August 30, 2004 (Charleston Daily Mail): "Often, an underpaid guard and a chain-link fence are the only security at the more than 130 nuclear reactors and other facilities using highly enriched uranium in 40 countries."
April 21, 2002 (Cleveland Plain Dealer): "the failure to solve the problem of waste disposal is one reason why no nuclear power generating plant has been built in a quarter of a century."
Other things George should keep in mind:
- Unlike wind and solar, nuclear fuel is not free. Uranium and plutonium will be more expensive once we stop getting free government fuel from dismantled arms.
- Based on capital costs alone, wind power is the same cost or less than new nuclear power plants. And did I mention wind is free?
- If he's so concerned about energy sprawl, why doesn't he worry about the fact that coal mines, natural gas fields, and uranium mines are "sprawled" all over the place, as are the rail and pipelines to bring them to power plants. With wind and solar, you don't need fuel infrastructure, just power plants.
1 comment:
I'd like to understand more about reasons to choose nuclear power for future energy production. Will's combination of anecdotal statistics and commentary is not particularly helpful.
COAL:
- Coal production kills miners.
- America gets half its electricity from coal.
- We have a 250 year supply of coal.
- Coal will be an important source of energy.
NUCLEAR:
- Nuclear accidents have never killed Americans.
- American gets 20% of its electricity from nuclear.
- America has not built a new plant in 30 years.
- Certain other countries have built/are building lots of plants.
- We have a history of heavy government investment in nuclear technology with good results in a short time period.
- A government funded project could find ways to reduce used fuel mass by 97% and radioactive lifetime by 98%.
- As the one-time leader in nuclear, America should get past its superstitions and build more plants.
WIND:
- We get 1.3% of our electricity from wind.
- Wind power is heavily subsidized.
- Obama proposes to target wind for 20% of electricity production.
- Wind turbines take up a lot of space, generate light pollution, and kill birds.
- Wind power involves "energy sprawl".
SOLAR:
- We get less than 0.1% of our electricity from solar.
- Solar panels involve "energy sprawl".
BIOMASS:
- Not as green as you might think.
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