Fukushima is still a mess and TEPCO is running from one crisis to the next, two years in:
The situation is worrisome enough that Shunichi Tanaka, a longtime nuclear power proponent who is the chairman of the newly created watchdog Nuclear Regulation Authority, told reporters after the announcement of the leaking pits that “there is concern that we cannot prevent another accident.”
Here’s another nuclear power proponent, Gregory Jaczko:
All 104 nuclear power reactors now in operation in the United States have a safety problem that cannot be fixed and they should be replaced with newer technology, the former chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said on Monday. Shutting them all down at once is not practical, he said, but he supports phasing them out rather than trying to extend their lives.
Nice of him to tell us that after he’s retired. Bieber save us from regulators who get their conscience back the day they start collecting their pensions.
Todd
Jackzco was one of the good guys.
From your article:
He’s been with NRC since 2005, chair since 2009. He’s been the guy with his finger in the dyke.
cleek
mmm. blondies.
cvstoner
Phase them out and replace them with what, exactly?
It takes between 10 and 20 combined cycle natural gas plants to replace one nuclear plant. Natural gas might be cleaner than coal, but not that much cleaner.
Linda Featheringill
The US has been lucky with nuclear power plants. So far.
Todd
@cvstoner:
God forbid we start demonstrating national restraint on energy use. Cutting back sprawl, cutting back square footage on new construction is communist.
MikeJ
@Linda Featheringill: When people talk about how safe they are, they always focus on what could never happen. And then something else like a tidal wave or earthquake or a volcano happens.
I don’t want to hear that nothing bad is ever going to happen. I want to know how you’re going to fix it when something nobody thought of does happen.
@cvstoner: Reneweables could handle 20% of demand without major changes to the grid.
cvstoner
@Todd: I agree with you Todd. I’m just saying that it’s not as simple as just “replacing them.” It’s going to take a radical change in our energy use to phase out these plants, and I don’t see that coming from the same government that is still on the fence regarding the Keystone Pipeline.
Schlemizel
@Todd:
The analogy I like is that we are trying to fill a bucket that has a hole in it. So far our only solution is to try and pour water into the bucket faster. Maybe we could try making the hole smaller? You think that might help?
The better part is that making the hole smaller will require a lot of new products and new ways of doing things that will create a lot of new jobs.
cvstoner
@Schlemizel: That would be a great strategy, except that every world leader of every government is committed to burning every pound, drop, and cubic foot of carbon still in the ground.
I believe we’ll get to the world you are describing. But only after global warming first destroys it.
greennotGreen
My late father, who was as Republican as they come, worked in the nuclear power field in the sixties. He later opposed the use of nuclear power because he said they had never solved the waste issue.
@Schlemizel: Actually, we could make the hole smaller in part without any new products or methods. Remember wearing a sweater indoors in the winter? Fewer lights on in retail establishments?
cvstoner
@MikeJ: You might be right, Mike, but what about the other 80%?
Todd
@Schlemizel:
But who will think of the CEOs and the meritorious inheritor/investor class, so structurally entangled in the mediocrity of the current status quo?
cvstoner
@greennotGreen: Your dad was right. There’s over 30 years of waste stored on site at most nuclear plants, and a lot of it is so old that people are afraid to even move it.
Todd
@greennotGreen:
Malaise! Jimmy Carter is the worst president ever, and we should turn on every light on Earth Day while running our hot water taps to run and run and run. Hahaha, that’ll show them libruls!
Schlemizel
@greennotGreen:
“I don’t know Dave, that doesn’t sound manly to me.”
One thing the last 40 years have taught me is that you can’t ask Americans to sacrifice for anything. No matter how small an effort, no matter how minor the inconvenience might be, as a nation we appear to have become a bunch of spoiled brats.
I read a story about post-war England & the struggles of rebuilding. There were gas shortages so gas was rationed. I reporter saw a chauffeur driven Rolls coasting down a hill with the motor off. When the car started up hill both the chauffeur and his passenger hopped out & started pushing the car up hill. It occurs to me that in the US the passenger would NEVER help push.
@Todd: – this too!
Baud
@Todd:
Hell, remember the flak Obama got when he suggested that people check their tire pressure to improve their gas mileage?
WereBear
I understand how people feel that way, but I don’t think it’s true.
We are like anyone else; we will answer the call of higher purpose. We long to be a part of something great.
The problem is that, right now, sociopaths, greedheads, and idiots have the loudest voices. We have the capacity to shut them up.
We simply need to exercise it. I believe that is what PBO is trying to do. It takes time; it didn’t get this way overnight.
