Iran to launch first nuclear power plant in October, says energy minister

[bananas]

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/06/25/africa/ME-GEN-Iran-Nuclear-Power.php

Iran to launch first nuclear power plant in October, says energy minister
The Associated Press
Published: June 25, 2007

TEHRAN, Iran: Iran's energy minister said Monday the country would launch its first nuclear power plant in October, state-run television reported.

A Russian company leading construction of the plant near Iran's southern port of Bushehr, earlier this year delayed its launch, which had been set for September, saying Tehran was behind schedule on payments.

<snip>

Construction of the Bushehr plant began in 1974 with help from then-West Germany. Work was then interrupted during the 1979 Islamic revolution that toppled the pro-Western Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and brought hard-line clerics to power. Iraq also bombed the plant during its 1980-88 war with Iran.

When Iran tried to resume the project after the war, the Germans refused to help. Iran turned to Russia, signing a US$1 billion (€0.74 billion) contract to build the 1,000-megawatt Bushehr plant in 1995. It was first scheduled to open in 1999, but has suffered many delays.

[Massacure]

1. Iran will "launch" it?

Is it just me, or is the word "launch" a bit of a loaded word?

[bananas]

2. LOL - A lot of naval terminology is used with nuclear power

For example, a group of reactors is called a "fleet".

[NNadir]

3. This is absolutely true.

The same thing is true of taxis: In New York City we have a taxi "fleet." I have noticed that many taxis are driven by people who have been in the Navy.

By the way, I'm interested to know if you think that Iran should keep burning dangerous fossil fuels and dumping dangerous fossil fuel waste into the atmosphere.

Iran maintains a variety of weapons systems fueled by dangerous fossil fuels and they have actually killed people, about a million Iraqis. (Iran was killing Iraqis before it became internationally fashionable.) Do you think that Iran should be denied access to dangerous fossil fuels which have actually killed people or are you only concerned with what Iran could do in theory.

My view is that the Iranians have a right to nuclear power. Every human being on the planet it does.

I do note that claims that only nations like the United States have a right to nuclear materials has been the justification for dangerous fossil fuel based war mongering. What's your view? Should the United States attack Iran just because Cheney et al say the word "uranium?"

Care to assist him in any way with raising the fear level?

[Massacure]

5. Didn't the EU offer to handle Iran's uranium to alleviate fears of a weapons program?

When I hear the word "launch", it reminds me of missiles. As much as I think the U.S. government and media does its fair share of fear-mongering, I don't entirely trust Ahmadinejad. I don't mind Iran building nuclear reactors, but I think it would be good for the EU or Russia to handle Iran's fuel cycle as Ahmadinejad is prone to being a nutcase.

[Dead_Parrot]

6. Funny, it makes me think of boats

Mind you, I've spent more time living on the coast than I have living under a crackpot president and his fear-mongering press.

Interestingly, "Launch" is from the old french "Lanceare", meaning to throw a spear (in turn from the latin "Lancea", a sort of small spear): "Lance" is related.
Make of that what you will. :silly:

[NNadir]

7. Yes. Russia also offered facilities.

I believe that the Iranians are wrong to enrich fuel, but the only ethical way for the world to confront this issue is to make all enrichment facilities - including those in the United States - open for international inspection. We need to fund the IAEA to provide trained inspectors for all of the world's facilities and they should have unannounced audit powers.

Ideally the world would set up internationally controlled enrichment plants.

We should also push for those reactor designs that use the thorium cycle to complicate the isotopic mix of reactor fuels.

Nevertheless, operations of the reactors themselves will be of service to the entire human race.

[bananas]

8. I knew some nuclear engineers who "jumped ship" back in the 70's

[NNadir]

9. Well you certainly sound as if your thinking dates from the 1970s.

Of course, there was little experimental evidence for any of the dumb ass suppostions made in the 1970s.

When the anti-nuclear consumer Ralph Nader went around in the late 1970's saying that the world would be 100% powered by solar energy by the year 2000, or reporting as he did in 1977 that if all of the US nuclear plants were not shut within five years there would be civil war, there was no way of discounting his soothsaying.

Of course we all know today that Ralph Nader is a moron at best, and a deliberate corporate stooge at worst. Not one damn thing he has said has proved to be true. Bush is not the same as Gore and solar energy is not an important form of energy. The nuclear industry did not shut down, and it did prove to be dangerous. Oh, and fluoride in drinking water did not kill everybody in the United States.

I knew some renewable energy advocates in the 1970s who had blow dried hair, gold chains with "Onks," "pyramid power," and polyester purple suits. So what?

Does this make me an authority on style?

