Greenpeace to intercept 'nuke' ship

[cal04]

GREENPEACE boats plan to intercept a ship carrying spent nuclear fuel from Sydney's Botany Bay.

Six shipping containers carrying the spent fuel from the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor, in Sydney's south, will be loaded aboard the Seabird, Greenpeace Australia Pacific (GAP) said.

The vessel is due to arrive in Botany Bay shortly to pick up the containers and depart about 2am (AEDT) for the east coast of the United States.

It is understood the spent fuel will be stored somewhere in the US.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20944110-1702,00.html

[badgervan]

1. I've Got An Idea....

... where they can store it if they bring it to the U.S. - Dick Pombo's backyard.

[cal04]

2. Greenpeace protests nuclear waste convoy

A police spokeswoman said a Greenpeace boat attempted to stop the material being loaded onto the ship at the Port Botany terminal.

"A vessel carrying protesters was intercepted and inspected by police from the marine area command as it sailed towards the ship before it docked at Port Botany," the spokeswoman said.

(snip)
"In an age of terrorism and fears about nuclear proliferation, these nuclear waste shipments are a magnet for terrorist activity," Greenpeace spokesman Stephen Campbell said.

(snip)
"This is the second shipment of fuel from ANSTO to the United States," ANSTO spokesman Ron Cameron said.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20944604-1702,00.html

[Odin2005]

3. Greenpeace can go fuck itself.

As far as im concerned anti-nuclear is pro-coal. Bunch of stupid luddites pretending to me enviromentalists, that's what they all are.

[ReadTomPaine]

4. Time to change your avatar then. Paul Wellstone worked hand in hand...

with Greenpeace on issues like these and was a staunch supporter of their goals. You might as well have put his name next to Greenpeace in your title.

[TheWraith]

5. Odin has a point.

People protest nuclear power, but they never seem to realize that coal produces orders of magnitude more pollutants, and unlike nuclear power, they're not safely stored away somewhere. They're just poured into the air--including the radioactive materials that were in the coal when it was burned. Coal-burning plants actually release more nuclear material into the air than the entire US nuclear infrastructure uses up. For that matter, the radioactive material they release contains more energy than the coal itself does.

Energy isn't free. Solar and wind aren't at all practical, and while fusion holds great promise, we're still probably ten to fifteen years away from having a viable commercial-scale reactor. It comes down at this point to either fossil fuels or fission, with little alternative. I don't think that you can reasonably be against both without ignoring the massive roadblocks to other options.

[sweetheart]

6. hardly, solar power really is ready

This kind of plant solves many of the shortcomings of solar, as the superheated generating fluid
is stored that the plant runs during evening rush.

Given computing advances in stepper motors, the ability for such systems to follow the sun
precisely for intense focus of energy have only existed in recent times. Why are you saying
that solar is not practicial, when it very very much is, and really its a matter of reinvesting,
across culture in to a non-petrol energy grid.
http://www.eng.fsu.edu/~shih/succeed-2000/roadmap/solar%20power%20plant.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Tres

[krispos42]

8. It's a start, but it's not enough

It's going to be a combination of things that we need to do.

We need to build clean-coal plants, recover the carbon dioxide, and store it in old oil fields or deep mines or someplace like that. Screw the natural gas plants; too dependent on foreign sources and still emit carbon dioxide.

We need to suppliment clean-coal with wind turbines, solar plants, and ocean-wave generators. In the Midwest, which has plenty of wind but low population density, we need to make wind- and solar-powered ethanol-distillation plants. Current ones burn natural gas to distill ethanol, which, of course, comes from overseas and creates greenhouse gasses. Legalizing hemp for ethanol production is also a good idea, as it creates much more ethanol while needing less labor to grow compared to corn.

We also need to push very hard for nuclear fusion power to replace all fossil-fuel power plants in the country. Eventually, we will be able to have fusion plants distilling biodiesel and ethanol as well, enabling us to get off foreign oil. And when the electric car that charges off of your home's circuit comes about, the grid will have enough capacity to power it.