MikeJ
@cvstoner: You asked how to replace the nukes. That’s how. You use renewables. If you only need to replace 20% of the energy produced, renewables work with the current power grid and no breakthroughs in storage.
Add in some investment in the grid, one or two of those storage techs that are always five years away from being ready for market, you can double that percentage.
Cermet
Can’t really understand what some here are thinking – when the ex-regulator said replace the current fission plants, I am sure they meant with better fission plants; these are currently available and if we choose wisely, can cost a fraction what the old (current) amerikan fission plants cost – that is, use the Candu reactors (use heavy water) which simply cannot melt down even with all coolent lost.
While the Candu (yes, a stupid name) reactor design is not as effiecent as a US sub based design, who the fuck cares! Its safe, uses unenriched unrainium, and produces little CO2 for a lot of power. Hell, they even produce a ton of tritium which (someday) might be useful for something other than nuclear warheads … .
Does anyone here know what the issue with all US plants that worries this person? Is it the corrosion caused by the boron in the coolent loops that regulate the reactor fission rate? I understand that stuff is extremely corrosive in reactors and has nearly destoryed the primary coolent system in a number of plants … .
NotMax
@Todd
Oh, my. Homonyms, ain’t they a gas?
The Dutch boy of legend placed his finger in a dike.
“finger in the dyke” is whole ‘nother concept.
Anyway, just wanted to share a favorite site for keeping up with nuclear power (and related topics) in general: All Things Nuclear.
For more technical data relating to Fukushima, Japan Atomic Industrial Forum.
Todd
@Schlemizel:
Asking suburban/exurban residents of Atlanta, Nashvillle, Jacksonville, Charlotte, Orlando, Tampa, or Cincinnati to sacrifice is communism.
Todd
@Baud:
Lots of good conservative chortles over that one.
Sad part, it helps on more than one level.
I really want Obama to announce a federal directive that people should not piss on live electrical outlets or plugged in, operable toasters.
weaselone
@Todd:
I have to admit, I am always impressed that Obama has managed to restrain himself from doing this. Still, I wish he would use this power for something constructive. He could encourage gun ownership and provide a recommended list of weapons to purchase. It would likely be far more effective than any legislation he could pass.
Off course, I could be wrong. He did offer up cuts to Social Security and that is now off the table.
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
@Schlemizel:
FTFY. Spinelessness on the part of political class does not mean Americans wouldn’t sacrifice given the right cause.
The problem is, nobody will ask, and the things they do want to sacrifice on (austerity, soc. sec., medicare, etc.) don’t really benefit the Americans who are doing the sacrificing.
RaflW
@Todd: Right. We could signal that energy use needs to change by raising it’s price to more fully reflect environmental costs. Y’know, market-based incentives to subdivide your f-ing McMansion into a duplex, for example, because electricity would be 15-20 cents/kW.
The screams of irate Americans would be incredible. So we’ll probably have a global climate catastrophe + nuclear reactors operating 20 years past their design lives.
Between all that, antibiotic resistance, and an utterly corrupt and power-mad GOP, the Thunderdome is coming into view…
Shrillhouse
Oh, good. For a second there I was worried that they didn’t have a plan…
Todd
@Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS):
No sacrifice by poor or middle class Americans is too great if it means that the Koch brothers, the DeVos family, Howard Ahmanson, the Hunts, the Waltons and a score of others have more zeroes in the ledger to apply toward political ends and perpetuation of their dynastic reign.
RaflW
@Schlemizel: I think that’s true for a certain very noisy, extremely immature percentage of the population.
But there are people who are making changes. The Prius wouldn’t be selling if some people didn’t care. The key is the price signal. And that has been the real bugaboo of fracking. Not only has it pu t groundwater at risk, it’s totally fucking up the price of natural gas. And yet they keep drilling! It’s pathological, the race to extract it all, even if the price gets to near zero.
Anyway, wholesale natural gas is very cheap now. So cheap that gas power plants are springing online all the time now. Cheap enough to be messing up solar installation rates. Solar had finally gotten as cheap as coal/nuclear, and fracking comes along and pulls the floor out from under US solar.
So we need a carbon tax. I don’t think we’ll get one in the foreseeable future, but we need it even if policymakers can’t look past about next Thursday. Blergh.
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
There is also something to this to remember that the people paying for all this electricity really don’t know or don’t care where it’s coming from at the point of purchase. They only see dollar signs on their bill. I couldn’t honestly tell you what percentage of the electricity in my house comes from coal or nuclear or whatever. The changes could be made at the supply side without consumers even knowing they were “sacrificing” some, except where price is concerned.
