Nuclear is Our Future Pro-nuclear activist group

“The regulation at issue requires the physical fire protection of electrical cabling to be independently tested to American Society Test and Measure standards for rating as qualified fire barriers.”

-Environment News Service

Why should it? They cannot give one single reason. Ooh, nuclear–it must be dangerous. It’s just an electrical system, for Christ’s sake. Get over it. You don’t fireproof every electrical system everywhere, why fireproof the identical system in a nuclear power plant? I can see cables controlling certain systems in areas near ignition sources. But everything? Things with the safety significance of the USB cable to the manager’s office printer?

They cite the Browns Ferry fire in 1975 as the need for any extra fire code at all. How about not allowing some idiot to set insulation on fire with a candle while trying to check flow in a duct? There are better ways to do this than clamping down and building extra layers just for the nice flushing sound of consumers’ money down the toilet.

Filed under Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day, Physics, Safety

Posted on June 30, 2006 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

“Now suppose that a smart, network connected air-conditioner is able to receive day-ahead, hourly electricity prices. For this example, assume that tomorrow’s mid-morning prices are low due to forecasted peak wind generation in the mid-morning hours. The customer has previously set the building’s smart thermostats to an acceptable temperature range and selected the option which minimizes electricity costs within this range. The smart thermostats have already “learned” through experience how to optimize the building’s inherent thermal storage to take advantage of the low mid-morning prices to pre-cool the building and then reduce air-conditioning load during the afternoon when prices are high. The actions all happen automatically and by aggregating air conditioners across the system, the mismatch between peak wind generation and peak demand is eliminated.”

-Alliance to Save Energy

Now suppose we build an air conditioner, and suppose that the purpose of the air conditioner is to cool the building. Now we shut the air conditioner off when we can’t get enough electricity. And now we can’t cool the building! But, most importantly, we can generate electricity whenever we want, not give a thought to the customer, and when they inconveniently choose to not roll back the entire 20th Century of technological development by letting their equipment sit unused, we can just impose a rolling brownout and call the customer selfish and a menace to society.
Ahh… It’s great to run a business that has such a dedicated, fierce customer base.

Filed under Alternatives, Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day, Economics, Energy

Posted on June 29, 2006 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

“When their daughter developed a rare brain cancer, one Minooka physician and his wife began investigating. Could it be the two reactors upwind and the four upstream? They found an alarming uptick in cancer rates for Grundy County, Illinois.”

-Nuclear Energy Information Service

What about all the “alarming upticks” in counties without reactors? What about their map of Illinois, which clearly shows that Grundy County is in no way a representative sample? Why look at the county-by-county cancer rates at all if they clearly don’t apply?

If you torture the statistics long enough, they’ll tell you anything, I guess.

Filed under Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day, Fun With Statistics, Health, Scientific Method

Posted on June 28, 2006 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

“The industry and its political allies have a long history of forcing uranium mines, nuclear reactors, radioactive waste dumps, and weapons tests on the land of Indigenous peoples.”

-Jim Green Nuclear & Environmental Research

It’s not the nuclear industry’s fault that minorities were forced to live in areas suitable only for waste dumps.

Oh, and you can make an argument that everything is indigenous land. A lot like the classic argument that the Hoover Dam is solar power.

Filed under Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day, Clueless, Conspiracy, Fuel Cycle

Posted on June 27, 2006 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

More like the “Dumb Pro-Nuclear Quote of the Month.” But if the statement is anti-nuclear, I don’t care who said it.

“Minarick and Kukiela have analyzed precursor events in operating reactors that, had they not been aborted by human or mechanical intervention, could have led to a core-melt. Their semi-empirical estimate of the core-melt probability in 1969-1979 was 0.001 per reactor year (in good agreement with the Three Mile Island experience). This probability in 1980-1981 fell to 0.00015 per reactor year. Based on this analysis, the probability of a core-melt between now and 2000 in one of the 100 U.S. light-water reactors would be about 20 percent. This number can be disputed. D. Phung suggests that on average the core-melt probability in U.S. reactors today is close to Rasmussen’s 0.00005 per reactor year or three times lower than the aforementioned estimate. Newer modifications of light-water reactors, such as Westinghouse’s advanced pressurized-water reactor and General Electric’s boiling-water reactor, designed jointly with Japanese reactor vendors, are estimated to be even safer. Their core-melt probabilities are estimated to lie in the range of 0.000001 to 0.0000001 per reactor year. No one can say whether these safety goals, if achieved, will be sufficient to restore public confidence in nuclear energy. If one accepts Phung’s probability estimate, the chance of a meltdown in a U.S. reactor by 2000 is about one in 12. How much this has been lowered by better operating procedures is unknown.”

