Open Thread (12/21/2009)

from today's Chicago Tribune:

"A fossil fuel gains stature in global warming fight: natural gas changes power equation"

The gist of the article is the upcoming switch from coal to natural gas for large electricity generating plants. Given the obvious solution of building nuclear plants this is the height of unintended consequences. Assuming for the purposes of discussion that global warming is real and is caused by man and involves carbon dioxide this trend does little to address the stated problem. Natural gas is still a hydrocarbon and it's combustion still produces carbon dioxide, albeit a bit less than coal. Unlike coal however, natural gas fits down a pipeline rather nicely so it has become the fuel of choice for cooking and for heating our homes. If we burn more of it in large power plants it seems rather certain that the cost for the little guys will go up

So is the unintended consequence that the cost to heat our homes with natural gas will go up significantly due to competition with large stationary power plants? Let's build nukes. Lots of them. Like the French and the Japanese. No carbon dioxide at all. Maybe the cost to heat our homes would go down instead of up.

Let's build nukes. Lots of them. Like the French and the Japanese. No carbon dioxide at all.

No CO2 at all, but plenty of spent nuclear fuel rods to dispose of. How do you propose to do that?

Maybe the cost to heat our homes would go down instead of up.

Back in 1968 Illinois Power told us that if we let them build a nuclear power plant at Clinton the price of power wold be reduced to almost 0. We were paying Illinois Power less than $30.00 per month for electricity and another $15 for natural gas in the winter. Somehow those promised savings did not materialize when the Clinton Nuclear Plant went on line.

Three Score and Ten Plus One

Keith Hays

Here's the answer from the DOE website:

...[T]he waste stream must be isolated from the biosphere until the radioactivity contained in them has diminished to a safe level....Under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, as amended, the Department of Energy has responsibility for the development of the waste disposal system for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. Current plans call for the ultimate disposal of the wastes in solid form in licensed deep, stable geologic structures. A national repository at Yucca Mountain has been chosen to store the waste, but progress on the facility has been delayed. In the interim, spent fuel is being stored at about 70 sites across the United States.

It is generally accepted that the radioactivity of the waste stream will not be diminished to a safe level until many millenia have passed. That research into advanced fuel cycles is still in the embryonic stage and the storage problem has not yet been resolved. Building "lots of nukes" and doing it now adds immeasurably to the nuclear waste stream. We do not appear to be ready to jump at that solution to our energy needs until the waste can be materially reduced in volume and the twin problems of transporting and storing the residual waste are solved.

No, nothing much costs the same as it did in 1968 - except maybe corn and soybeans. That wasn't the point of the comment. The fact is, that for what ever reason, the promise of reduced cost resulting from nuclear generation of electricity have never been fulfilled - not at Clinton and not elsewhere. That ethereal promise of reduced cost is the same one that was floated a generation ago.

Three Score and Ten Plus One

Keith Hays

Apparently the problem with carbon emissions isn't dire enough to do something that could help with DU military applications, though that's a seperate and irrelevant issue. Oh, and safety regulations are just too hard to enforce to use a technology that could help now. What Would Jane Fonda Do? :-)

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Glock21 Op/Ed

Can I just point out that DU is not "reactor waste." In fact, it's the uranium that's left over when
you take out the kind that you *do* use in a reactor.

Oil Man, if global climate change is the pending disaster that it is claimed to be, then dealing with nuke waste would be about the easiest of the possible options in reducing CO2 emmissions by 80%.

I thought we were talking about the end of life as we know it, Arvid? 

I do not have the background to discuss globel climate change specifics since there appears to be multiple root causes, such as magnitic pole shifts, core cooling, impacts through our atmosphere, deforestation and most probably human environmental impact due to species population explosion.

I find rsw's apparent willingness for the government to control nuclear waste but not drinking water in CU somewhat puzzling.

So rsw is it your position if private monopolistic nuclear power generators cannot deal with their waste to make a profit, its the government's responsibility but if the private water supply owner can make a profit its still the government's to support to support the monopoly through preditory annexation to assure their profit and future revenue?

I like CO2 as a necessary component for plant growth, dry ice and a major component of our atomosphere very necessary for life on this planet.  However, as a wise man once said, 'everything is good in moderation'.  Excess is the problem whether it be nuke waste or global warming.