Obama becoming a disaster - see for yourself

[lynnf]

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=127203

Obama energy plan implodes


...

The primary push behind these policies was Obama's belief in the radical environmentalists' notion that use of traditional fuels was changing the climate. During the 2008 campaign, Obama admitted that electricity rates for every consumer would "necessarily skyrocket" under his plan.

The political wheels are coming off this goofy energy plan.

...

Also last week, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., rallied Democrats to urge the president to suspend federal stimulus grants to renewable energy developers after Schumer learned that wind turbines and solar panels are largely made in China and Japan and that many of these "developers" are foreign companies "stimulating" jobs overseas.

...

Even more damaging, Obama last week canceled the Yucca Mountain, Nev., project, on which $10 billion has been spent constructing a safe storage deep underground for nuclear waste from 104 U.S. nuclear plants.

Under federal and (most) state laws, no safe storage of the nuclear waste means no more nuclear power plants. Two months before, in the State of the Union speech, Obama called for a "new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants" to create "clean energy jobs." Which is it? Was the SOU call for more nuclear power plants just another Obama head fake?

...


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lynn

[angelatc]

Don't worry - Lindsay Graham is working on a new version with Lieberman and some Democrat. They won't be happy until they tax the air.

[constituent]

Don't worry - Lindsay Graham is working on a new version with Lieberman and some Democrat. They won't be happy until they tax the air.

YouTube - Taxman (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzLry3ABpV0)

[fisharmor]

I can't help but wonder what a free market would figure out to do with spent nuclear rods.

Probably come up with a 2nd generation power plant that would cost a thousand dollars and power an entire neighborhood safely....

...but since spent nuclear rods are about as dangerous as butter knives, we can't have the public possessing them.

[cajuncocoa]

Don't worry - Lindsay Graham is working on a new version with Lieberman and some Democrat. They won't be happy until they tax the air.

Isn't that the truth!! :rolleyes:

[azxd]

Don't worry - Lindsay Graham is working on a new version with Lieberman and some Democrat. They won't be happy until they tax the air.

Isn't that the truth!! :rolleyes:
It does seem to be their plan :(

[Fox McCloud]

I really have no problem with nuclear energy disappearing. It's a fuel I really want to like, but just can't because it's another energy that can't exist without government help and/or aide.

As for the waste problem? It's a bit more complex than that, and we have, once again, politics getting in the way: http://mises.org/daily/3536

[andrewh817]

I really have no problem with nuclear energy disappearing. It's a fuel I really want to like, but just can't because it's another energy that can't exist without government help and/or aide.

As for the waste problem? It's a bit more complex than that, and we have, once again, politics getting in the way: http://mises.org/daily/3536

Really? That news to me, care to explain it?

[Fox McCloud]

Really? That news to me, care to explain it?

sure:

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9740

the government also subsidizes nuclear power's insurance, as well (which is not mentioned in this article)...Milton Friedman even mentions this little tidbit in a particular video out there.

Edit: Ahha, here it is-- YouTube - Milton Friedman on Self-Interest and the Profit 1/2 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0TzouOdndg&fmt=18) around 2:19.

[noxagol]

I think it safe to say that ALL energy sources are subsidized on some level. If they were all removed, its tough to say which would be the most cost effective.

[Fox McCloud]

I think it safe to say that ALL energy sources are subsidized on some level. If they were all removed, its tough to say which would be the most cost effective.

sure, they all are, but if you compare how much of our nation's energy grid comes from coal and natural gas, then compare the subsidies it gets to other energy sources, I think you'll find its significantly less per MW/hour.

[noxagol]

sure, they all are, but if you compare how much of our nation's energy grid comes from coal and natural gas, then compare the subsidies it gets to other energy sources, I think you'll find its significantly less per MW/hour.

Well you've also got to look at the whole chain of production. How much in subsidies/tax breaks do the coal and natural gas harvesters get? How about the uranium miners/enrichers and/or plutonium?

Also, how about disposal costs. Right now, coal and natural gas don't have to pay any (sure they have to pay expenses to keep the exhaust cleaner). If property rights were in full effect, how much cost would there be for this? There would be none for nuclear waste beyond buying a piece of land and constructing a storage facility to house the waste while they figure out how to make money off of it somehow. Coal and natural gas plants might, instead of just venting into the air, capture the exhaust gases, process them in some way and sell them. Who knows?

When you really look at how the government has effected the whole process, it is difficult to determine which would come out ahead.

[Fox McCloud]

Well you've also got to look at the whole chain of production. How much in subsidies/tax breaks do the coal and natural gas harvesters get? How about the uranium miners/enrichers and/or plutonium?