-Alvin M. Weinberg

Blah, blah, blah. This is how you alienate people.

Design a passively safe reactor instead of mitigating hazards that you create. IFR. ESBWR. AP-1000. MSR. Physically impossible.
Consequences if it does happen? What are the consequences of footprints on the ceiling if you walk up there without special equipment?

Come on, guys. Act professionally. Don’t kludge, to borrow a software term.

Filed under Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day, Safety

Posted on June 26, 2006 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

“The Abolition 2000 Statement recognizes “the inextricable link between the ‘peaceful’ and warlike uses of nuclear technologies,” and calls for the establishment of an international energy agency to promote and support the development of sustainable and environmentally safe energy sources.”

-Western States Legal Foundation

Sure there’s a link. Any bomb materials in a reactor can’t be in a bomb, and any materials containing bomb materials in a reactor can’t be diverted into the military cycle, however improbable such diversion is anyway.
But somehow I don’t think that’s what they’re talking about.

Filed under Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day, Proliferation

Posted on June 25, 2006 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

“Due to the combined effects of Chernobyl and appalling economics the nuclear industry has been stagnating for years.”

-Friends of the Earth International

(Read: cheap oil and hype from people who don’t know an RBMK from the hole in the ground that it produces.)

Filed under Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day, Chernobyl, Economics, International, Safety, Their Actions

Posted on June 24, 2006 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

“Initially, nuclear reactors were designed to specifically produce plutonion for bombs.”

-Federation of American Scientists

Initially, natural reactors did nothing but produce heat. Then, when the first “real” man-made reactors were designed, they split off between light-water reactors (which turned out to be like natural ones) used in nuclear submarines and Chernobyl-style plutonium production reactors.

Every nuclear power plant in operation in this country today is derived from submarines. They were never used to produce plutonium.

Filed under Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day, Chernobyl, Industry Performance, International, Plutonium, Proliferation

Posted on June 23, 2006 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

“Every firm or state/local government seeking to cut CO2 via energy efficiency has reported a profit”

-Amory Lovins

To quote Sybil Fawlty, “And the reason it’s cheap-ish is it’s no bloody good!”

You have three options when trying to do this. The first is to keep paying high prices, which is unacceptable. The second is to cut back your use of energy–in most cases electricity and natural gas–which follows the basic principles of supply and demand: if prices are high, demand goes down. The third is to build a zero-emission system that’s cheaper in the long run but still produces electricity. That system is almost always a nuclear power plant. Unfortunately, people cannot act by themselves to build a nuclear power plant, so they cut back until prices go down–and it doesn’t happen, because no utility that likes being solvent will build capacity to serve demand that isn’t there. It’s a classic problem: cheap energy drives demand, but demand isn’t there without cheap energy. A sudden need for more energy has started this investment cycle in the past, and probably will in the future: the simple economics of a vicious cycle.

In short: it’s a meaningless statement. He never shows that these companies are optimizing their profits or that lowered demand via energy efficiency doesn’t simply eliminate a need for new, cleaner facilities.

Remember, we still get 50% of our electricity from coal burners in this country. They have killed over one million people from air pollution since the last nuclear plant order. The only reason that they still exist is conservation in the ’70s.

Filed under Alternatives, Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day, Economics

Posted on June 22, 2006 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

“It took 17 years and attempts in three states for LES to obtain this license. But if the plant is built, New Mexicans will be paying–with their health and with their dollars–[for] the consequences of LES’ waste for far, far longer than that.”

-Michael Mariotte, as quoted by Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety

Uh, uranium? Uranium isn’t waste. And it’s one of the least radioactive of all radioactive substances.

It’s been in the environment for billions of years before we got here. The only reason volcanoes still erupt, for example, is heating caused by natural radiation from (predominantly) uranium. Who are we to suddenly decide it’s dangerous?

Filed under Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day, Environment, Fuel Cycle, Health, Waste

Posted on June 21, 2006 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »