The True Costs of Nuclear Power

In Florida, a surcharge will be added to our bills for 9 years before the new plants produce power. This is like buying a new car and making payments for 9 years before you can drive it. The price will change during that time too. Also, no warranties. You pay all costs if anything goes wrong, assuming you survive the defect. Junking it when it is retired will cost more than the purchase price.

I installed the elevator in the Crystal River nuclear powerplant containment building. This plant is operating beyond it's original design life right now. I remain unconvinced that adequate security and safety measures will be taken at nuclear plants.

Even if what supporters say is totally true, it does not address the extreme costs of building a reactor, which is the premise of this post.

Whether through mining or from "recycling" spent fuel rods and processing new fuel, radioactive wastes are created not easily folded back in to the processes that threaten the health of workers and off site contamination.

And there will always be wastes. Maybe 5%, maybe more of unusable REMs will be produced. Doesn't sound like much, but it'll be with us for a long, long time.

And, in order to claw back usable fuel from lower concentrations of radiant energy available would require constructing enrichment facilities capable of producing weapons grade materials and enable weapons proliferation.

I hear as an alternative to that there is serious consideration of ocean dumping of nuclear wastes.

People of conscience need to continue opposing development of nuclear power and embrace conservation and lower consumerism as the most effective action take that can have an immediate effect.

Lochbaum objects to nuclear power because it cannot do anything for
transportation or home heating? C'mon! It doesn't take a scientist
to recognize that a LOT of people use electricity to heat their
homes. Also, in case he hasn't noticed, plug-in hybrid electric
vehicles use electricity too. Then he talks about the waste, as if
no other form of electrical production has it. To be sure, this
so-called "waste" is the best thing going for nuclear for three
very important reasons: 1. There is very little of it. One pellet,
the size of the tip of your finger can replace 2000 pounds of coal.
2. It can easily be contained. Used fuel from a nuclear facility
consists ofa solid ceramic material that doesn't emit anything into
the environment. It has been safely contained for decades and can
continue to be contained until it is recycled, which brings me to
point 3. 3. Used nuclear fuel is 95% recyclable. When something is
95% recyclable, it is hardly accurate to call it "waste". France,
Great Britain, and Japan have been recycling used fuel for years,
which drastically reduces the radioactivity, volume, and toxicity.
The problem is much more political than technical. Although nuclear
isn't the panacea of energy, environmentalists are wise to support
it, or at least consider it, especially when the alternative for
the immediate future is to dig, drill, or pump stuff out of the
ground and set it on fire.