Word: nuclearization
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...speech Tuesday, Obama acknowledged "some serious drawbacks with respect to nuclear energy," but the drawbacks he mentioned - waste disposal and reactor safety - are not the real obstacles to a rebirth. It would be nice to have a permanent Yucca Mountain-style repository for spent nuclear fuel, but for now plants have been storing their waste on-site without major problems. And the nuclear industry's safety record has improved dramatically in the 30 years since the Three Mile Island meltdown, although there are still occasional blips like the recent radioactive leak at a Vermont plant. The NRC is not exactly...
...Tennessee Valley Authority scrapped plans for three new reactors in Alabama and delayed a fourth by at least four years. Other reactors have been canceled in Texas, Missouri and Idaho; license applications have been suspended in Mississippi, Louisiana and New York. Peter Bradford, a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), has calculated that of the 26 new applications submitted to the NRC since 2007, nine have been canceled or suspended indefinitely, and 10 more have been delayed by one to five years. Utilities like Exelon, Duke Energy and FPL have ditched or scaled back their nuclear ambitions...
...Wall Street moneyman in his right mind would finance a new reactor. But President Obama has located an alternative financier: you. On Tuesday he announced an $8.33 billion loan guarantee for the new Vogtle reactors, the first step in the Administration's push to jump-start the nuclear construction industry. Obama also urged Congress to set aside political differences and triple the budget for nuclear loan guarantees. "On an issue that affects our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, we can't keep on being mired in the same old stale debates between the left...
...President is ignoring a much fresher debate: between theory and reality. Even if Obama were correct that a nuclear rebirth is needed to address the climate crisis - and he isn't correct - the fact is that the rebirth isn't happening. Despite the prospect of new taxpayer guarantees - and the cradle-to-grave subsidies that already support this 50-year-old industry at the federal and state level - utilities keep scrapping or delaying plans for new reactors...
...waste-disposal problems, safety issues and regulatory delays create a much more serious obstacle to a nuclear comeback: they jack up the already exorbitant cost of construction. That is the truly serious drawback of nuclear energy. Recent studies have priced new nuclear power at 25 to 30 cents per kilowatt-hour, about four times the cost of producing juice with new wind or coal plants, or 10 times the cost of reducing the need for electricity through investments in efficiency. Nuclear energy is much cleaner than coal, and it provides baseload power when the wind isn't blowing...