[TheWraith]

9. There's not nearly enough energy density in solar power.

Most of the energy from the sun is absorbed in the atmosphere, leaving only a relatively small amount to impact the surface. To replace the power output of a single nuclear reactor, you would have to pave over at least 25 square miles with solar cells. That's not even figuring in the space required by the associated storage mechanisms, the access roads to get at all the cells for maintainence, or the amount of mining, processing, and manufacturing that you'd need to do to produce that many solar cells.

[ReadTomPaine]

10. Ok, lets talk nuclear power, then..

Here are a few facts that you and others here may be unaware of.

Most people are familiar with the disaster that occurred at Three Mile Island in the late 1970's, however that was far from the only nuclear meltdown that occurred at a civilian facility here in North America.

What is that, you say? Didn't know there were more? Well I'm afraid there have been plenty. Don't be embarrassed if you weren't aware of this, in some cases these incidents have been carefully kept from the public for decades.

For example, in California, right outside Los Angeles in the Simi Hills, a meltdown occurred in 1959 that released at least 300 times more radiation than the Three Mile Island accident and resulted in the deaths of hundreds of people, at a bare minimum. Even more serious & widespread repercussions from this incident are suspected, however sealed records and stonewalling by both government and industry officials have prevented even the most basic information from being shared about this disaster. Simple public health questions, such as which direction the radioactive cloud traveled, have never been divulged.

The Simi meltdown is just one of several that happened in the 1950's. The very first prototype reactor also suffered a meltdown - EBR I in 1951. This was followed the next year with an even more serious meltdown and radioactive release at the NRX site in Canada that required the removal and burial of the core by a clean up team that included 150 US Naval personnel including a young Jimmy Carter. Then in 1966 there was yet another partial meltdown - this time at the Fermi I reactor in Michigan. Around 10 years later we had Three Mile Island.

Keep in mind that these are just the known meltdown-style accidents at North American civilian facilities. There have been more documented in England, Scotland and of course the former Soviet Union as well as plenty of nuclear accidents that didn't involve meltdowns but were just as dangerous to the public, as well as all the military accidents of which are only dimly aware. Given that the Simi incident was kept secret from the public for approximately 40 years, we really have no idea how many other serious accidents have been kept from us.

I'm all for the responsible use of nuclear power, but the industry as it stands is simply not trustworthy enough to support at this point as the safety record for these materials, facilities and procedures is not a good one. The publics trust has been repeatedly violated and its health threatened, often without disclosure of any kind. Once proponents of nuclear power can outline transparent, failsafe operational and disposal procedures I'll revisit my view on this matter but until then I can only judge this industry by its own former actions, and that is not a record I can trust.

[TheWraith]

11. I don't know where you're getting your information, but it's highly slanted.

I'll start off by saying that I don't disagree that fission reactors are potentially dangerous. But there's a huge amount of propaganda circulated by the anti-nuke crowd which, to put it mildly, has no basis in reality. A good example is the frequently cited figures for anywhere from 200,000 to 1 million dead from the Chernobyl accident, when the IAEA, WHO, and UNDP put the death toll at around 9,000.

For instance, the Simi Hills incident that you refer to, at the Santa Susana Field Lab? The "deaths of hundreds" line is a bit deceptive. About a hundred people--mostly employees of the facility--have settled with Boeing (the lab's owner) over allegations that their cancers or leukemia resulted from radiation exposure at the lab. That's not the same thing as implying that a radioactive cloud killed hundreds of people.

The implications of long-term repercussions from the incident are a bit exaggerated as well. Radioactive iodine has a half-life of 8 days, meaning that it would have been essentially gone within a few weeks or months after the incident.

A better question is, why are reactor accidents in the 1950s and 1960s relevant today? We have a vastly better understanding now of the principles involved in building and containing such a reactor. There hasn't been a serious nuclear accident anywhere in the world in the last 25 years that wasn't the result of gross human negligence. Europe has been clean even longer.

Further, even if you stipulate that some degree of radiation hazard is unavoidable, how is that worse than fossil fuels? Do you know how many people die every year from the byproducts of fossil fuels, pumped into the air? Tens of thousands. More people die in one year, in the United States alone, from fossil fuel use than have been killed by every nuclear accident put together.

