Nuclear is Our Future Pro-nuclear activist group

Rep. Nita Lowey, that eminent friend of nuclear power (joined by woo-woo John Hall as well as Eliot Engel, Maurice Hinchey, and Christopher Shays), is sponsoring a bill intended to make it even more unnecessarily difficult to build a nuclear power plant–or relicense one.

-Require that the NRC determine that plants are safe. In other words, add another piece of paper onto a process that already works.
-Require that the NRC certify that each nuclear power plant doesn’t have security vulnerabilities during the licensing process. In other words, the effects of a terrorist attack are the victims’ fault.
-Add another level of bureaucracy to the evacuation plans requirement, and expand the EPZ to 50 miles. More stakeholders can veto the plan under this proposal than possible today–any state within 50 miles or any federal agency involved in emergency management–increasing the likelihood of Shoreham-type politics.
-Require that the NRC do the same reviews for a renewal that they do for a licensing, most of which are completely pointless, since the design doesn’t change. In reality, all a renewal application should have to prove safety-wise is that a plant’s designed-in safety effects won’t be affected by aging.
-Require the NRC to determine in any relicensing that the population density around the plant hasn’t changed to the point where it is defined as “urban siting,” which is bad for some reason. In other words, shut down Indian Point.

Fortunately, the bill doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting past President Bush even if it did pass. But we’re going to have to watch out for this in a couple years, when either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton will be eager to prove that they’re tough on these “problems.” Indian Point is going to have a constant fight on its hands come 2009.

Oh, and four Democrats and one Republican do not a bipartisan coalition make. Maybe they put the “coal” in “coalition” (or the “mental” in “environmentalist”), but not much more.

Filed under Emergency Response, Perception, Physics, Politics and Regulation, Safety, Security and Terrorism, Their Actions

Posted on June 1, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

An Australian indigenous group has volunteered a part of their land as a low- and intermediate-level waste repository (read: for rubber gloves and used reactor parts, respectively).

Do you think they’ll stop using the “environmental racism” argument? Don’t hold your breath.

Link.

Filed under Environment, International, Perception, Sustainability, Waste

Posted on May 31, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

They want a new nuke to replace Wylfa when it closes.

Take any support you can get, guys.

Link.

Filed under Decommissioning, International, New Build, Perception

Posted on April 30, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

The first Video Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day (and it’s a doozy):

-The Birth of Europe, BBC, 1991

1. The pile of coal at the beginning is not supposed to be part of that clip.
2. Chernobyl did explode, but it was a steam explosion (the reactor’s heat output spiked and boiled the water in the cooling system, which exploded and took radioactive material with it), not a nuclear explosion, which would require a nuclear weapon. Reactors are a lot easier to build than current nuclear weapons, and if they could explode, they would have been used as weapons.
3. The old technique of “close-up on damage to make it look more extensive than it actually is” features prominently; if you look at the surrounding area, there’s very little physical damage beyond the building itself.
4. The point on the construction of nuclear power plants being a way to displace domestic use of oil and gas to increase export revenues is absolutely correct. Today, they’re trying to use basically the same technique to turn anti-nuclear Germany into a gas- and oil-powered puppet of Moscow.
5. The narrator, dripping with contempt, pronounces nuclear power dead–neglecting the fact that Chernobyl was not developed to “provide an energy panacea” but for the production of weapons-grade plutonium. The only reason to design a reactor like that is weapons-grade plutonium production; it is more complicated, more expensive, and harder to control than a normal nuclear power plant.
6. The narrator repeats the false claim that Chernobyl had anything to do with civilian nuclear power, that it was a nuclear explosion, and that it somehow vindicated decades of scaremongering by illiterates.
7. They say that public opposition caused reactor cancellations, but in a part of this documentary that I did not upload, they grant that 1986 was a world low in oil prices. Cheap oil hurts nuclear just as much (or more) as it hurts coal.
8. This is one of the first uses of the unbelievably specious Economics Argument: that laws should be passed against nuclear power because it’s expensive. If it’s as expensive as they say it is, they should be confident enough in their projections that they shouldn’t need a law against it; all the Economics Argument demonstrated was the departure of the anti-nuclear movement from its traditional concerns–they now felt they could say anything they wanted and get away with it.
9. Nuclear power was not the first source of energy to be rejected–coal was banned in much of Europe in the Middle Ages until they started to run short of wood. Again, another part of this documentary mentions this, so they should know better.
10. The rest of the clip is fairly decent except for the complaints about EdF’s debt–which has long been paid off and whose nuclear fleet is now a cash cow and the backbone of the European grid. And nationally, the US has the “biggest nuclear program”–although it’s obviously not under the control of one operator.