I personally know a Naval Officer who thinks nuclear energy is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and he spent decades operating reactors and overseeing their operations. We've been chatting a lot about nuclear energy recently in some detail. He is a tireless worker for nuclear energy and a great guy.

[bananas]

10. Al Gore talked about the 70's when he appeared before Congress

He told how Tennessee was going to build 21 nuke plants,
but cancelled 19 of them and only completed 2.
He also explained why that was relevant today.
Watch him, maybe you'll learn something:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=100192&mesg_id=100260

[NNadir]

11. Don't you have a report I can watch from Jesus?

There are two kinds of antinukes. Those who think that it is 1975 and those who think it is 2050.

Neither one are living in the real world or in real time.

As of 2004, Tennessee gets 29% of its electricity from nuclear energy, 11% from hydro and 60% from coal.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/at_a_glance/states/statestn.html

It would have saved lots of lives if they'd built the nuclear plants, everyone of those people who died from air pollution caused by the coal in fact.

I'm certain, of course, that you are absolutely thrilled - I can tell from you silly gloating over 1970's stupidity - about these states of affairs. It bothers you not a whit that a smarter 1970's generation could have left us the State of Tennessee as climate change free.

Tommorrow's Sunday. Head out to the Church of Gore, fall on your knees, rend you clothes, and pray to Saint Gore of the Cross for redemption.

[bananas]

12. None of the congressmen disagreed with Al's point

The Republican congressmen disagreed with Al about a lot of things,
but they knew he was right about this.
They disagreed with him about global warming,
they disagreed with him about what to do about it,
but nobody disagreed with him on this point.

[phantom power]

13. Wait. We're supposed to find *congresscritters* convincing?

Nyet.

[bananas]

15. Let me put it this way.

Suppose back in 2003 both sides of congress agreed that invading Iraq would be expensive and not have much effect on Global Terrorism, then voted down the IWR.

[Dogmudgeon]

16. What Al Gore REALLY said ... without your spin

I transcribed the sequences you have been claiming that "prove" Gore is anti-nuclear. I also went looking for transcripts. It seems that no full transcription of Gore's remarks to the House on 3/24/2007 exists.

The real content is different than you represent it.

(2:05:53) You mentioned nuclear -- uh, I'm sure that'll come up again, I'm not, I'm not an absolutist in being opposed to nuclear, I think it's likely to play some role, I don't think it's going to play a major role, uh, but I think it's going to play some additional role, and I think the reason it's going to be limited is mainly the cost. They're so expensive and they take so long to build, and at present, they only come in one size, extra large, and people don't want to make that kind of investment in an uncertain market for energy demand.

Gore is plainly talking about the conservatism of the market -- the same problem that has crippled most new energy development. It is the reason, for instance, that the growth of wind energy has been projected to be about 35% per year over the last five years, yet the actual output has barely doubled, a real growth rate of under 15% per year (assuming it did double, and using the Rule of 70).

And, yes, I think that Gore is out-of-date on the state of the art in nuclear energy generation. Nuclear energy is, in fact, scalable. And it takes a long time to build because they can't build when "activists" have chained themselves to the gates, or filed 30 different times for "injunctive relief". (They sure aren't doing that at coal plants.) Al Gore has also been concentrating on the environment, not the problems of getting a nuclear reactor built. For a man who single-handedly raised the public's awareness of the present climate crisis, after a series of humiliations that the press and the progressive left contributed to, I give him a lot of credit. If he's a little off the mark on a side issue, it's no big deal.

Gore was also supportive of carbon commoditization, just like your other bludgeon, the IPCC4 policy recommendations. Again, Gore and the IPCC are not to be faulted. But YOU should know better -- especially if you retain your anti-nuclearist position, as these are all issues that are economic control issues, not nuclear ones.

While you focus narrowly on Gore's statement that nuclear energy won't play a major role, you overlook the far more profound implication in his statement: energy money is scared money. He goes into detail a few minutes later. --

(2:18:59) I'm not opposed to nuclear; I have deep questions about it, I'm concerned about it; I used to be enthusiastic about it.

Back when I represented Congressman Gordon's district, TVA had 21 nuclear power plants under construction; and then later I represented Oak Ridge where we're immune to the effects of nuclear radiation, you know (laughter) so I was very enthusiastic about it. But, but uh, 19 of those 21 plants were canceled, and I'm sure Bart (?) gets the same questions I used to get about whether those partly finished cooling towers might be used for a grain silo ... but people are upset, still, that they have had to pay for 'em and not be able to get electricity for 'em ...