[ReadTomPaine]

12. How many more need to sicken and die before you see the problem here?

How large an area are you willing to expose to contamination before you reconsider? Almost half of Europe just 20 years ago not enough?

This is a public utility, not an arena bloodsport or a cold war missile strike. There is no Playstation-style 'reset' button for nuclear accidents after they occur, no 'acceptable loss' scenario. This industry has demonstrated on multiple occasions over several decades that it cannot police or manage itself properly and I am unwilling to wait until another truly catastrophic occurrence proves this beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Frankly, neither should you.

[Odin2005]

15. There is no reset button for global warning from coal.

[ReadTomPaine]

18. A single catastrophic accident at a coal plant is nothing compared...

to a similar disaster at a nuclear power plant. They are simply not comparable in any way. If you doubt this, I have some land to sell you 80 miles north of Kiev.

As others have pointed out, human accidents occur all the time in this industry. It's not an 'if' scenario. It will happen again, just as it happened before. Once that genie is out of the bottle, there are no quick cleanups. This technology is not ready for prime time, and rather than face the music the nuclear industry instead circles its wagons and hides its flaws from view. That's simply too dangerous a gamble given the nature of the materials and the track record of those involved.

As I said above, give me a transparent and accountable nuclear industry and a failsafe set of operational and disposal procedures and I'm on board. Until then, my verdict stands as is.

[jpak]

25. Coal vs. Nuclear is a false dichotomy

it completely ignores conservation and renewables as alternatives.

In the US, 23 states have developed Renewable Portfolio Standards. They will generate 10-30% of their electrical demand from renewable sources by 2020.

The Electric Power Research Institute estimates the US could reduce its electrical demand by 24-45% with existing technologies.

The US generates ~50% of electricity from coal and consumes ~1 billion tons of coal each year to produce power.

Efficiency (conservation) **alone** could reduce the demand for coal by 50-90%.

The DOE further estimates that the US could produce ~1 billion tons of biomass for energy production each year.

Biomass **alone** could eliminate the need to burn coal for electricity and would be carbon neutral.

In combination, energy efficiency and renewables (not just biomass, but wind, solar electric and thermal, geothermal, hydro, biogas, tidal and wave power) could satify most - if not all - of America's electrical demand.

[TheWraith]

31. Strawman much?

Kindly do some research before you go out scaremongering. Coal kills more people in one year, in the US alone, than a full-scale nuclear meltdown would. And we're already contaminating the biosphere with far more material coming from coal. Are you or are you not aware that coal-burning also releases radioactive material? Are you aware that the toxic waste products of a nuclear plant are measured in tons per year, whereas the toxic wastes of a coal plant--no less deadly--are measured in the kilotons per year?

Nuclear power isn't without risk, but the sheer bullshit scaremongering that's so prevalent in the anti-nuke crowd has done nothing other than drive us to further poison the air and water. Kindly read up on the dangers of coal mining, tailings, coal sludge, atmospheric fallout from the smokestacks, etcetera and then tell me that that really is more acceptable to you than nuclear plants, when you consider the fact that we haven't had a major nuclear accident anywhere on the planet in 20 years.

[ReadTomPaine]

38. For someone critical of scaremongering, you certainly indulge in quite a bit yourself.

Your entire first paragraph is spent committing precisely what you accuse me of in your first sentence. Why are you so defensive about this? The infrastructure that we have is neither the point, nor the question here so discussion of coal is irrelevant. The question is what sort of infrastructure we are going to be moving toward, and spending our GNP achieving.

Pouring money into nuclear power at this time is like trusting Halliburton or Enron. This is not a trustworthy, reputable industry - it's a black hole of fiscal responsibility & accountability. It's modeled after big oil, only worse. This makes support at the current juncture unwise given the massive risks associated to the public. The conversation is not about how bad coal is, it's about how much better or worse nuclear would be and it's simply not good enough yet.

I would rather see the money currently spent toward nuclear power redirected to alternatives until the industry becomes accountable, transparent and operationally failsafe. Nuclear power is still in R&D as far as I'm concerned and it should remain there until the rewards outweigh the risks and the CBA is more favorable.

