Nuclear Power, The Real Alternative
June 12th, 2008 by jacob
The price of gas should force us to invest in alternative energy sources on economic grounds alone. The fact that much of the world’s readily available oil supply is in the hands of would be dictators like Chavez, or established dictators like the Saudi’s or outright religious lunatics like the Mullahs of Iran should force us to invest in alternative sources of energy, on security grounds alone. The fact that the much of the Western World (Britain, Germany, France Japan) already have adopted nuclear energy as that alternative should give us pause as to why we have not. That a ‘carbon-free’ source of energy would improve air quality by reducing emission particulates, ozone and carbon monoxide is established fact. The impact of carbon dioxide emission leading to Global Warming, while not a proven fact, is something to consider. If we reduce our carbon footprint, without buying carbon credits, Al Gore will go broke; such a laudable goal is worthy of a Manhattan Project.
Nuclear power is the only alternative that is anywhere near cost effective. The rest of the current crop of alternatives are economic losers. Research and development will be required on a massive scale for many of these ideas. Solar and geothermal power are untested in the market on an industrial scale. Wind power has been tried in CA and required huge capital expenditure for little energy, and is economically uncompetitive; even with $100+ per barrel oil, it will require a technological breakthrough to become viable. These lines of development effort have all three of the economic millstones around their necks: high-cost, high-risk and indeterminate schedule. All of these economic millstones make the alternative energy schemes attractive to the Democrats and their friends in ELF, Green Peace and the Sierra Club.
Nuclear power is a proven source of power that is used world wide. Nuclear power has been used for years. Proven nuclear power plant designs exist. In short, in comparison to the other alternatives nuclear power is low cost, low risk, and critically, has a determinant schedule. In a market that has not been politically skewed, as ours is, this power source would not be confined to less than ten percent of the energy production. This skewing is the result of lobbying by the likes of Green Peace and pandering by the likes of the Democrats.
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What are we waiting for? We only lack the political will to overcome and defeat the Sierra Club, Green Peace and ELF and other members of the environmentalist/anti-humanist lobby. We also need to over come the coal and oil lobbies that work behind the scenes with the enviro-whackos. This is the irony, the self anointed champions of the environment are actually harming it due to their ignorance and fear. Ignorance and fear have lead to many stupid and evil outcomes in the past, this is one problem that has an ‘on-the-shelf’ solution, need we wait for things to get worse?
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June 12th, 2008 at 8:37 am
Nuclear power is close to my heart as I have actually worked in a commercial civilian nuclear power plant (and yes, the stuff really glows).
Do you want a government program, or do you want to streamline licensing procedures to allow for more plants to be built? I agree that nuclear power is a clean source of energy, and besides, it ticks off the left wing environmentalists. It also tests the hypocrisy of the “global warming” crowd who clearly want no new sources of energy generation.
Besides the power generation issue, the other consideration is the reporcessing of nuclear fuel. Jimmy Carter banned this in the 1970s, and no President has ever reversed that Executive Order. It’s amazing that this is one industry in which recycling in this country is discouraged!
June 12th, 2008 at 9:56 am
Ron,
Can you reprocess nuke fuel into a viable/usuable product? Other than military applications, that is.
June 12th, 2008 at 10:25 am
Jacob, Kudos on a great post, but could you expand on the following:
“We also need to over come the coal and oil lobbies that work behind the scenes with the enviro-whackos. This is the irony, the self anointed champions of the environment are actually harming it due to their ignorance and fear.”
What groups are you talking about? My brain is short circuiting.
June 12th, 2008 at 10:37 am
I believe the answer may be that we need a government program to pursue nuclear power in conjunction with the private sector.
The government would provide the muscle to get us past the Jane Fonda types, and to streamline the approval process.
June 12th, 2008 at 11:20 am
Cathymac,
I think I can answer on behalf of Jacob. The groups he was talking about was…the coal and oil lobbies! HA. Just thought I would catch you at a vulnerable moment!
June 12th, 2008 at 11:23 am
Jacob,
I see you slyly left out PETA but then I noticed the figure on the right in the above cartoon looks strickingly like YOU! Did you plan that Mr. Smugness?
June 12th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Yikes, didn’t read very well, did I? Pardon my brain fry, it is still HOT outside.