And I think the stoppage of the nuclear industry was really less due to Three Mile Island and Chernobyl and environmental concerns, and more due to the fact that after the OPEC oil crises of '73 and '79, the projection for electricity demand went from 7% annualized compounded, down to 1% and, and when energy prices are going up, the uncertainty over how much they can plan for also goes up.

Now electricity ought not follow the price of oil, but it does, because there's just enough, uh, fungibility between oil and coal on the margins that electricity chases oil. Now oil's back at $60 a barrel; where's it gonna be a year from now? We don't know, but the fact of the uncertainty is itself the reason why these utilities do not want to place all their chips in one large bet that doesn't mature for another fifteen years at a very expensive cost. The new generation, there may be smaller incremental power plants, standardized, safer, more reliable; perhaps we may get a solution to the long-term storage of waste issue -- I'm assuming we will; reactors are ... (chair interrupts at 2:20:52)

In other words, progress in nuclear energy came to an end because of an energy glut. If you'll notice, progress in non-nuclear renewable energy came to an end because of the same energy glut. Ronald Reagan rode into Washington on a flood tide of cheap crude, promises of eternal affluence, and a pocketful of secret deals made with OPEC via the group we now call the "Bush Family Evil Empire".

Nuclear energy has taken a long time to get started again because the corporations are unwilling to spend money on a long-term project. Like most any energy project.

Today, most of the Western world's "wealth" is made by trading derivative, secondary, and abstract "financial instruments". Not only is there a market-driven reticence to build nuclear energy generators, there is a reticence to build more oil refinery capacity, or wind farms, or to even repair the sidewalks in the poor section of town.

Gore may also be concerned that if he advocates for nuclear energy, he will be pilloried by the current crop of activists, who are more concerned with making showy public statements than with social change and economic justice. Damned right he will. They did it in 2000, and once they get going again, "Swift Boat" won't begin to compare. There is as yet no significant progressive voice for nuclear energy ... but as you are finding out, that is changing. And it's going to be changing fast.

Now at least people can read for themselves what Gore really said -- and WHY he said it. There is a lot more to it than being the premature victory whoop for your "team". The fact that we are so averse to risk, seek only easy money, and have neglected our physical infrastructure -- all the while destroying nature -- is going to prove to be the coup de grace to both Peak Oil and Climate Change.

--p!

[bananas]

17. Thanks for transcribing that - I'm not spinning anything.

I've had links in my sigline to his videos for a long time specifically so people can see and hear for themselves exactly what he said.


What Al Gore said: "I don't think it's going to play a major role, uh, but I think it's going to play some additional role"

I'm not spinning anything - that's exactly what he said. He's said the same thing a number of times.
He's been more specific elsewhere - he doesn't think it will be much more of a percentage than it is now.
When I quote him, the anti-Gore "pro-nukes" go ballistic and spin it every which way they can - as you just did, claiming he's "out-of-date".
No, he's well aware of the state of the art of nuclear and other energy technologies.


What Al Gore said: "And I think the stoppage of the nuclear industry was really less due to Three Mile Island and Chernobyl and environmental concerns, and more due to the fact that after the OPEC oil crises of '73 and '79, the projection for electricity demand went from 7% annualized compounded, down to 1% and, and when energy prices are going up, the uncertainty over how much they can plan for also goes up."

How Pigwidgeon spins it: "In other words, progress in nuclear energy came to an end because of an energy glut."

You've gone beyond spinning his words - Al says "energy crises", you change that into "energy glut".
The exact opposite of what he said.


I'm not sure which "team" you think I'm on - apparently it includes Al Gore, every congressman, IPCC, NEI, MIT, CMI, PWC, ...

[Dogmudgeon]

18. No "spin," just historical facts

When I quote him, the anti-Gore "pro-nukes" go ballistic and spin it every which way they can - as you just did, claiming he's "out-of-date".

When you quote him, you claim to speak for him. You use his words to oppose nuclear energy development, though he says no such thing.

I do not quote Al Gore as being pro-nuclear. I never quote him to make pro-nuclear arguments. That would be misrepresenting him. I am also respecting what I perceive to be his strategy of encouraging solidarity among environmentalists.

However, you DO misrepresent him by quoting him to support an anti-nuclear position -- frequently.

And that is spin.

I'm not sure which "team" you think I'm on - apparently it includes Al Gore, every congressman, IPCC, NEI, MIT, CMI, PWC, ...

So the whole world stands with you now? Or are you simply cribbing from Lackoff and trying to marginalize me by reframing?

Yep, that's spin, all right.

"Al says "energy crises", you change that into "energy glut".
The exact opposite of what he said."