This is simple stuff, Wraith. Don't fall in love with the tech before it's ready - you're hurting the future of a promising nuclear industry by leaving it in the wrong hands and pushing it out the door too early. The money belongs in the lab or elsewhere, especially now. While we are making the required advances to make nuclear power practical and safe, we can support promising alternative industries that are run responsibility and benefit us today. Everyone wins this way - science, the public and even the markets.

Now as far as recent major nuclear accidents, I'm afraid you're the one who needs to do the research. Start here - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/966855.stm

Japanese police have arrested six people in connection with the country's worst nuclear accident.

The six were all employed at the Tokaimura uranium processing plant at the time of the accident there in September 1999. They include former plant manager Kenzo Koshijima and a deputy manager in charge of processing operations.

Yutaka Yokokawa, the only survivor of the three workers who caused the accident, was also among those arrested.

...

They are the first to be arrested since the accident at the plant run by JCO Co, which killed two workers and exposed more than 400 people to radiation.

[TheWraith]

40. The conversation is exactly about how bad coal is.

And that's for a simple reason: an objective assessment shows that solar, wind, and biosynth fuels don't have a prayer of replacing all of our energy needs, or even a significant fraction. Our near term options are simple: fossil fuels, fission, or wait for fusion. Anything else is a pipe dream, and only contributes to our current lack of initive.

Oh, and my apologies for failing to include the phrase from my original admonition about there being no nuclear accidents not caused by deliberate human recklessness. I still invite you to research how many people have been sickened by the use of coal and fossil fuels.

[ReadTomPaine]

44. We are going to have to disagree on the promise of alternatives..

as I accept neither your premise nor your conclusions on that matter. However I suspect we are largely in agreement that an elegant fusion solution is going to be the answer to the technical questions facing nuclear power.

In an effort to keep this conversation constructive, what would your preferred scenario be for a transition from coal? How would you like to see the nuclear industry develop from what it is today?

[Nihil]

47. Nicely dodged. Let's try again.

> Your entire first paragraph is spent committing precisely what you
> accuse me of in your first sentence.

I'll leave you two to the bickering side-thread but I'd like to see
this issue addressed (rather than hastily avoided).

His first paragraph is as follows:

>> Kindly do some research before you go out scaremongering. Coal kills
>> more people in one year, in the US alone, than a full-scale nuclear
>> meltdown would. And we're already contaminating the biosphere with far
>> more material coming from coal. Are you or are you not aware that
>> coal-burning also releases radioactive material? Are you aware that the
>> toxic waste products of a nuclear plant are measured in tons per year,
>> whereas the toxic wastes of a coal plant--no less deadly--are measured
>> in the kilotons per year?

Ignoring his first sentence (opinion rather than factual), is there
anything in this paragraph that you believe is false (rather than
unpalatably accurate)?

If so, what?

1) That coal kills more people in one year, in the US alone, than a
full-scale nuclear meltdown would?

2) That we're already contaminating the biosphere with far more material
coming from coal?

3) That coal-burning also releases radioactive material?

4) That the toxic waste products of a nuclear plant are measured in tons
per year, whereas the toxic wastes of a coal plant--no less deadly--are
measured in the kilotons per year?

Which of the above do you believe to be wrong?
I look forward to reading your reply (if it addresses the above).

(Hint to other readers: All four points are incontrovertably proven already.)

[ReadTomPaine]

51. “The infrastructure that we have is neither the point, nor the question…

so discussion of coal is irrelevant. The question is what sort of infrastructure we are going to be moving toward, and spending our GNP achieving ... The conversation is not about how bad coal is, it's about how much better or worse nuclear would be and it's simply not good enough yet.”

To which you've responded; "No! Coal bad!".

Yes. Coal less than an ideal source of energy. This is why we need to transition away from it. What is the road map from there to here? That's what we need to be thinking about. I don't have a problem with nuclear technology. I have problems with the current nuclear industry and emphasis on production over research. It's a devil's deal. I'm sorry if this isn't the reply you are looking for, but you are asking the wrong questions of the wrong person.

Give me an accountable, transparent nuclear industry and a set of reasonably failsafe operational and disposal procedures and I'm on board. This is not an anti-nuclear stance.

[Nihil]

52. I responded to your criticism but, in answer to your question ...

> Give me an accountable, transparent nuclear industry and a set of
> reasonably failsafe operational and disposal procedures and I'm on board.