Also, how about disposal costs. Right now, coal and natural gas don't have to pay any (sure they have to pay expenses to keep the exhaust cleaner). If property rights were in full effect, how much cost would there be for this? There would be none for nuclear waste beyond buying a piece of land and constructing a storage facility to house the waste while they figure out how to make money off of it somehow. Coal and natural gas plants might, instead of just venting into the air, capture the exhaust gases, process them in some way and sell them. Who knows?

When you really look at how the government has effected the whole process, it is difficult to determine which would come out ahead.

I will generally agree that it is rather complex and is difficult to tell, but nuclear is so expensive, I just can't see it competing, even on a completely and fully private scale.

Coal and natural gas plants would merely buy up all the land in an area where it pollutes to avoid having to pay any fines, or, in other cases, if the power plant predates all housing in the area (ie: built after the plant itself) it could merely claim to have already homesteaded the air to pollute in that area, thus also eliminating fines.

[Zippyjuan]

I can't help but wonder what a free market would figure out to do with spent nuclear rods.

Probably come up with a 2nd generation power plant that would cost a thousand dollars and power an entire neighborhood safely....

...but since spent nuclear rods are about as dangerous as butter knives, we can't have the public possessing them.
Can we pay you $20 to keep them at your house since they areonly as "dangerous as butter knives?" You will only have to keep them for 250,000 years.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=nuclear-waste-lethal-trash-or-renewable-energy-source


Finding an alternative or figuring out how to make Yucca Mountain work—there is already so much nuclear waste in the U.S. that, according to NRC, if Yucca were already open, by 2010 it would be filled to its statutory limit of 70,000 metric tons—will take up "a significant part of my time and energy," new Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu, a physicist, testified during his Senate confirmation hearing earlier this month. "We do need a plan on how to dispose of that waste safely, over a long period of time."
(article is from 2009 so it would only take about a year or so to fill up Yuca Mountain with the waste we already have).


In fact, the U.S. nuclear industry has produced roughly 64,000 metric tons (one metric ton equals 1.1 U.S. tons) of radioactive used fuel rods in total or, in the words of NEI, enough "to cover a football field about seven yards deep." (Of course, actually concentrating rods this way would set off a nuclear chain reaction.)
Maybe it could be recycled?

The National Research Council, the research arm of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, notes, however, that such reprocessing is impractical and expensive. In 1996 it estimated that reprocessing of existing used nuclear fuel could cost more than $100 billion. Eleven years later, the Council further declared that research and development of such technology under the GNEP should be halted, because the money could be better spent on other areas of nuclear power research, such as next-generation reactors.

Store it on site? Already doing some of that and running out of room.


But nearly all of the nuclear power plants in the U.S. have already run out of storage space, because these pools were not designed to be long-term containers and enough room needs to be preserved in case of a crisis such as a meltdown. In the absence of a long-term solution (such as burying the waste deep inside Yucca Mountain), the nuclear industry has turned to so-called dry cask storage.

This involves immersing the radioactive used rods in helium or some other inert gas and slotting them into a steel container that is further encased in a concrete cask—at a cost of roughly $1 million per cask. The encased rods still manage to emit roughly one millirem of radiation per hour and heat the outside of the 100-plus ton concrete casing to as much as 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius).

"These are placed in rows on a concrete pad for stability. They're essentially out in the air," says NRC's McIntyre. "Generally, they are putting them within the controlled area of the reactor site so they are protected under the physical security of the plant."

Some 9,000 metric tons of spent fuel rods are already stored encased in some 900 such casks—the bulk of them stored vertically in concrete casks but some placed horizontally into concrete bunkers.

[noxagol]

I will generally agree that it is rather complex and is difficult to tell, but nuclear is so expensive, I just can't see it competing, even on a completely and fully private scale.

Coal and natural gas plants would merely buy up all the land in an area where it pollutes to avoid having to pay any fines, or, in other cases, if the power plant predates all housing in the area (ie: built after the plant itself) it could merely claim to have already homesteaded the air to pollute in that area, thus also eliminating fines.

It's not a matter of polluting the air, it's the pollution going into other people's property. It's like tossing your garbage on your neighbors lawn, but on a microscopic scale.

[Warrior_of_Freedom]

send it to the moon

[pcosmar]

send it to the moon

Better yet send it into the sun, by the same means and for the same energy.
The sun would consume it without a hiccup.

[Mordan]

what about Fusion? Fusion needs gov

[Fox McCloud]

It's not a matter of polluting the air, it's the pollution going into other people's property. It's like tossing your garbage on your neighbors lawn, but on a microscopic scale.

again, my situation still applies; if the power plant was there prior to any housing/commercial/other developments, and people then begin to build there (say, because the land is really cheap because of the pollution and eye-sore of a plant), they would not be able to sue the plant for trespass, as the power plant had already homesteaded the right to pollute in a particular area.

If however it didn't have this, then it could either pay for trespass, or buy up all the land in the area as to avoid the fines for trespass as well.