June 12th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
ACT,
Any resemblance w.r.t. smugness is purely coincidental. Now, can you answer me this, “Who is the bent over jackass?”
June 12th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
ACT, PETA ? As long as no kitties or puppies are used in the fusion process, they could care less.
June 12th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
I agree with you, Jacob. What’s the big deal? Besides, all this corn growing is increasing the size of the dead zone off the coast of Louisiana and Texas (the largest dead zone yet, in fact). We can’t go about killin’ off the ocean like that, it’s impacting our trade of seafood, etc. Can they build nuclear powerplants underground?
June 13th, 2008 at 9:12 pm
Jacob,
“Who is the bent over jackass?”
The front doesn’t look very familiar butt the backside looks identical to zimzo!
June 13th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
Dan,
PETA doesn’t really care anything at all about animals but if there is a fight to be had and money to be made (or extorted) they will be in on the deal!
June 13th, 2008 at 10:01 pm
Umm, you might want to look into the number of new reactor licenses currently working their way through the NRA. Nuclear power is alive and well. Frankly our issue is a lack of nuclear engineers more than anything else. Finally, you are talking about apples and oranges here. Electricity, by and large, is generated through coal burning plants. We really have no shortage of coal (that is why electricity wholesales for about 4-5 cents per kilowatt hour and that is why wind is not 100% viable yet). It has nothing (or very little) to do with the price of oil. You are right to bring up the coal lobby and the electric utility lobby they are the ones holding nuclear at bay. If coal prices increase (or the cost to utilities to USE coal increases) then nuclear AND wind will step in to replace them - solar won’t be far behind. Might also want to try to figure out why nuclear is used so much in Europe and part of the Pacific Rim. Might have to do with government regulation of the power industry and high costs for alternative fuels - these places are HARDLY conservative hotbeds after all.
June 13th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
Troll,
What blog site you been hanging out at? It surely wasn’t here but since you’re back, let me comment.
We’re not talking apples and oranges. The 5 main fuels for electricity is water, nuclear, coal, oil and wood chip. Only one doesn’t create waste or waste natural resourses. If we eliminated oil from the equation we could have more oil for other uses. You are probably one of the green-weenies so this should please you. If we generate an ABUNDANCE of electricity then we could stop having brown-outs or even black-outs. Then we could set our thermostats to what we wanted without upseting the rest of the world as Osama-bama says AND we could all plug in and recharge our electric cars! Nuclear creates less waste than coal so it is more feasible. We’ll keep oil and coal for those vacation periods.
BTW where ever did you find the 4-5 cent per kilowatt hour figure? If my wife could run her blowdryer for an hour and only cost that much, I would by a bunch and heat the house. Pretty cheap, don’t you think?
June 13th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
Troll,
“Frankly our issue is a lack of nuclear engineers more than anything else. ”
True, most nuclear engineering programs where closed down years ago. We have built no new power plants for over 25 years now. Why is that? TMI was used to shut down ALL new construction. We learned the wrong lesson. The right lesson was ‘oh look, the safety features worked!’ Instead Jane Fonda made a movie about ‘the conspiracy’.
Please tell me where I can by electricity for 4-5 cents per Kilo-watt-Hour.
Why apples and oranges? Both Coal, Oil and Nuclear energy are all used for the production of electricity. If we where smart, where would switch over to 100% nuclear until some other source makes itself available via research or the great pumpkin.
With enough electical power you can run electrical current through sea water to create hydrogen. This in turn can be used to power our automobile fleet. I think we could even get the older vehicles to run on the stuff with some tinkering.
The emission from a hydrogen burning engine is water.
June 14th, 2008 at 12:10 am
Solar and wind do not scale as well as nuclear power generation. Nuclear also works at night, on cloudy or still days. In 2005, the US was the worlds largest producer of nuclear generated power. But, we can and should do better, as a percentage of our total power generation.
Found some interesting data if anyone is curious :
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/nuc_generation/gensum.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table1_1.html
We should put more research into hydrogen combustion vehicles. I would think the big problem with hydrogen is storage, as hydrogen has a very low energy/volume ratio. I am curious how much hydrogen would need to be pressurized to provide a reasonable E/V ratio. If there are any rocket engineers visiting here, they might be able to shed more light on this..