... I give you France as an example of how it can (and should) be done.

> This is not an anti-nuclear stance.

Glad to hear it. That didn't come across from your earlier posts.

:hi:

[Odin2005]

14. typical anti-nuclear scare-mongering

[ReadTomPaine]

16. I'm sorry that you have problems with reality, but the facts are what they are.

There is not a single error in my post above, everything I've written is verifiable. I'm sorry if these facts do not fit into your personal view of nuclear power, but reality does intrude in such things from time to time.

Until this industry can be responsibly controlled, made to work transparently and with full public accountability I cannot support it. You'd be better off listening to your political icons more closely instead of energy industry PR pamphlets.

I'd trust Paul Wellstone over a corporate spokesman in a heartbeat.

[jpak]

20. Fermi 1 - a commercial-sized breeder reactor caught fire and melted down in 1966

Every commercial-sized liquid sodium breeder ever built experienced a serious sodium fire that resulted in decommissioning or lengthly expensive repairs...and none have actually "bred" significant quantities of plutonium.

Browns Ferry 1 also experienced a devastating fire that nearly burned through the electrical cables used to control the reactor in 1975.

These "accidents" cost rate payers hundreds of millions of dollars, and the TMI accident cost PA rate payers nearly a billion dollars.

Pro-nuclear advocates selectively forget these inconvenient facts...

[TheWraith]

33. Anti-nuclear advocates selectively forget all facts.

Out of curiousity, what has been the cleanup costs for fossil fuel use?

How many accidents have there been at coal mines and plants?

How many fires have there been in coal mines, destroying the local environment and even entire towns?

[sweetheart]

17. Density from solar3 is 600MWH from 60 acres of mirror

That's a nuclear plant in 60 acres... from the wikipedia link.

There are enough hot/low deserts in the US to power the entire country
using this sort of technology.

This document suggests
http://www.solarpaces.org/SolarThermal_Thematic_Review.pdf
that the reason we don't have more solar plants like this:
http://terraserver.microsoft.com/image.aspx?T=1&S=10&Z=11&X=2575&Y=19294&W=3
is because of Enron, that its manipulation of markets in the early 90's
bankrupted the solar power generators.

The cost it says, which i'm sure is lower now is 8cents/KWH That's higher
than fossil fuels, but without any radioactive outputs, and if we include
the war-costs in fossil fuels, its cheaper.

[TheWraith]

34. A nuclear reactor usually produces 1000-2000 megawatts, not 600.

And "megawatt-hours" (MWH) aren't the same as megawatts. In fact, a solar array producing 600 MWH is actually producing one 24th the electricity of a nuclear plant running at 600MW, or about one 80th of a 2,000 MW nuclear reactor.

[ReadTomPaine]

39. Yes, and as a simple analogy, race cars make more power than street cars...

but are still unsuitable and unsafe for general public use.

They make plenty of power, sure, but that's not the point. How safe are they for people to be around all the time? How reliable are they? How difficult & costly are they to service once they do break down? How sustainable are they to own? How much can you trust the person selling one to you? How much can you trust the few people able to service it?

Some people are thrilled at the idea of owning one, but they aren't thinking about the whole picture.

[TheWraith]

41. You analogy bears no relation to the question at hand.

In generating electricity, getting more out of a single investment is always better. That is, unless you want to pave over Nevada with solar cells. That 60-acre solar plant? To produce the same real energy as a nuclear reactor, you'd have to build a cutting-edge solar facility 5,000 acres in size, or a conventional facility 35,000 acres in size. Worse yet, a 150,000 acre wind farm. Care to destroy that much open land, when a 50-acre nuclear plant does the same job?

Despite the fact that we haven't built any new nuclear plants in almost 30 years, and we've been building renewable energy all that time, nuclear power still accounts for 20% of our national electrical needs, compared to 7% for ALL solar, wind, hydro, etcetera. That's a huge difference. The facts are even more apparent when you break it down by type. Hydroelectric power accounts for 6.4 out of the 7% of non-nuclear renewables. Solar, despite all those big expensive deployments, is only 0.01% of all US electricity.

