr: http://www.iea.org/Textbase/techno/etp/index.asp
Coal estimates, at just under 3 cents / kw-hr of course do not include the significant environmental damage that has and continues to occur due to excessive carbon emissions.
One more point: nuclear "waste" is very frequently a resource, and should be stored responsibly, not simply disposed of. In fact, millions of life saving medical procedures are performed every year with nuclear "waste". If the proper repository were built, it is easy to store, monitor, and extract when needed. Furthermore, next generation nuclear plants will be capable of "burning" it, greatly reducing the amount of time it will need to sit before decaying to non-harmful levels.
Our government needs to get in the habit of keeping it's promises, not shrugging their shoulders as if they don't know what's going on. Blaming the nuclear industry for the lack of a repository is typical political BS.
As for Wisconsin, the Feds have put us in a difficult position. The moratorium made sense if it was assumed the federal government was planning to honor their commitments. Since they haven't, we are denied the use of a technology that is clearly a lesser of evils: nuclear fission, while it has it's drawbacks is clealy much easier to clean up after than carbon belching fossil fuel plants, and is much more capable of meeting baseload demand than a wind alternative. Solar, while very promising isn't ready yet, and we need to take the next step now. In my opinion, Wisconsin should take make this step forward, and insist that the federal government keep it's promise. Failure to act now will result in continued environmental damage with potentially catastrophic consquences. When the next generation of energy technology is ready, we'll accept it then, but continuing to do nothing is far more harmful than building up nuclear energy-an imperfect alternative that is still much better than the fossil fuel plants in use today.
Greg
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