
Nuclear plants in the US keep closing - jseliger
http://www.vox.com/2014/5/2/5671394/nuclear-power-retirements-climate-change
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protomyth
If you spend a huge amount of time and money demonizing something along with
making films about it in disasters and protesting every time an electric
company wants to build one, then you get aging plants without replacements.
Damn shame that was one of the things that could really help us now.

At this point, it will probably be natural gas then what comes next. We have
plenty of resources in the US to bridge to the next power source.

~~~
zurn
staving off catastrophic climate change is the issue, more natural gas doesn't
help.

~~~
tvladeck
natural gas as a replacement for coal-fired power does help, though. it helps
a lot.

~~~
whythehellnot
In terms of total emissions, no we are doing much worse. Many, many gas wells
crack and poisons the land and releases enormous amounts of gases hundreds
times worse than CO2.

In terms of total pollution, it removes the vast majority toxic waste produced
by coal which kills many people. Not to mention the mercury levels in the
ocean it's causing.

WE really needed advanced technologies like Nuclear Energy in the face of
virtually a coal/gas apocalypse. We are now in serious jeopardy without it.
Why do you think China's making Nuclear energy such a massive initiative? Even
India is doing decent research on them because they're sitting on a pile of
thorium.

This isn't a problem that we can be gambling with. We only get one good try at
this because there will be tens of thousands of years of repercussions. The
fact that we're settling with "good enough" on this could mean millions will
be displaced & billions of people could starve to death. All because we're
being controlled by a greedy gov, greedier lobbyists & a population too stupid
to do the right thing.

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spenrose
On a mostly-renewables grid: [http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/12/the-grid-
of-2030-all-...](http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/12/the-grid-of-2030-all-
renewable-90-percent-of-the-time/)

The culture of budgeting new nuclear plants:
[http://www.carbontax.org/blogarchives/2013/11/21/why-
officia...](http://www.carbontax.org/blogarchives/2013/11/21/why-official-
nuke-plant-cost-estimates-are-like-campaign-promises/)

Nuclear is tied to water in problematic ways:
[http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/the-energy-futurist/the-
ener...](http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/the-energy-futurist/the-energy-water-
nexus-2012-edition/)

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Zigurd
The power plants that are closing would not be allowed to be built now. New
plants are safer, and some designs appear to be inherently safe from meltdown.

Vermont Yankee leaks. Seabrook might be at risk from earthquake. It's time for
new and safer nuke plants.

~~~
chc
If we were talking about _replacing_ old nuclear plants, that would be a
different conversation. That isn't what's happening. We're largely
transitioning from our aging nuclear infrastructure to our older and even less
safe methods of power generation.

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toomuchtodo
Possible solutions:

* Increased incentives for solar (which serves as a consistent energy source during daylight hours)

* Guaranteed rates for base load nuclear generation

* A carbon tax on fossil fuel generation, used to subsidize nuclear

Across the US, we already pay for reserve capacity, known as "peaker plants".
They are paid simply to sit idle all year for those few days when we reach
maximum system demand. It would be similar to paying low/zero-carbon base load
plants (nuclear) to produce flat out, acknowledging their fixed costs.

I cringe at the thought of a substantial number of natural gas turbine plants
being built, and the price of natural gas skyrocketing.

~~~
logfromblammo
I always thought that it would be a better alternative to peak-demand power
plants to have a variable-demand industry connected to the base-load power
plant.

Rather than firing up the peak-demand plants when load rises, just keep the
plant humming along at the same rate and throttle back the cement producer, or
biomass gasifier, or fertilizer plant, or aluminum smelter, or paper mill, or
desalinator, until the grid load comes back down. Any industry that can
singlehandedly soak up all the excess power on additional production would do.

~~~
jjoonathan
They already do that. There just isn't any industry that can singlehandedly
soak up _all_ the excess power (subject to constraints of proximity to power
plants, distance from cities, etc). There's a chance electric cars will change
this.

~~~
NickNameNick
Paper mills are pretty good at providing large amounts of instantaneous
interruptible load. I'm sure there are others, but you're probably right,
soaking up ALL the excess baseload in a baseload only grid i would be a
challenge.

Energy storage, using electric car batteries as grid smoothing utilities is an
interesting approach. Grid sized flow batteries[1] are another interesting
option.

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_battery](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_battery)

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callmeed
I live 10 miles from the last operating one in California (Diablo Canyon, just
south of San Luis Obispo, run by PG&E). I have several friends and parents of
friends who work there. It's the #5 employer in our county behind only the
county itself, prisons, and the university.

One friend said he expects it to be shut down (or at least announced) by 2020.

Maybe this is an uninformed opinion but it will be a bummer if they do. That's
a lot of lost jobs for our area (1,700). I've lived here most of my life and
no one hear feels unsafe (despite being near fault lines). They spend so much
money on this thing, seems crazy to shut it down. (I heard they spent $70M on
their SAP installation).

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rdtsc
Interestingly there is a small and lucrative market that specializes in
"closing" and "decommission" of nuclear power plants.

Just like it takes decades to build and start operating them. It takes very
very long to close and decommission them.

I knew someone who was in that business, very nice niche market!

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afterburner
Everyone likes to talk about scare-mongers when something like this pops up,
which is disappointing and condescending. I oppose nuclear power plans on the
basis of their incredible cost, always more than any budget or contingency
plan can account for. It's a waste of money that can be put to better use in
the renewables field.

~~~
chc
Which renewables have proven themselves to be remotely as efficient, practical
and cost-effective as nuclear plants? I'm not aware of any unless you live
around relatively special geography (e.g. there are places where hydro,
geothermal or even wind power are strong contenders, but it doesn't seem like
it can be generalized).

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djern
An article sponsored by GE that discusses how great nuclear power is? How
surprising.

Yes Nuclear power doesn't emit greenhouse gasses, but to say it's clean isn't
true either. Nuclear waste is particularly nasty, and the politics behind
dumping it are concerning.

~~~
yulaow
I know that you were downvoted for the first sentence, but the second is a
serious problem and this is why in my country, with a referendum, we
legislated against the use of any form of production of energy through nuclear
fission.

Maybe it does not seem a problem UNTIL you found that some nuclear waste (and
with some I mean A LOT) have been buried illegally and without controls not
too far from your house [true story -> [http://gizmodo.com/the-mob-is-
secretly-dumping-nuclear-waste...](http://gizmodo.com/the-mob-is-secretly-
dumping-nuclear-waste-across-italy-1513190243)]

~~~
bsder
The problem with fossil fuels vs. nuclear is that everybody thinks of fossil
fuels as _SAFE_. They are not.

"Nuclear waste is bad--but I'm okay with you guys destroying the Gulf of
Mexico."

Dumping every ounce of nuclear waste we have at the bottom of the Gulf of
Mexico would cause less damage than Deepwater Horizon did.

And that's before you start talking about things like coal dust that actually
adds _MORE_ radioactivity to the environment than nuclear waste.

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angersock
Well, another awesome legacy of the Baby Boomers and Gen-X. Thanks for all the
scaremongering, folks--I'm sure my kids will appreciate your principles when
we have to ration their electricity.

~~~
protomyth
Us Gen-Xers were a little young given the hysteria was all about the 70's. We
were the "remember all that free love and stuff? yeah, not for you"
generation.

~~~
angersock
Fair enough--then again, there are a lot of folks in my demographic that
aren't helping matters either.

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neotoy
This is good news. Solar will fill the gap.

~~~
chc
Is there any reason to find this claim more credible than "The Flying
Spaghetti Monster will provide all the energy we need"? People have been
saying that solar is about to take off for about three decades now. They were
wrong at every step of the way. Maybe you're right, but the odds are not in
your favor. At this point, I'll believe it when I see it.

Until then, nuclear power is actually _proven_ to work and to do so more
safely than any comparably effective fuel source, so it's unfortunate to see
people saying we should abandon it in favor of a technology that has a
demonstrated track record of not being good enough, and thus will just lead us
to rely more on fossil fuels.

~~~
Hypx
Solar power has been growing at an exponential rate for the last several
years. The interesting thing about exponential growth is that it isn't
actually all that fast in its first stages, and easy to dismiss as
meaningless. Once adoption really gets going, solar will become very large
very fast.

~~~
mhandley
But nothing in the real world really follows an exponential. In reality, what
looks exponential is almost always a logistic curve:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function)

I'm optimistic about solar too, but even if it looks exponential now, this
doesn't tell you much about where it will level off. That will no doubt be
determined by how cheap the panels become, and how cost effective storage
technologies turn out to be.