To say that solar has a real chance of supplying US energy needs is to ignore the VAST amount of electricity that we as a nation require. You can talk about conservation like it's going to make the problem go away, but even the best conservation won't eliminate our large and growing requirements for energy. It's part and parcel of running the world's most technologically advanced civilization. Do you know how much energy we require? It's around 4,000 terawatt hours a year. To accomodate that demand, you'd have to deploy around twenty billion kilowatts worth of solar cells.

[jpak]

22. Really???

There are >350 MW of solar thermal power capacity on-line in California today - and another 300-900 MW in development.

Portugal is building two large (64 and 116 MW) PV farms.

Korea is building two large (110 MW) PV arrays.

Germany deployed 837 MW of PV last year alone.

Luckily they didn't buy into the "solar is too difuse" red herring argument.

The DOE estimates that a PV array <100x100 miles square located in the US Southwest could satisfy all of the country's electrical power demand.

Oh yeah...

US uranium mining has collapsed. The US produces only 2 million pounds of yellowcake per year. US reactors use >62 million pounds per year - the rest is imported.

Dat nuclear dawg don't hunt...

[sweetheart]

26. are you sure thats PV and not STP?

I found a link for a portugal one
http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=39442

This article claims an 11Mw installation of PV in portugal is the world's largest:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/04/portugal_gets_w.php

Do you have any stats on the density issue between PV and STP?

Do you have any links to support the numbers you just put up, specifically california.
Do those numbers include home watering systems and individual home PV installations?

[jpak]

27. They are PV arrays....

http://ec.europa.eu/energy/idae_site/deploy/prj097/prj097_1.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/renewable/Story/0,2763,1477722,00.html

[TheWraith]

32. All those plants add up to much less than two nuclear reactors.

And that supposed DOE statement about the 100 x 100 mile PV array is a lie piled on top of a half truth. For starters, I've done the math, and in actuality you'd have to have an area more like 220 miles x 220 miles. That's 48,000 square miles, which is half the land area of Nevada. Then you have to figure in surplus capacity for future growth, a means to store energy, access roads to get at the cells, etcetera, all of which increase the neccessary area. I've done the math--by the time that you were done, you'd be paving over pretty much all of Nevada. But even if it were only half of Nevada, would you consider that an acceptable tradeoff, destroying that much wilderness? Not to mention the strip-mining that you'd need to do in order to get the raw materials? Last but not least, you'd require solar panel production many thousands of times greater than anything previously accomplished, which any engineer will tell you is insanely difficult.

And US uranium mining is completely irrelevant. For starters, we actually have the capacity to produce ample uranium from our own natural deposits, and second, do you know who are the two largest producers of uranium ore in the world? Canada and Australia. Yeah, that's as bad as OPEC.

[jpak]

36. The US is more dependent on imported uranium than imported oil

and will never be uranium self sufficient.

Furthermore, the US is in keen competition with China, India, Pakistan, France, S. Korea, the UK, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Finland, Belgium, the former USSR Baltic states, Mexico - countries that import most if not all of their uranium for nuclear power plants.

The World Nuclear Association recently reported that there will be an 11% shortfall in global uranium supplies in the next 5 years...

Global uranium production is currently 36 thousand tonnes per year and demand is 67 thousand tons per year. The difference is made up by rapidly dwindling uranium stockpiles...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=115&topic_id=29898

China and Japan have been locking in uranium supplies from Australia and Canada - and locking competitors out.

Who's gonna lose out in that contest???

The US has the resources to drastically reduce its energy consumption and transition to a sustainable carbon-neutral renewable energy economy.

There is absolutely no need to waste our money on dead-end nuclear energy.

[TheWraith]

43. The uranium issue is a red herring.

A big part of the reason for production shortfalls is because of a lack of new mining--mainly opposed by the same people who argue that nuclear power is evil and a "dead end technology." Even if we could never buy another pound of uranium, we have more than enough on our own territory to make it worth our while.

[ReadTomPaine]

7. Perhaps, but views on nuclear power are not the issue for me here

It's the insult of seeing that crass subject line next to Paul Wellstone's face and the hypocrisy it demonstrates that's the issue.

