[Ayoob]

WASHINGTON—Obama administration officials Monday brushed aside calls for a freeze on new U.S. nuclear power development, and sought to reassure the public the nation's nuclear facilities are safe and the threat of harmful radiation reaching U.S. soil from Japan is minimal.

Meanwhile, the U.S. was sending more technical experts to Japan to get more information about the damaged nuclear reactors there as Japanese crews scrambled to prevent meltdowns at the facilities.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1 ... 3216100488

Breaking America's 30-year-old cherry, Obama grunts one onto the face of hippies nationwide by funding a new nuclear power plant in Georgia. Following in the wise footsteps of displaced rival John McCain, Obama boosts American energy independence with strategic investment into the one wise electricity choice that creates the first distance to the problematic Middle East.

Observing reality and learning from it, McCain said, "Why is it that we aren't using more nuclear power in the United States of America today? It's because we haven't addressed the issue of either reprocessing or storing spent nuclear fuel. We can do that," McCain said in a speech on June 2, 2008 in Nashville, Tenn. "Nuclear is clean."

McCain also dropped in a military statistic he is fond of citing.

"My friends, the U.S. Navy has sailed ships around the world for 60 years with nuclear power plants on them and we've never had an accident. That's because we have well-trained and capable people."

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter ... -argument/

I proudly pulled the lever for McCain on this one issue because nobody else would talk about nuclear power. It looks like I finally got something I wanted out of our current president. Good for him, and may he fund a hundred more this year.

[rollin]

Right wing that is. Oh goody more "spent fuel" with which to never deal. Amazing how selective the mentality is when really wanting something. It can ignore just about anything.

Apparently the cost of electricity is a trashed climate blowing over a radioactive wasteland. Add that to your power cost calculations when comparing it to solar and wind power.

[ROCKMAN]

Perhaps no Navy nuke accidents (at least one reported) there's still the question of spent fuel:

Waste from naval fuel is shipped to INEEL for storage at the Idaho Nuclear Technology and Engineering Center. Fuel from test, research, and educational reactors is stored at the Savannah River Site and INEEL. Although there were many more shipments by road, the tonnage of rail shipments exceeded the tonnage of shipments by road by a factor of about 2. Included in the rail shipments are naval spent fuel, which has been shipped for more than 40 years by rail in shielded shipping containers from naval shipyards, and prototypes, which are shipped to the Expended Core Facility at the Naval Reactors Facility in Idaho, where the fuel is removed from the containers and placed into water pools.

[SteveO]

I wouldn't object to this "nuclear renaissance" if it wasn't for the fact that these "new" AP1000 PWRs use the same inefficient zirconium clad, solid fuel technology that Westinghouse has been building since the 60s.

These things are just plutonium makers with a power plant attached to them. We really need some different ideas.

[Keith_McClary]

Breaking America's 30-year-old cherry, Obama grunts one onto the face of hippies nationwide by funding a new nuclear power plant in Georgia.
...
Observing reality and learning from it, McCain said, "Why is it that we aren't using more nuclear power in the United States of America today? It's because we haven't addressed the issue of either reprocessing or storing spent nuclear fuel. We can do that," McCain said in a speech on June 2, 2008 in Nashville, Tenn. "Nuclear is clean."
...
Good for him, and may he fund a hundred more this year.

On June 27, 1954, the USSR's Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant became the world's first nuclear power plant to generate electricity
After six decades we still need government subsidies for the reactors and for waste disposal and free government liability insurance.

[Plantagenet]

The Obama administration is making a big effort to reduce CO2 emissions in the US to stop climate change.

Nuclear power plants release zero CO2.

I assume this push to build nuclear power in the US is part of Obama's climate change agenda. Funding new nuclear power plants is something Obama can do with "a pen and a phone" to advance his agenda.


Obama's move offers HOPE and CHANGE to the US nuclear industry

[steve from virginia]

Life cycle + dependencies and all nuclear power is underwater. It cannot pay its own way, in other words.

As the world slowly goes broke there is less available funds for white elephants like nuclear power plants.

What happens when the generator companies fall bankrupt? A: board up plants w/ plywood and abandon them ... and hope for the best!

