Obama Administration Nuclear Supporter? Not!

It has been a while since I have had a desire or chance to post to this blog. Without a doubt the policy of the Obama administration is renewable energy, electric cars, etc. Nuclear Power is out. Cash for Clunkers is in with the dubious proposition that paying people to turn in their old clunkers for new cars is good for the environment (My beef with this is of course people will naturally have to buy a new car, why should the government confiscate my earnings and give it to someone else to buy a car???)

The Chattanooga Times Free Press, in an article titled "Nuclear Power Heating Up" states that:

But a bill approved by the U.S. House of Representatives in June calls for utilities to generate at least 20 percent of their electricity from renewable sources such as wind, solar and geothermal energy by 2020. Congress spurned attempts to include nuclear power in the renewable portfolio standard.

The Obama administration also has effectively canceled plans for an underground storage facility for nuclear wastes in Yucca Mountain, Nev., and rejected a loan guarantee request for a U.S. uranium enrichment plant to reprocess nuclear fuel.

U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp., R-Chattanooga, said he fears the White House may be throwing a wrench in plans for a nuclear revival.

I guess if we want nuclear power as a viable option instead of T Boone Pickens tilting at windmills in Texas, we'll have to vote for Republicans for real change in Washington.

More nuclear power less money for terrorists

It's been said before but it bears repeating, we don't want to buy oil from countries that support terrorism. The faster we can move away from oil and build nuclear power plants, the faster funding sources for terrorism will dry up. From today's Wall Street Journal. Great article on the pros (and cons) of nuclear power

One final point about security: One of the biggest dangers to our security is from oil nations providing support to anti-U.S. terrorist groups. The faster we can move away from carbon-based energy, the faster we take away that funding source. Nuclear energy offers the fastest and most direct path to that safer future.

When will clarity rise through the mud?

Life is a machine. It takes energy to run it. The living cells in plants synthesize chemicals from sunlight. We eat plants, and a few animals. Only nuclear power draws energy from a power source that life does not build upon. Of course growing plants for fuel (biofuels) impacts the environment, and in a way that non-scientist promoters fail to understand. Today's New York Times reports again on how energy choices impact the environment. It's called entropy for those who have studied thermodynamics.

The benefits of biofuels have come under increasing attack in recent months, as scientists took a closer look at the global environmental cost of their production. These latest studies, published in the prestigious journal Science, are likely to add to the controversy.

These studies for the first time take a detailed, comprehensive look at the emissions effects of the huge amount of natural land that is being converted to cropland globally to support biofuels development.

When will we wake up, get educated (or listen to those who are), and conclude as a society that nuclear power can displace the use of chemical fuels (fossil or bio) and liberate our planet from the burden that chemical fuels demand?

Nuclear Power delivers low cost, 24 hours a day

In the no news is good news category, US nuclear power plants are running at a record capacity of 91.8%. In other words, they keep on ticking no matter the time of day or year. The article goes on to state that the average production cost of power was 1.68 cents per kilowatt hour. Now I wonder what the best solar power plants can do (of course only when the sun is shining, so at night you'll still be able to turn on the lights in your home, whereas the solar power systems won't be producing anything. So at best solar has a capacity factor of 50%, far less than +90% for nuclear. Now where are those solar power cost numbers, oh yes, here they are: Solarbuzz.com says 30 cents per/kwh, and they go on to say that is 2 to 3 times the average RESIDENTIAL bill. What they don't say is that it is 18 times the cost of nuclear power. I really don't want my electric bill to go up by almost 20 times, and of course there won't be any electricity at night from solar power.

U.S. nuclear power plants posted all-time record highs in electricity production and efficiency in 2007, according to preliminary figures released today by the Nuclear Energy Institute. U.S. nuclear plants generated approximately 807 billion kilowatt-hours (kwh) of electricity last year, exceeding by more than two percent the previous record-high of 788.5 billion kwh of electricity set in 2004.

The wikipedia entry on economics of nuclear power plants, claims that new nuclear power plan construction will cost $1,984 per kWe. So thats $2/watt, but that watt flows continuously while solar does not. Nanosolar claims $1/watt is that cost of coal, and they will match that. Is that in direct sunlight at noon? Do you have to track the sun? What do you do at night? Who dusts the collector panels?

Patrick Moore on Nuclear Power

A great interview on CNET News.com. Patrick Moore is the founder of Greenpeace (what a name! ranks right up there with calling the world's biggest frozen island, Greenland). Patrick has some quite quotable answers in the Q&A on CNET.  My favorite is his take on solar power:

Solar photovoltaic simply has no place on the grid. All the money that's going into subsiding solar is a waste of money because it could be being used on more effective technologies that we already have that are not unreliable and intermittent. The $3.2 billion that California is subsidizing in solar would build a 1,000-MW nuclear plant and provide 10 times as much power into the system and on a reliable basis.

Wow! so to equal a nuclear power plant, California taxpayers would have to spend $32 billion. Maybe that will get their attention. Also he notes that we have 1000 years of power available from existing mined uranium that is currently in the U.S. reactors. Not sure if he is multiplying 100 power plants by 1000 years. I think we should have 1000 nuclear power plants in the U.S. so that we can completely eliminate coal and save the 6,000 people per year he quotes. I think most of these coal miners are in China, but having spent a few months in Hong Kong, I can tell you those chinese people would really welcome some blue skies!

Biodiesel vs Food

Interesting article in the New York Times today on fuel oil vs food oil. Basic economics. If one devotes cropland for growing biodiesel, food crops will be more scarce and prices for food will rise. Nuclear power does not divert resources (land, fertilizer, etc.) to produce energy. The best thing we can do for the world's poor is build nuclear power plants on a scale that lowers the per kilowatt cost way below that for fossil fuels. 

If only science writers knew the three laws of thermodynamics, and basic economics. Then no one would be surprised by rising food prices in an era of expensive oil and crops being diverted for fuel!

Productive Climate Discourse

Yeah!  Finally. A focus on what to do, big thoughts, not stuck in the mud details.

A great summary by Andrew Revkin at the New York Times. Please stop by his blog page and add your thoughts on how nuclear power can be a positive force for global change! Andrew lists a number of actions to take, and this one focuses on the renewable option for energy. If only he had listed nuclear as one the options that does not come with significant environmental or security risks or social costs!

Finding renewable sources of energy that are cheap and do not come with significant environmental or security risks or social costs is a good thing, particularly in a world adding roughly 80 million people a year, and where two billion people today only have firewood or dried dung as an energy choice.