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| FT - US struggles to revive nuclear power industry |
| 2004-06-30 |
| EFL - hattip to WND As the US struggles with high oil and gas prices and an overdependence on foreign suppliers, Washington is trying to get a reluctant nuclear power industry to build itself up as an alternative. But the Utility companies won’t be suckered. The US energy department is providing incentives to encourage US power companies to apply for licences to build the first new nuclear plants in 25 years. The department is also considering building a plant of its own. The 103 operational US nuclear power plants are so old they are being forced to apply for 20-year extensions on their 40-year operating licences. Even though they provide 20 per cent of the nation’s energy, no provisions have been made to continue that supply, much less increase it, once the plants are too old to operate. Californians are soon to meet my two friends - Mr Rock and Mr Hardplace. A tedious application process, high costs and public resistance have made utilities skittish about new nuclear power for decades. A company would be pretty stupid to take a risk on adding capacity with a business case that is almost surely a money loser. It is much more economical and "green" for public utilities to add capacity powered by natural gas. Sort of sucks for a homeowner to pay his/her gas bill during the Midwestern winter when his/she are competing with a large corporation for each therm of gas. -snip - Chernobyl and Three Mile Island In 1984, public opposition prevented a completed $5.3bn (?4.35bn, £2.9bn) plant from opening in New York state. The devastating Chernobyl accident in Ukraine two years later all but finished the debate. Today Mark Urso, who works in the nuclear services division of Westinghouse Electric, gives talks on nuclear energy. "Typically, the only thing they [the public] know or ask questions about are the nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl," he says. There is another, arguably bigger obstacle than public opinion: the build-up of nuclear waste. Without an offsite repository, nuclear plants must store their own waste onsite. And when storage space is full, the plant can be threatened with closure. Efforts to set up a national nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, have been blocked for years by the state’s governors and members of Congress, regardless of party. I think that the waste should be stored in the state that uses the electricity - by percentage of MW used. Lee Raymond, chief executive of ExxonMobil, the world’s biggest publicly listed oil and gas company, has stated that nuclear has great potential, especially from an environmental standpoint. But he has noted that political opposition makes nuclear power a poor contender for meeting the rising US energy demand. "The political reality in the US today would lead to the conclusion that there will not be any more nuclear power plants built in this country for a long time," said James A. Baker, the former secretary of state to President George H.W. Bush. The utilities seem reluctant to prove them wrong, in spite of improvements in plant safety, mandated by US regulators, lower operating costs and a streamlined application process. "No one has ever tried to use [the new process], so there is a lot of uncertainty about how the process will work," says William D. Magwood IV, director of the energy department’s Office of Nuclear Energy. There is no financial incentive to build a plant where the per MWatt capital cost is prohibitive from the get-go. The return looks bleaker if the greenies get worked up and prevent you from using your plant transforming your investment into a radioactive white element. The department has agreed to Nuclear Power will be viable in the US when Americans decide they want to restore some resonableness to the system. The Free Market would certainly work to correct the problems in Electric utilities is we stopped convincing ourselves that California was an experiment in Deregulation. Here is why "deregulation" failed in California: 1. The state enacted legislation to prevent any addition of capacity due to enviromental concerns. 2. The state made no more to restrict increases in usage. 3. The state fixed the price that local utilities could charge customers. 4. Because they could not add capacity, or refuse to provide power and the local utilities were forced to buy power on the open market, from providers that weren’t price controlled and being located out of state - had no obligation to sell power to California. 5. Forced into a situation that could only lead to bankrupcy, the local utilities did their best to distribute cash to stockholders before this story written by a crackbaby proceded to it obvious conclusion. Final note - we will have at least one big blackout this summer because Americans want our power grid to be repaired at no cost to us by Glinda and the Lollypop kids. [/rant] |
| Posted by:Super Hose |
| #2 Damn straight we should be saving pertoleum - there's a hell of a lot better uses for it than burning it in an IC engine. Plastics, to name just one. Have cheap kits to convert cars to use alcohol, is my take. And seriously screw with the Saudi's cash flow at the same time. It's a win-win... |
| Posted by: mojo 2004-06-30 3:40:03 PM |
| #1 I think that we should promote nuclear power and save the petroleum to run my large car. |
| Posted by: Formerly Dan 2004-06-30 2:33:58 PM |