[ROCKMAN]

“Funding new nuclear power plants is something Obama can do with "a pen and a phone" to advance his agenda.” So true. He has done a great job so far to promote energy development. Such as using his “a pen and a phone” to expand the leasing of govt coal reserves leading to an explosion in exports, calling on his Interior Dept to expedite the expansion of coal export terminals in Texas, had his EPA give final approval for a new coal fired e- plant in Texas that would burn Illinois coal for the next 30 years, hundreds of DW GOM drilling permits approved since the Macondo blow out and calling all his agencies to expedite the completion of the southern leg of Keystone Pipeline which started flowing oil sands production directly from Alberta to Texas last month. And then there’s what he hasn’t used his “pen and phone” to prevent: the importation of Canadian oil. Without which I doubt a single bbl of oil sands production would be produced today given the US is the only market. After all, he had no trouble using his “pen and phone” to convince many countries to not import Iranian oil.

Yes indeed…as has been said many times: the pen (and phone) are mightier than the sword. Well, at least mightier than the Sierra Club.

[Tanada]

Actually the Federal Government has been collecting a surcharge on spent nuclear fuel for decades, promising that some day soon they will put it in a safe place for someday later reprocessing. They spent lots of money getting studies and tests done on Yucca mountain from that fund, but then Harry Reid became majority leader and killed the project. All that money is still in the hands of the Government that has been promising a repository any day now for 30 years.

Spent nuclear fuel is a political issue, not a technological one.

[careinke]

I heard on NPR yesterday, that the damaged Japaneese reactors are going to take 40 YEARS to completely shut down. Honestly, where do you think humanity will be in FORTY YEARS? My guess, the later stages of collapse.

I don't feel the 60'S nuclear power technology we use today, would be a good fit with the upcoming collapse.

just sayin

[Tanada]

I heard on NPR yesterday, that the damaged Japaneese reactors are going to take 40 YEARS to completely shut down. Honestly, where do you think humanity will be in FORTY YEARS? My guess, the later stages of collapse.

I don't feel the 60'S nuclear power technology we use today, would be a good fit with the upcoming collapse.

just sayin

40 years is the standard timetable for dismantling every reactor, you take your time and let the short lived radio isotopes decay away between steps. About the only exceptions are reactors that were small, like the ones on ships, that they just haul off to long term storage. They are still slowly dismantling Fermi One a few miles north of here and it was shut down in 1972. Once the fuel is removed even if nothing else never gets done its no big deal, a big lump of very mildly radioactive steel and concrete taking up about the footprint of a big box store.

[GHung]

Old news. Plant Vogtle has the two new units well under construction, and word is that the area will be over-built for electrical generation when they are complete. Southern Co. is closing coal plants. Vogtle currently has two GE PWRs rated at 1200 MW each, built in '87 - '89, and the two new AP1000 reactors will add another 25 MW of capacity for a cool price tag of $14 billion+. The media is making a big deal out of what is only a formality.

See it here: https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Vogtle+E ... e&t=h&z=15

Plant Vogtle is paired with a pumped storage system near Eatonton, GA (Lakes Oconee and Sinclair). It is located on the Sanannah River about 100 miles upstream from the infamous DOD/DOE Savannah River nuclear facilities.

[Plantagenet]

Old news.

Nope. The new loan guarantees were just announced yesterday.

This is a very big deal. Maybe even as Joe Biden would say, its a F%*#in big deal.

Obama and the Ds are now backing nuclear energy development in the US and funding the construction of two nuclear power plants. This will re-energize the entire US nuclear industry, which has been moribund for decades.

Obama supports renewed construction of nuclear energy power plants in the US


Thank you, President Obama

[GHung]

Plantagenet: "Nope. The new loan guarantees were just announced yesterday."

Formally, perhaps, but rest assured Southern Company received guarantees under the table some time back. Did you look at my google maps link? I posted that on TOD over a year ago; same photos. Southern Company wouldn't have already spent a couple of hundred million bucks if they had any doubts. I also admit to having some inside knowledge on this; did quite a lot of work for GA Power back in the day and still have some contacts. One told me last spring that they had already poured thousands of yards of concrete. They weren't building a parking lot.

[Plantagenet]

I also admit to having some inside knowledge on this; did quite a lot of work for GA Power back in the day and still have some contacts. One told me last spring that they had already poured thousands of yards of concrete. They weren't building a parking lot.

You make good points, GHung. Thanks.

I was surprised that O came out for more nukes and issued the federal loan guarantees, especially so soon after the Fukushima disaster in Japan, but I guess you saw this coming all along.

[Synapsid]

GHung,

Do I recall correctly that GA ratepayers are being billed for the construction while it's going on?

[Synapsid]

An article in yesterday's Financial Times discusses the closures, announced in the last 18 months, of four nuclear-power plants in the US; they are uncompetitive for various reasons that are discussed in the article. Four others are mentioned as being vulnerable too.

I don't know if there's a paywall. I read it on Naked Capitalism.

[Loki]

Breaking America's 30-year-old cherry, Obama grunts one onto the face of hippies nationwide by funding a new nuclear power plant in Georgia.

That was unnecessarily crude. And didn't you just move to Oregon? The hippies here enacted a law here years ago that prohibits new nuclear plants from being built in the state until a permanent federal disposal facility is established. So basically never. You might have chosen the wrong state to move to.

Let's hope these new plants turn out a bit better than some of our last forays into nuclear power. Google WPPSS (pronounced “whoops”), a Washington state nuclear boondoggle that resulted in the largest municipal bond default in US history. Also Google the Trojan nuclear plant, Oregon's first and only nuclear plant, decommissioned less than halfway through its design life because of construction and design flaws (but ratepayers are still paying for it).



Might as well Google San Onofre while you're at it, California ratepayers will be paying for that plant for years, though it'll never produce another kilowatt.

The evil ecoterrorists (Sierra Club et al.) didn't shut down any of these projects, the nuclear industry screwed them up just fine all by themselves, just as they have done with Fukushima Daiichi.

As for Obama, his “all of the above” energy strategy has been explicit for quite some time. Rockman has outlined the president's unwavering support for the oil industry in great detail, it's quite impressive. No surprise he'd offer similar support to the nuclear industry. I knew from the get go back in '08 that Obama had no interest whatsoever in environmental issues.

[Loki]

Since the OP seems oblivious to recent history, here's a bit of short-term historical perspective, a Washington Post story from Februrary 2010:

Obama has long been amenable to new nuclear power and said throughout the presidential campaign that it had to be part of a comprehensive energy strategy. The loan guarantee he promised Tuesday would come from $18.5 billion in money authorized during President George W. Bush's administration under the Energy Policy Act of 2005. But in the latest budget proposal, Obama has proposed tripling that to $54.5 billion, an amount that Chu said could help jump-start seven to 10 new nuclear power reactors. The United States has 104 commercial nuclear reactors.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 01302.html

Obama extended this pork in part, if you believe their spokesman, to get the GOP to play nice on climate policy. That's obviously failed miserably in the 4 years since this article was written. Yet the nuclear goodies are still on the table, and then some.

One of the most entertaining parts of this story is how small government free market conservatives line up to vote vociferously for federal loan guarantees for the nuclear industry, but ignite into a ball of white hot fury when the same guarantees are extended to solar and wind projects. SOLYNDRAAAAAAA!!!!!

[GHung]

@Synapsid - I expect the costs will be floated as far north as North Carolina, south into Florida, and west to Mississippi. Georgia Power customers got a rate increase for Christmas. Here's the breakdown of who gets first dibs on paying the bills [wikipedia]:

In June 2010, the United States Department of Energy awarded an $8.3 billion loan guarantee to facilitate the construction of two new nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle, near Augusta, Georgia. A Southern Company subsidiary, Georgia Power, owns 45.7% of the current 2,430 MW facility, with co-owners Oglethorpe Power (30%) Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia (22.7%) and the City of Dalton (1.6%). The plant is operated by Georgia Power. The $14 billion construction project is scheduled to be completed by 2016 and would double the plant's capacity.[9]

The construction of two 1,154 MW reactors has been hailed by Energy Secretary Steven Chu as "the first new nuclear power plant to break ground in decades". It is expected to create up to 3,500 jobs during the construction phase, and 800 once operational.[10]

MWHs are pretty fungible. They'll be selling this power to gridweenies all over the Southeast.