The secret, dirty cost of Obama's green power push

[flacaltenn]

Ladies, there is quite a bit of mis-information floating around here about Yucca Mountain and spent fuel storage. The correct information is readily available.

For decades, nuclear electric power utilities have been paying (their ratepayers have been paying) a surcharge to the federal government to create a fund to build a spent fuel repository. Yucca mountain was developed and built with these funds. None of the cost came out of general revenues. While Yucca Mountain is more than adequate for the task, it is not the BEST solution, and local politicians, led by Harry Reid, convinced an ignorant public that it represented some sort of long term danger to the people of Nevada, and particularly Las Vegas. It was all bullshit, but the fact was that it was a mistake to develop it without any local input. So it has been mothballed. The money is wasted.

HOWEVER, there is another facility in New Mexico, called the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant ("WIPP"), that has enough capacity for all of the nuclear waste we could ever generate (particularly now, since Nuke has been effectively killed by Fukushima and Natural Gas). WIPP is in a giant solid, salt deposit that is totally impermeable to water or anything else. Water migrates at a rate of inches per thousand years. It is deep enough to be totally impervious even to nuclear weapons. Furthermore, the local population has NO OBJECTION to it being converted to a national waste depository. All that remains is for Congress to get its head out of its ass and move on it.

Currently, spent fuel ("nuclear waste") is stored at each nuclear power plant. After an initial cooling off period, it is sealed into steel-reinforced concrete casks, which are as safe as humanly possible. At least one of them has been dropped from airplane altitude and suffered no damage when it struck the ground. The next move is to have these casks moved from the individual plants to their "final resting place," and I gather that Congress has no appetite right now to fight the inevitable battles with America's housewives who will go into nuclear-powered hissy fits when they hear that one of these casks might be trucked within a thousand miles of their kitchen windows.

It will be completely safe, but this is, after all, the United Fucking States of America, and any idiot with time to waste and a bullhorn can bring us collectively to our knees.

One might also keep in the back of one's mind the fact that nuclear "waste" from power plants CAN be re-used FOREVER (we have the technology to re-process it), but all of our Presidents from Jimmy Carter on down have agreed that we don't want to build a re-processing plant, because, in effect, we don't want anyone else to do it and we don't want to be in a position of saying, "we can, but you guys can't." Because the process can also be used to develop weapons grade materials.


So storage of nucear waste is NOT a problem that we need to worry about. It's all politics at this point. It is paid for; we have the technology to transport and store it (or even reprocess it for future use), but we don't want to be inconvenienced by fighting about it. Right now.

I actually tried to go to Yucca Mountain last year, but was kept out by a fence. I peed on the fence to satisfy myself that it wasn't electrified. Strange what boredom will cause you to do.

So all I want to know is WHEN will those leaking caskets of GOVERNMENT Nuclear Waste start going there from Hanford and Savannah river??? Dont care as much about when the CONTAINED waste from commercial plants starts moving there..

And DUDE (I assume) seems like there are smarter ways to test for electrical fencing...

 

[QuickHitCurepon]

Really?

Wind has tripled under Obama from 25gw to 60+ gw
Solar is increasing at the fastest rate of all energy sources

fact

Considering how much the GDP has grown during Obama's term, only a threefold increase is a pittance when at the same time, the technology to build traditional A&E has gotten so refined that they can design systems that would be extremely cheap, if they had the will to do it.

Solar is a whole different story. Arizona and Nevada have the land available for solar panels that could power the entire Southwestern U.S. But no, it's too ugly. It's too difficult. Just quit whining then about energy prices and oil independence.

You guys complain about a mine that for the most part is underground and wish to cover the world with this crap? What do you think the effect to the critters living underneath these monstrosities will be?

You conveniently ignored this post or did you miss it while you pray nothing bad ever happens, since we are supposedly a modern technological marvel?

If our country goes bankrupt and languishes for a long enough period of time, the federal government will take drastic measures. In that climate, the entire electrical grid will cease to function. We can barely balance the power flowing through it now during a relatively prosperous period, and for sure, in a prolonged Depression, there will very well be no fully active grid. Nuclear power will also slowly disappear in a deep economic crisis, because again, in good times, we cannot even build large dump sites for nuclear waste, and temporary storage facilities are beyond capacity.

That leaves us during the abovementioned Depression with only one good solution, because natural gas and coal will certainly not sustain the power needs of all 50 states: Solar power will have to be developed in massive projects across the sun-rich states. The greatest of those states with sun are of course, the ones with deserts.

It is not entirely unlikely that the feds will, through eminent domain, choose Nevada, Arizona and maybe, also New Mexico and pepper all the desert areas in those states with solar panels. That is approximately 2 million square miles of land. Do you think if that happened they will not deliver all the energy those panels can put out when plugged in?

It does not take much to break a clean running machine. A small scrap of metal broken off from the engine will likely get stuck in the wrong place sooner or later and grind it to a halt. Keep dreamin' buddy.

 

[flacaltenn]

QuickHit:

I ignored your doomsday scenario rationale for more alternatives BECAUSE in a true economic meltdown, we'll be heating with coal and nat gas ---- not solar and wind. And burning a lot of cow dung and trees. I could go for months on an old moonshine still that MIGHT be up in my woods.

Short of a Mad Max scenario --- I gave you the reasons why a FUNCTIONING modern society will never have a MAJORITY of its power coming from your list of renewables. Did you understand the 20% daytime peak argument?

 

[Widdekind]

hypothetically, solar power panels could be put on barges, or other floating platforms, forming "sea farms" of power panels

 

[elektra]

Better then the Blood and man hours used for Coal, oil and gas.

Actually more people die in Industrial accidents producing Solar Panels and Wind Turbines than Coal, Oil, and Gas.

Solar Panels and Wind Turbines use more Coal, Oil, and Gas in the production phase hence the impact on human safety is much greater.

You have to make "Renewables", seems people forget that Solar Panels and Wind Turbines do not magically appear, they are manufactured with Oil, Coal, and Gas.

How about the mining of raw materials for the worlds largest in physical size power plants, Renewables require a larger percentage of mining than other forms of energy.

Simple fact is if you use more raw materials that requires more human labor, using more human labor results in more accidents as well as greater impact on human health.

 

[elektra]

hypothetically, solar power panels could be put on barges, or other floating platforms, forming "sea farms" of power panels

Realistically that would requires millions of gallons of fresh water to wash the salt spray from the panels surface otherwise the efficiency of the solar panel will be diminished.