On a related note, anyone notice how gasoline has stabilized at above $3/gallon here. I’m sure that’s not going to cleaner fuels.
magurakurin
@cvstoner:
So, fuck it?
Conservation and massive investment in solar and wind. The Germans are doing. But they are such a rash and impetuous race.
The US can stand still and listen to the shills going on about how nothing can replace nuclear as if it was a 1000 year old solution. By all means lets compare the output of an industry with 60 years of heavy subsidies and investment to one that has been neglected…that will make the outdated and dangerous technology look better.
The nuclear power shills will go on blathering about the need for their outdated solutions. But nuclear energy is a dead man walking. Fukushima killed it. Solar energy will see breakthrough after breakthrough as investment continues to ramp up. I’m not arguing that nuclear power should stop, I’m saying that it’s dead. Sure it will continue for a time, but in a hundred years…when we are all long gone…people will sit back in amazement that humankind could have been so foolish as to fuck around with nuclear energy.
magurakurin
@NotMax:
There used to be a lesbian band in Portland, Ore called “Dutchboy Finger.”
Todd
@Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS):
I know where mine comes from – coal. And since I use a heat pump, I pay a bloody fortune if I don’t keep the thermostat down to 66 in the winter months. That means lots of sweaters and hot beverages a few times a night.
RaflW
@WereBear:
I know I’m whipping a very dead horse, but this is the inexcusable, original sin of Dubya. Post 9/11, America was in deep psychic shock and, many of us believed, the nation was looking for a higher purpose to come out of it.
But that moral cavity of a man said “go shopping.”
Good lord, man, if he had set a visionary goal – say, real green energy independence in 10 years, we might have had a shot. I know it seems like liberal fantasy, but surely significant progress could have been made.
But Dick Cheney and Dubya himself were oil men. Men of the 20th century. We got “go shopping” and “conservation is insufficient.” We certainly weren’t asked to sacrifice in terms of actually, gee!, paying for the wars that ensued. The total lack of a higher purpose, and the descent into torture and wars of vengeance will have a lasting and deeply troubling resonance for us.
WereBear, I appreciate the idea that PBO is working to overcome some of that. But I think the current state of the GOP as exemplar, but our larger culture too, is a mirror of the terrible choices we let ourselves be led into post 9/11.
Its chilling how, more than a decade on, 9/11 is probably working to damage the US far more than it’s instigators imagined. And waaay more than most Americans could ever acknowledge.
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
@Todd: ack, I used to have a heat pump when I lived in the south. That shit was useless below a certain temperature.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@RaflW:
Post 9/11? You’re being way too charitable. The writing was on the wall back in the Seventies, Reagan spray-painted “America, fuck yeah!” over it and since then energy independence has meant more drilling and more fracking. The fossil fuel industry provides our politicians with the personally advantageous hammers. Is it any wonder that energy solutions all look like nails to them?
cvstoner
@magurakurin: No, I’m not saying “fuck it.” I’m saying that it will not be as simple as swapping batteries in a flashlight, and all the magical tech thinking will not change that.
roc
@cvstoner:
Modern reactor designs that are incapable of runaway reaction, don’t generate the worst, longest-lived waste and could actually be run on the problematic ‘spent’ fuel from our older plants, solving two problems at once?
Sure, there’s a lot of engineering to be done on that count, but it should be pursued for no other reason than doing something about our ever-growing nuclear waste problem.
magurakurin
@cvstoner:
whatever. The Germans are on it. And if memory serves me, they are the ones who discovered nuclear fission.
Nuclear energy just isn’t the irreplaceable key element that it is shilled to be. And actually replacing the 20 percent part of the energy mix that nuclear fills may not be as simple as replacing a battery but it is as simple as “shutting off a light.” The amount of energy wasted in the States, and the world, is staggering. Just ending lighted advertising would amount to how much? A fuck of a lot.
but you know Freedom and the Free Market.
You can call it magical thinking. The Germans are calling it current research developments. Someone is going to find the breakthrough…just as someone found nuclear fission. Why the attitude in the States seems to have become “it’s just so hard” instead of the old “fuck yeah, we can do that,” I don’t really know who is to blame.
But if we all agree to blame Reagan, I’m totally good with that.
Todd
@Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS):
At 25, there are no areas where you can warm up. Below 22, I gotta crank the emergency strips.