[jpak]

19. Photovoltaics, wind and wave power are multi-billion $ per year global industries

that are growing exponentially (and in double digits).

The US alone will deploy >3000 MW of wind capacity - this year - that will generate the same amount of electricity as a 1000 MW nuclear plant - and will deploy more wind capacity every year indefinitely.

How many US nuclear plants have been ordered since 1973????

***ZERO***

Globally, there are 59,000 MW of wind power capacity in place today and it's growing at >11,000 MW per year.

How effing impractical is that????

...and another thing...

Global PV production will produce the equivalent of at least one 1000 MW nuclear reactor per year starting 2008-2010 at the present rate of growth.

New wave and tidal power power projects will exhibit the same rates of growth and power output within 10 years.

Maine already uses hydro and wood biomass power plants to generate ~50% of its in-state electrical demand.

Maine has at least 1000 MW of new wind and several hundred more MW of tidal power capacity in development.

These projects and existing hydro and biomass plants will generate **at least** 60% of the state's electricity in the near future.

How effing "impractical" is that?????

[TheWraith]

30. All of which means absolutely nothing.

You can throw around all sorts of figures, but the reality is that solar continues to be a fraction of 1% of all energy generation, and it's not growing nearly fast enough to supplant other energy needs. You're talking about replacing one nuclear reactor a year, MAYBE, starting in three or four years. But there are dozens of such reactors in the US alone, hundreds in the world. At its current rate of growth, solar won't produce enough power to compete for at least 50 or 60 years.

More to the point, you haven't countered, or even acknowledged, the simple facts about the amount of area needed to produce solar energy. To supply the entire US with all its energy needs, you would in effect have to pave over all of Nevada with solar cells.

[jpak]

35. Not true - is the area of Nevada 100 miles square??? Nope

PV installations do not have to "pave over" anything. There is enough space available in commercial/residential roofs, urban brownfields and agricultural fence rows to accommodate all the space needed for PV and wind power.

Again, new US wind installations are bringing the equivalent of a 1000 MW nuclear reactor on-line every single year - today - and soon it will be 2+ per year.

And NO new nuclear reactors are under construction in the US today.

Furthermore, if the US had to depend solely on its domestic uranium supplies (@ $100/kg) they would last less than 26 years - and even less if we expand US nuclear capacity.

Nice try though!!!

[TheWraith]

42. Try actually reading and understanding.

I already pointed out that that figure of 100 miles on a side is completely wrong. Read my figures. Second, do you have any idea how hard it would be to find well over 50,000 square miles of area for solar cells on rooftops and fencelines? Again--that's half the square area of Nevada, just for the cells, completely ignoring access and storage equipment.

"Again, new US wind installations are bringing the equivalent of a 1000 MW nuclear reactor on-line every single year - today - and soon it will be 2+ per year."

No, they're not. That's another false fact. Compare the megawatt hours, not just the megawatts. Solar and wind come with high MW numbers, but their actual MWh production is much lower because they only produce either a few hours a day, or at well below capacity. Wind power produces about 0.04% of all US electricity, despite the fact that we've been building wind farms for decades. Our 103 nuclear plants, on the other hand, produce 20% of all US power. That's about 0.2% from each and every plant, meaning that all existing wind power in the US only adds up to one fifth the output of a nuclear plant.

Last but not least, even if your figures are accurate, I would call 26 years of total energy independence pretty good. And you know who are the two leading uranium producers in the world? Canada and Australia, hardly OPEC countries. Besides which, in 26 years we'll likely have better and newer technologies such as fusion reactors that we can begin moving into service.

[roody]

28. Tell my $0 electric bill that solar is not practical.

Correction: Tell my -$13.00 electric bill.

[roody]

29. Correction: --$34.00

[Odin2005]

13. So what? Al Gore dosn't like nuclear either, that doesn't mean i hate Al Gore

I have Wellstone as my avatar because of his economic progressivism, not his enviromental views.

[NotGivingUp]

48. time for you to do some research and use the brain that you were hopefully given

[Endangered Specie]

21. Botany Bay?

Botany Bay!!