June 14th, 2008 at 3:21 am
Limiting nuclear power production to merely regional electricity production is a huge waste, IMO. Its time to start building nuclear power plants on a massive scale in remote central locations for the production of carbon neutral synthetic fuels (gasoline, diesel fuel, and aviation fuel) and industrial chemicals (methanol and hydrogen).
And the US government needs to start ordering its own nuclear synfuel facilities from the nuclear power industry and use the revenues from the sale of synfuels to produce more and more nuclear synfuel power plants until the US is completely free of fossil fuels. And then start building even more in order to export clean synfuels to other nations around the world.
Right wing conservatives may not like the federal ownership of nuplexes but they sure like to tout the French nuclear power program which is totally government owned.
June 16th, 2008 at 8:06 am
Dan,
“We should put more research into hydrogen combustion vehicles.”
I’m with you. And I’m going to call my first hydrogen car the “Graf Zepplin”!
June 16th, 2008 at 8:20 am
Marcel,
“production of carbon neutral synthetic fuels”
If you burn ANYTHING with carbon you get Co2 and CO plus other things. So what are you suggesting?
June 16th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
BTW where ever did you find the 4-5 cent per kilowatt hour figure?
AND
Please tell me where I can by electricity for 4-5 cents per Kilo-watt-Hour.
WHOLESALE, boys, WHOLESALE - read closer.
June 18th, 2008 at 9:49 am
Let’s hope that more liberals don’t go green, may not be enough power left for the rest of us :
Gore’s Home Still Guzzling Energy
In the year since Al Gore took steps to make his home more energy-efficient, the former vice president’s home energy use surged more than 10 percent, according to the Tennessee Center for Policy Research.
“A man’s commitment to his beliefs is best measured by what he does behind the closed doors of his own home,” said Drew Johnson, President of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research. “Al Gore is a hypocrite and a fraud when it comes to his commitment to the environment, judging by his home energy consumption.”
In the past year, Gore’s home burned through 213,210 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity, enough to power 232 average American households for a month.
In February 2007, “An Inconvenient Truth,” a film based on a climate change speech developed by Gore, won an Academy Award for best documentary feature. The next day, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research uncovered that Gore’s Nashville home guzzled 20 times more electricity than the average American household.
After the Tennessee Center for Policy Research exposed Gore’s massive home energy use, the former Vice President scurried to make his home more energy-efficient. Despite adding solar panels, installing a geothermal system, replacing existing light bulbs with more efficient models, and overhauling the home’s windows and ductwork, Gore now consumes more electricity than before the “green” overhaul.
http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/gore_home_energy/2008/06/17/105394.html
June 18th, 2008 at 10:28 am
Gore sucks power. Gores’ monthly utility bill is more than my yearly mortgage. Gore wants carbon credits. Gore likes and backs Obama. Obama wants Gores’ backing. Obama doesn’t like SUVs, thermostats at 72 degrees or eating all you want. Obama then takes a real good look at Gore. Obama freaks out and has a massive coronary and dies. Gore backs McCain’t. McCain’t drills in Alaska. Drillers kill polar bears for sport. Russians hear gunfire and drop bombs on White House. VP Huckleberry signs new order to muzzle liberals and use hot air to power Gores’ home. All is right with the world.
June 18th, 2008 at 10:29 am
Is not GWB’s house in Crawford TX real energy efficient or is that an urban legend?
June 18th, 2008 at 11:22 am
Jacob,
It seems to be true: http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/house.asp
June 18th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Sanity,
Thanks. Man is Gore a hypocrite.
June 18th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Has anyone here ever heard of the Copenhagen consensus?
June 18th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
jacob, is that when the boys down at the filling station all dip out of the same tin ?
June 18th, 2008 at 7:10 pm
I thought so.
June 18th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
That is the way I understood it, Dan.
July 8th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
[…] Having oil from overseas coming in at $27 per barrel also made it easy to do nothing.In a previous post I began to lay out some of the energy issues confronting our country, and how nuclear power is the […]
August 14th, 2008 at 1:26 am
Jacob there are emerging technologies that can allow you to extract CO2 from the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide from air combined with hydrogen through water electrolysis can enable you to make any type of hydrocarbon fuel that you want.