Actually, here is what "Al" says, verbatim:

And I think the stoppage of the nuclear industry was really less due to Three Mile Island and Chernobyl and environmental concerns, and more due to the fact that after the OPEC oil crises of '73 and '79, the projection for electricity demand went from 7% annualized compounded, down to 1% and, and when energy prices are going up, the uncertainty over how much they can plan for also goes up.

You're right; Gore didn't say "oil glut" at all, he said "oil crises". He was concentrating on the microeconomy of nuclear energy investment in reply to being goaded into taking a position on nuclear energy. But I wasn't changing his words at all -- he said "after", and I was talking about "after". I bolded it in the quote. YOU are the only one twisting words here. There was, in fact, an oil glut that came after these crises, including the era where increasing prices caused the market to avoid investment.

The price of oil is a matter of record, not spin.

Price chases demand, in Gore's phraseology. Energy prices went up; confidence disappeared; investment soured; demand went down; energy prices fell. A cartel can game this cycle fairly easily. In most industries, this kind of manipulative control is known as "pump-and-dump" -- though big oil didn't get the high prices it wanted, only the increased dependence. They also got a lot more oil-, natural gas-, and coal- fired generators built over the following 20 years -- capitalist competition triumphant! The Reagan Era of cheap oil destroyed the incentive for nuclear and non-nuclear renewable energy, and twelve years of Republican politicking froze development solid. Gore is clearly talking about the era's energy demand destruction, and the aversion to risk that investors have.

It's part of our history.

It became cheaper, much cheaper, to keep burning petrochemicals (and coal, for related reasons that don't really figure into the oil crisis era). No solar collectors. No wind turbines. No nukes. No CAFE standards enforcement. And more greenhouse gas.

We do not control our energy market, our energy market controls US. It destroys our ability to plan and to develop our resources in an optimum manner. Furthermore, I strongly suspect there will be another attempt to game the system as soon as we begin to implement effective oil demand reduction of any kind.

Here is an account from a fairly neutral point of view, the recent history of the city of Houston. And here is a much better overview from a "friendly" source. Finally, here is a detailed explanation from WTRG Energy Economics, which has a free-market bias.

And if you continued listening, you heard several more attempts by the GOP to push Gore into committing to a stance on nuclear energy because it is currently a wedge issue among the left. On the other hand, the days of the GOP's "ownership" of nuclear energy are numbered. We are going to have nuclear energy, and its development will be determined by the progressive movement, not the Greedy Oil Party.

The anti-nuclearist use of Gore's words likewise overlooks the implications for all energy development. Both OPEC and Anglo-American oil interests pumped-and-dumped when they wanted more political power, when they wanted to break energy-independence programs, and when they wanted to dominate the world market for energy. Their new tactic is to ride the production plateau and claim they are capping production to moderate the impact of peak oil. The will claim to want to "wean us off our addiction". And when we start to reduce our dependence on their oil again, I have no doubt they will miraculously discover a huge amount of new oil which will then be depleted as soon as we get back into the "easy motoring" habit.

We have also seen, just this year, the obscenity of turning food into fuel for profit, and the commoditization of greenhouse gas with the start of a new era of profiteering. All it will take will be one cold year to derail our resolve in controlling carbon gas emissions, and likewise a few new oil fields to scrap wind, solar, tidal, and nuclear development.

Spin is required to "prove" that Gore has committed to any particular energy policy when he is promoting climate and ecological remediation. But spin is not required to read economic history. Gore's explanation of market activity on nuclear energy is a simple reading of that history -- not sweeping support or rejection of a particular "flavor" of energy. If either of us were to say so, it would be spin.

--p!

[NNadir]

19. Well done.

[bananas]

20. Bullshit.

When you quote him, you claim to speak for him. You use his words to oppose nuclear energy development, though he says no such thing.

No, I'm not claiming to speak for him. I let him speak for himself. It's not my problem that you don't like what he says.

I do not quote Al Gore as being pro-nuclear. I never quote him to make pro-nuclear arguments. That would be misrepresenting him. I am also respecting what I perceive to be his strategy of encouraging solidarity among environmentalists.

I agree with that - quoting him to make pro-nuclear arguments would be misrepresenting him.

However, you DO misrepresent him by quoting him to support an anti-nuclear position -- frequently.

No - I quote him to show what his position is. And he's made his position clear -- frequently.

[Name removed]

22. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Dogmudgeon]

23. Ah, bullshit -- popular and content-free

I have no problem with what Al Gore says or believes. And since you don't even appear to read most of what I write, you really don't know what I do or don't like.

You no longer even respond to factual information -- your response to it has been, on a number of occasions, a content-free "Bullshit". Like this one.

Likewise, I find it impossible to respond intelligently to appeals to popularity, authority, or snark, other than to point them out. When I try to go further than that, I usually make an ass of myself. So that's it for me.

--p!

[bananas]

24. Here's a chart of new reactor orders and a list of reactors cancelled

Al Gore: oil crises of 73 and 79, demand down, prices up
Pidgewidgeon: In other words, an oil glut.

Nope.

They started cancelling reactors in 1974, immediately after the 1973 oil crisis.
Here's a list of cancelled reactors (pdf).
http://www.nei.org/documents/U.S.%20Commercial%20Nuclear%20Power%20Reactors%20Canceled.pdf

New reactor orders dropped like a rock immediately after the 1973 oil crisis.


The oil glut didn't happen until the 1980s.

[Dogmudgeon]

25. Once Upon A Time: Plenty of oil, destruction of demand

Now we're back on track. Well, with the thread, anyway.

First of all, the graph you use to illustrate oil supply is actually a graph of oil prices. The availability of oil is a different animal. Cartels often manipulate the price of the goods they are offering, and OPEC used their goods as an "Oil Weapon" (in their words). This weapon, though, backfired. Oil was plentiful after the OPEC boycott, even moreso than before.

Using the "oil weapon" destroyed demand. Some of it was healthy -- increased efficiency and intentional conservation -- and some of it was unhealthy -- businesses ruined, capital debased, wealth squandered. But suddenly, the market for oil, and energy in general, collapsed. Prices stayed high as a result of cartel economics, keeping demand further suppressed. There was plenty of oil to be had, but not plenty of money.

You can see it on graphs of oil production and demand. An orderly and vigorous growth of energy demand stops abruptly in 1973, drops, then recovers at about half its previous rate. The economy was in chaos for a decade, and it took until the 1990s for demand to return to levels of the early '70s. And it was all triggered by an oil boycott that lasted five months.

Imagine what a serious depletion-triggered crash would do.

The caption to your reactor construction chart -- from a PBS story about nuclear energy -- summarizes my argument quite neatly:

FACT: Between 1974 and 1991, more than 200 power plants were canceled -- about half fossil fuel, half nuclear -- as demand for electricity dropped after the '73 Arab oil embargo. Plant cancellations were not the result of the TMI accident, as is commonly thought.

So, it wasn't just the nuclear industry that took a hit. Other forms of power generation likewise suffered. Even coal plant construction was depressed, and lagged for some years. While new reactor construction stopped, the ones in service or nearing completion stayed on line and have continued to provide base-load energy for three decades or more. But the nascent solar and wind industries died in their cribs. Although I am pro-nuclear, I am not against other technologies, and I have often lamented that loss. We lost 30 years of nuts-and-bolts experience in a wide variety of energy technologies.

There was plenty of oil after 1973, but not plenty of demand. Energy investors demanded low-risk, cheap, sure-thing investments. And a new breed of oilmen stepped into the power vacuum to profit from OPEC's disaster. George H. W. Bush was one of the leaders of this pack. Almost all new energy funding went into rebuilding the demand for oil. For a long time, it was the only game in town.

This is why I can't understand why so many lefties think oilmen are uniformly pro-nuclear. Oil tycoons have held energy and politics in a death grip for over half a century. Their interest in nuclear energy has always been strictly as a power grab, because they can't privately possess it -- uranium is too widespread, and the government is always involved in its use. They are also moving quickly into biofuels, solar, wind, and other emerging methods of power generation which they CAN privately possess and control. Dick Cheney comes across to me less as a straightforward promoter of nuclear energy than as a vulture leering at attractive new ventures and sneering "you're next!"

But no matter what mix of energy technologies we have in the future, the powerful and ruthless will seize them. Unless we are prepared for an ongoing political struggle to democratize power, wealth, and control of resources, we will survive only as well-schooled serfs.

--p!

[bananas]

21. They started cancelling nukes *during* the energy crisis. nt

[Name removed]

26. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[NNadir]

14. You're very liberal at interpreting other people's opinions, not so good at offering...

...your own thoughts.

Tennessee gets 60% of its electricity from coal. Good or bad?

You won't say, of course. Instead you will offer some rather weak interpretation of what someone else said.

To repeat, 1970's thinking was stupid. It killed people, lots of them. If the nuclear plants had been built, Tennessee would not burn coal.

Got it?

No?

Why am I not surprised?

Say seven Hail Gores, 20 Our Cindys and maybe a vision will come to you.

[IDemo]

4. That has got to be one incredibly huge booster rocket n/t