(figured this thread needed some lightening up)

[ReadTomPaine]

24. Khaaaan!

http://www.khaaan.com/

;)

[IA_Seth]

23. Then what?

The link isn't working, did the article say what the hell greenpeace planned on doing when they got there? Harassing the freighter doesn't seem to be the smartest thing to do if concerned about the environment, or don't oceans count?

[Miss Chybil]

37. We're a nuclear dump to the world now? What the hell? nt

[cyberpj]

45. US to be Aussie nuclear dump (Jan '05 article) - Also Japan Uranium soil!

Here are a variety of articles and links I saved in 2005 - some are now gone, some are still there.


US to be Aussie nuclear dump
By Amanda Hodge
January 21, 2005

THE US will become Australia's nuclear dumping ground in a remarkable 10-year agreement that takes the pressure off the Howard Government to find a domestic waste site.

The agreement to take spent fuel rods from the proposed new Lucas Heights reactor in Sydney was sealed at ministerial level late last year following talks between the US Department of Energy and the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation.

original link - story no longer available
http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,12003697%255E421,00.html

=============================================
US to be Aussie nuclear dump
By Amanda Hodge
January 21, 2005 The Australian

(snip...)
The question of where to store the nation's nuclear waste became a federal election issue last October after John Howard backed away from a plan to force a repository on South Australia.

(snip...)
ANSTO spokesman Steve McIntosh yesterday hailed the US agreement as a coup for Australia.

"We have always viewed the spent fuel question as the biggest hurdle we had to jump and that seems to be out of the way," Mr McIntosh said.

(snip...)
The US decision represents a special exemption for Australia, in part to reward ANSTO for helping develop a low-enriched uranium fuel capable of producing radio-pharmaceuticals but not open to potential abuse.

The US already accepts spent fuel containing uranium previously enriched in the US from 41 countries, including Australia, to reduce the risk that residual uranium will be used for nuclear weapons.

But the proposed Lucas Heights replacement research reactor will use low-enriched uranium fuel which does not come under this agreement and is not easily reprocessed.

THIS LINK WORKS:
-http://nucnews.net/nucnews/2005nn/0501nn/050121nn.txt

Can't find much else re this story on the net now -it's gone.


Japan Ships Uranium-Contaminated Soil to U.S. for Disposal

October 04, 2005 — By Associated Press
TOKYO — Japan's nuclear research and development agency on Monday shipped uranium-contaminated soil to an undisclosed location in the United States for disposal, officials said.

The Japan Atomic Energy Agency sent 290 cubic meters (10,150 cubic feet) of radioactive soil from the port of Kobe, part of 3,000 cubic meters (105,000 cubic feet) of contaminated soil from a uranium ore plant in western Japan, said Atsushi Oku, an official of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology which oversees the agency.

He declined to disclose the destination of the ship, but Kyodo News agency said it was headed for Everett, Washington.

The soil will be sent to a company which will extract the uranium, Oku said, declining to give the name of the company.

However, the watchdog group Citizen's Nuclear Information Center said the soil would be sent to a company in Utah.

In 1988, abnormally high levels of radioactivity were found in soil in Yurihama in Tottori prefecture (state), where the agency's predecessor had a plant which extracted uranium from uranium ore for enrichment, according to the CNIC. In 2004, Japan's Supreme Court ruled that the contaminated soil must be removed.

Officials had been looking for a place inside Japan for disposal of the soil, but could not find a suitable location, Oku said.

Japan currently does not have facilities to dispose of radioactive byproducts from uranium enrichment.

CNIC criticized the move, saying that "countries which are unable to handle their own radioactive waste are not qualified to produce such waste."

Source: Associated Press

[Miss Chybil]

46. Why do I feel like there is a big "For Sale" sign on our country?

Probably because there is...

Thanks for the info. Now I'm even more depressed.

[cyberpj]

50. And none of us will get a penny from it, either.

Even more depressing than the info itself is how hard it is to find. Once found articles on the net are removed and I've never seen any of this published in the corporate media. All such information is withheld from the public to prevent uproar but I'm starting to wonder if Americans are even still capable of uproar!

Will we ever have a true, free media again? Seems doubtful here in the corporate states of america. So, now, imagine what other information we don't even know.

[NotGivingUp]

49. makes you feel real good, don't it?