About That Nuclear Revival... (from the Executive Director of the Sierra Club)

[bananas]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carl-pope/about-that-nuclear-reviva_b_228796.html

Carl Pope
Executive Director of the Sierra Club
Posted: July 9, 2009 01:56 PM

About That Nuclear Revival...

As the Senate gets ready to examine energy and climate legislation, America's most serious welfare dependent is back at the taxpayer trough again. Unsatisfied by a set of federal loan guarantees, subsidies, and other trinkets and baubles that would make the greediest gold digger blush, the nuclear complex is demanding still more. Passage of any legislation that requires those who emit carbon to pay for the carbon sinks they preempt will, appropriately and unavoidably, mean a competitive advantage for nuclear power. If carbon permits sell for $30 per ton of CO2, as the EPA estimates they would under the House bill, the cost of coal-fired electricity vs. nuclear would go up $.03 per kilowatt hour-- a healthy boost.

But that's not enough. Instead Republican senators like Lamar Alexander are calling for a federal commitment to build 100 new nuclear plants. It appears that what is envisaged is that the taxpayers actually pay for building these plants -- but not that the taxpayers would ever be repaid from the sales of electricity. No, the profits from this investment would flow to shareholders in big utility and nuclear companies. This is not even a bailout -- I guess you could call it a bail-forward. And it would be very expensive.

<snip>

But there has always been an interesting question -- is the problem nuclear technology per se, or is it the nuclear industry and its culture of welfare dependence -- something that in other contexts is referred to as the soft-bigotry of low expectations? If we really made nuclear stand on its own, would it learn to build plants that make economic sense? It appears we will never find out.

Instead we are witnessing the collapse in Europe of a much bruited -- and publicly subsidized -- nuclear revival. This is the month that Finland's Olkiluoto 3 nuclear power plant was scheduled to go on-line, the vanguard of a new generation of safe, affordable nuclear reactors. Instead, Olkiluoto is at least three and a half years late and more than 50 percent over budget. A similar plant being built in France is 20 percent over budget and struggling to stay on schedule only 18 months after breaking ground. In Britain, where the nuclear utility is owned by the French utility EDF, there is no sign of new orders being placed, and EDF is complaining that it can't afford to build new plants if it must compete with renewables.

<snip>

[madokie]

1. Has private money built any of the nuke plants we have here in the USA?

[bananas]

3. I don't think so.

They were built before deregulation, when infrastructure was built by public entities like WPPSS and TVA.
When the electricity system was privatized piratized, the plants were sold for pennies on the dollar to companies like Entergy, a company the state AG recently described as "kind of like the mafia".

[NNadir]

2. You mean the executive director of the "Drive to the mall in my SUV"

and "discharge my environmental responsibility by buying a calendar on recycled paper every year at Christmas" club?

He, she or it doesn't like the world's largest, by far, source of climate change gas free energy?

Why am I not surprised?

Last I heard from the Sierra Club, they were debating the wisdom of "protecting the environment" by building a wall between the parts of Mexico the US stole in 1848 and the parts that still contain largely Spanish speaking people.

There are ZERO people in the Sierra Club who know shit from shinola about energy, except when it comes to driving up to the Shell station to fill the Navigator on their way to the "we care about climate" meeting.