This clip is disturbing not only because it’s indicative of the anti-nuclear movement going off the deep end while managing to retain all of their power, but because the rest of the documentary is an excellent history of energy. Did they feel pressure to trash nuclear power, when they should have treated it as they did other topics? Do they somehow feel that nuclear power is special, that it is not subject to the same market forces and business cycle that everyone else is?

Filed under Alternatives, Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day, Chernobyl, Economics, Energy, Environment, Financing, Health, Industry Performance, International, New Build, Non Sequitur, Perception, Physics, Politics and Regulation, Proliferation, Radiation, Safety

Posted on March 28, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 2 Comments »

It has failed to bankrupt them, give their CFO a heart attack, and lower their bonds to junk status; World Nuclear News has more.

Filed under Economics, Financing, Industry Performance, International, New Build, Perception

Posted on March 26, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 2 Comments »

“Nuclear waste dumps, toxic incinerators, atomic reactors and other such facilities typically are located where there is cheap land, cheap facilities, and little organized opposition. Too often, this has been in minority and poor communities that have felt powerless to oppose corporate giants.”

-Nuclear Information and Resource Service

1. The problem is not that a toxic waste facility is located in a suitable area, but rather that racist governments have forced minorities onto land suitable only for toxic waste facilities.
2. The implication is of course that people are not allowed to support things that NIRS doesn’t. People either oppose something or “feel powerless to oppose” it. I think nuclear power is a good idea, just like they think windmills and solar panels are a good idea. This is entirely possible, and while I am aware that I am in the minority, it’s not a result of corporate bribery. People can have honest disagreements about issues without one being a liar.

Filed under Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day, Crackpots, Non Sequitur, Perception, Politics and Regulation, Sustainability, Waste

Posted on March 23, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 3 Comments »

“In 2003, the NRC found that a record number of unplanned outages at both units could have been avoided had Entergy corrected known problems.”

-Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition

That doesn’t make it a safety problem–they had mechanical breakdowns, and shut the power plant side (and hence the nuclear reactors, since there’s no point operating them without producing electricity even if that were possible) down for repairs. Was there, at any point, even a potential for a nuclear accident? Well, no.

Filed under Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day, Industry Performance, Non Sequitur, Perception, Safety

Posted on March 10, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

Link.

They report that people are waking up to the logical progression:
1. What oil we have we need for transportation and plastics production. Soon, we’ll have only enough for plastics production.
2. We’re running out of natural gas. Prices have increased 700% since 1996.
3. Coal is a public health hazard.
4. Nuclear is Our Future.

Filed under Alternatives, Energy, Environment, New Build, Perception

Posted on December 24, 2005 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

Link.

Pro-nuclear people were there in larger numbers than we used to be able to muster. That’s the good news.

Interestingly, they quote a chemist on evacuation procedures. They also state that a local “blamed the town’s explosion of growth over the past 30 years on the low taxes that residents once paid because of the taxes the plant paid.” Apparently, that’s a bad thing.

Obviously, they quote an anti-nuclear activist as saying that all these people were bribed. If so, that’s half the town. I’d label that a conspiracy theory.

“How many people here know somebody with cancer” is not scientific. The cancer is there and was caused by something. Radiation is one of the easiest causes to rule out, though, because it comes nowhere near the amount needed to cause cancer.

Entergy is not requesting that two different power plants of different designs be relicensed in the same hearing. They are requesting that the NRC approve the identical features of each at the same time instead of reviewing the same items twice.

Filed under Conspiracy, Economics, Emergency Response, Energy, Health, Perception, Politics and Regulation, Safety, Scientific Method

Posted on December 24, 2005 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

They were to determine whether they would apply for an Early Site Permit at the Crystal River, Shearon Harris, Brunswick, or Robinson nuclear power plants by the end of the year. The decision has been delayed until March due in part to an unusual amount of local interest in the project. They join Duke Power in delaying their ESP decision.

This is yet another example of PIMBYism–Please, In My Back Yard!

Link.

Filed under New Build, Perception

Posted on December 24, 2005 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »