Finally!! Helps me feel better that I voted for him, bringing back nuclear power.
Quote:Washington (CNN) -- President Obama announced $8.3 billion in loan guarantees Tuesday for two nuclear reactors to be built in Burke County, Georgia.
A new nuclear power plant has not been built in the United States in three decades.
The new reactors are to be part of an expansion of an existing nuclear facility near Augusta, Georgia, operated by Atlanta-based Southern Co.
The loan guarantees will help create 3,500 on-site construction jobs and 850 permanent operations jobs, administration officials claimed. The reactors will help provide power to over 550,000 homes and 1.4 million people, it said.
"This is only the beginning," Obama said during a visit to an International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers training facility in Lanham, Maryland. "We'll continue to provide financing for clean energy projects ... across America."
The president acknowledged that construction of new nuclear facilities will meet with some political resistance. Nuclear development has traditionally been opposed by more progressive elements of the Democratic Party. But nuclear power, he said, remains the country's largest source of fuel that produces no carbon emissions.
"To meet our growing energy needs and prevent the worst consequences of climate change, we'll need to increase our supply of nuclear power. It's that simple," he said.
At the same time, the president argued, traditional Republican proponents of nuclear power should acknowledge that comprehensive energy legislation is needed to help provide incentives to make clean energy more profitable.
Any new nuclear facilities, he promised, will "be held to the highest and strictest safety standards."
Leading congressional Republicans -- including both Georgia senators -- were quick to praise Obama's decision
http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/02/16/o...3A+U.S.%29
Where does Obama plan to store the nuclear waste? By his order, the only long term storage facility in this country, Yucca Mountain, on which $9 billion has already been spent on planning and development, has already been closed.
I agree with the decision to resume building nuclear power plants by I am skeptical that it will happen on Obama's watch. I just wish that Obama had made the decision for the right reasons.
AGW has been exposed as a hoax, yet the administration continues to talk as if CO2 emissions from coal fired power plants is a crisis threatening our species' very existence.
We should be building new nuclear plants, just as we should be building new coal plants and drilling for energy - to keep energy costs affordable to give our economy room to expand.
Hoot Gibson Wrote:Where does Obama plan to store the nuclear waste? By his order, the only long term storage facility in this country, Yucca Mountain, on which $9 billion has already been spent on planning and development, has already been closed.
I agree with the decision to resume building nuclear power plants by I am skeptical that it will happen on Obama's watch. I just wish that Obama had made the decision for the right reasons.
AGW has been exposed as a hoax, yet the administration continues to talk as if CO2 emissions from coal fired power plants is a crisis threatening our species' very existence.
We should be building new nuclear plants, just as we should be building new coal plants and drilling for energy - to keep energy costs affordable to give our economy room to expand.
D.C. Cook in MI. stores their waste on site in a big mausoleum. It looks like a giant motel, but it is actually concrete about 10 feet thick with 3 feet thick steel in the center. I have heard rumors of sending waste to space. I don't know if that's feasible or even safe, I don't have enough knowledge to say.
Quote:We should be building new nuclear plants, just as we should be building new coal plants and drilling for energy - to keep energy costs affordable to give our economy room to expand
Can agree with this as long as they install the SCR's and scrubbers on the coal units. I am also for the new carbon capture(sending the co2 down 10-15 thousand feet in the ground via drilled wells) units they are starting to install on coal units.
TheRealVille Wrote:D.C. Cook in MI. stores their waste on site in a big mausoleum. It looks like a giant motel, but it is actually concrete about 10 feet thick with 3 feet thick steel in the center. I have heard rumors of sending waste to space. I don't know if that's feasible or even safe, I don't have enough knowledge to say.
Can agree with this as long as they install the SCR's and scrubbers on the coal units. I am also for the new carbon capture(sending the co2 down 10-15 thousand feet in the ground via drilled wells) units they are starting to install on coal units.
Carbon sequestration makes no sense in the absence of any demonstrable effect on the climate. I am all for scrubbers to reduce SO2 emissions and other pollutants that pose a real health risk to humans but trapping carbon dioxide is nonsensical, IMO.
I hope that I will live to see the day that the people bilked by Al Gore's marketing of carbon credits will win a class action lawsuit and a large sum of money. It would be poetic justice for Al Gore to lose his ill-gotten fortune at the hands of the trial lawyers who financed his political campaigns.
Realville, Why is it that you're against surface mining but you have no problem with mining uranium for nuclear energy? If I remember correctly in the past you said you were against anything harming the environment.
I've stated many times before I think we need to be energy independent and that would include all forms of energy.
As Hoot said there is no approved plan to discard nuclear waste, wouldn't it be practical to resolve this problem first.
Apparently Barry's EPA, have a few issue's with nuclear power, from the EPA linked below.
All of the nuclear power plants in the United States together produce about 2,000 metric tons per year of radioactive waste. Currently, the radioactive waste is stored at the nuclear plants at which it is generated, either in steel-lined, concrete vaults filled with water or in above-ground steel or steel-reinforced concrete containers with steel inner canisters. The Department of Energy is currently preparing a license application to construct a permanent central repository at Yucca Mountain. If the license is granted, the repository could begin to accept waste by 2012. In addition to the fuel waste, much of the equipment in the nuclear power plants becomes contaminated with radiation and will become radioactive waste after the plant is closed. These wastes will remain radioactive for many thousands of years.
Although power plants are regulated by federal and state laws to protect human health and the environment, there is a wide variation of environmental impacts associated with power generation technologies.
Nuclear power plants use large quantities of water for steam production and for cooling. When nuclear power plants remove water from a lake or river for steam production and cooling, fish and other aquatic life can be affected.
Water pollutants, such as heavy metals and salts, build up in the water used in the nuclear power plant systems. These water pollutants, as well as the higher temperature of the water discharged from the power plant, can negatively affect water quality and aquatic life.
Although the nuclear reactor is radioactive, the water discharged from the power plant is not considered radioactive because it never comes in contact with radioactive materials.3 However, waste generated from uranium mining operations and rainwater runoff can contaminate groundwater and surface water resources with heavy metals and traces of radioactive uranium.
The construction of nuclear power plants can destroy natural habitat for animals and plants or contaminate local land with toxic by-products. For example, the storage of radioactive waste may preclude any future re-use of these contaminated lands.
http://www.epa.gov/cleanenergy/energy-an...clear.html
Old School Wrote:Realville, Why is it that you're against surface mining but you have no problem with mining uranium for nuclear energy? If I remember correctly in the past you said you were against anything harming the environment.
I'm not against mining Old School. I'm 100% for it. What I have said I am against is, these power houses not putting on scrubbers and scr's, to clean up what's coming out of their stacks. I am for power made by coal 100%, just make it cleaner as it's being burned is all I've ever said. I want to give my kids, generations after I'm gone, a chance at life. All I want is to
burn coal as clean as possible, and to
mine it as
clean as possible without polluting our water, for our kids after us. Just stewardship.
TheRealVille Wrote:I'm not against mining Old School. I'm 100% for it. What I have said I am against is, these power houses not putting on scrubbers and scr's, to clean up what's coming out of their stacks. I am for power made by coal 100%, just make it cleaner as it's being burned is all I've ever said. I want to give my kids, generations after I'm gone, a chance at life. All I want is to burn coal as clean as possible, and to mine it as clean as possible without polluting our water, for our kids after us. Just stewardship.
Is there a chance that you would be involved in the new Georgia plant's constuction if it indeed happens?
Th waste is the biggest question.
Sending waste to space will never happen. Could you imagine what would happen if a shuttle exploded in the atmosphere carrying thousands of tons of nuclear waste?
Mr.Kimball Wrote:Is there a chance that you would be involved in the new Georgia plant's constuction if it indeed happens?
Probably not, I don't travel much anymore. I stay around a plant in WV and work maintenance there. I haven't worked on nukes in about 10 years.
TheRealVille Wrote:Probably not, I don't travel much anymore. I stay around a plant in WV and work maintenance there. I haven't worked on nukes in about 10 years.
lol. The years of wear and tear catching up with you too?