Incitatus for Senate
@Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS): Is a heat pump geothermal? Because that works perfectly in New England, heating and cooling, it’s amazing.
magurakurin
@cvstoner:
Here is some magical tech thinking for you
Higgs Boson's Mate
@magurakurin:
Nice. The initial capital costs would be staggering. That the authors have no estimate of the lifespans of photovoltaic and wind power equipment makes this a pig in a poke as far as long term costs.
magurakurin
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
It’s so hard.
cvstoner
@magurakurin: Yes, and California did a study a few years ago that proved that solar plants could be cost competitive with intermediate-range combined cycle natural gas plants.
And how far along are they at implementing that technology?
Not very far.
Why?
Because the capital and political will doesn’t exist to make the investment. Our electric generation system is heavily stacked towards burning fossil fuels. Cheap natural gas is driving the change now, not cheap solar energy. The carbon industry has vastly more political clout than solar/wind. And, unfortunately, that is who is calling the shots.
So, we can all talk the wonders of renewables, and I believe in them. But until the politics changes, we will be burning carbon until the planet is a crisp.
magurakurin
@cvstoner:
But you said it was magical thinking and now you’re saying it is because of political roadblock.
Like I said, whatever. I’m not arguing, because it’s a done deal. Someone is going to make the breakthrough, and soon. It’s going to happen and it’s going to happen because of the economics. The US may well be politically fucked, but other places are not. The investment is happening. The research is happening. The infrastructure build out is happening. Even in the US. In spite of the political roadblocks.
And to anyone who holds a completely fatalistic view of the future. I’ve been there, done that. But I recommend drugs, booze, sex and more drugs. Arguing about why we need nukes on the internet, not so much.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@magurakurin:
Would you buy a new car if they couldn’t tell you how long it would last? Convincing investors to plunk down huge sums for construction and then committing rate payers to unforeseeable increases in their utility bills for maintenance just won’t happen.
StringOnAStick
@magurakurin: Hey, thanks for that quote; it’s nice to read a few things now and again that don’t leave you feeling like the energy situation is completely hopeless!
Villago Delenda Est
@cvstoner:
Conservation is for communists. Energy efficiency is like Hitler and Stalin watching TV in your family room. I think I’ll idle my car in the driveway all day to piss off the libtards.
StringOnAStick
One of my buddies did his PhD on modeling the intereactions between natural gas prices and the construction of nat gas power plants. It was obviously more complicated than that, but the general upshot was that when nat gas is cheap, lots of nat gas plants get built, which then drives up the cost of nat gas, thus rendering the nat gas power plants expensive and ending their building boom cycle. The extreme cheapness of fracking gas might toss the model this time around though, at least for longer than usual.
The larger scale problem is that big public investments like power generation should not be left to the free market; it guarantees just the sort of mess we have today and results in zero strategic long term planning, plus a grid that is groaning with the load and with no one wanting to take responsibility for the expensive repair and replacement that needs to happen.
Power plants (nat gas, solar, whatever) have multi-year lead times in terms of planning, design, and construction, much less funding, and as the system currently operates (because FREEDOM!!!) it is all at the mercy of short-term market signals based on the price of commodities. It is planning based on a chicken-with-it’s-head-cut-off model, and that’s fucking stupid when your entire society runs on remotely generated power. But the Kochs wouldn’t want it any other way, and they tend to get their way. I wish those two were a LOT older…
Villago Delenda Est
@RaflW:
Al Qaeda mission accomplished!
Joe Buck
Jaczko repeatedly lost 4-1 votes (he was the only guy at the NRC who wanted to get tough) and was basically driven out.
fuckwit
@Todd: agenda 21! u.n. genocide! black helicopters! argle blargle!
RaflW
@cvstoner:
I think the capital exists. The market genie is just not doing it’s thing, yet.
That said, I plunked $750 into Mosaic, which is – in a very tiny, incubatory way – starting to securitize and sell investable amounts of solar. I made this investment with what I’d call mad money at this point. If it goes bust, I won’t be hurt by loosing $750.
But if the model can be supported and expanded, I think capital is seeking returns and willing to take the risk on solar. Wind has tended to do OK, though federal credits are still too much of the mix on that.
jc
The Fukushima disaster is a huge, ongoing tragedy. But my mind keeps going back to how Dick Cheney reacted to the situation in the weeks after it first spun out of control — full-throated, absolute support for nuclear power, and damn the hippies to hell. And I don’t doubt he still supports it unconditionally.
The world faces a steep uphill battle for survival when we’re governed by people who only see profit, and reality be damned. We have to overcome the Rick Perry mentality just to get at solving the fiascos they create. They see no problem in allowing unregulated fertilizer plants next to schools and nursing homes. And they are offended that you disagree.