PSC slams plan to pay for nuclear power plants (Georgia)

http://www.ajc.com/business/content/business/stories/2008/12/24/psc_nuclear_power.html

Georgia Power recently got some good and bad news, as it continues its push for new nuclear reactors in the state.

The good news: Neither the Georgia Public Service Commission’s public interest staff nor the state’s biggest industrial customers oppose the new reactors outright.

he bad news: Both the PSC staff and the industrial customers slammed the company’s proposal to begin charging for the new reactors five years before they’re complete.

In filings late last week, the staff said it was recommending approval of the reactors subject to adoption of a number of financial limits.

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It si claimed that we have some thirty-five to forty years of nuclear power capabilities before we start running out of the uranium to use.

But if every state in the nation starts building power plants, we could run out within ten eyars of the complektion of those plabnts.

So is it all that good a deal? Yes, it is for the people in the industry - who build the plants and maintain the plants and get the consuemrs to pay for everything even before the plants are operational.

But for the consumer, even if the waste problem was solved (Which it is not) it is a very very bad and expensive deal.

They're based on the same wrong model that said back in the 1970s we'd have pumped every drop of oil out of the ground by 1990 or so. The fact is that we have hundreds of years worth of uranium via conventional mining, and thousands more using the technology the Japanese have pioneered for filtering dissolute uranium out of seawater.

"Technology Available energy PWh/yr-1
Nuclear 4.1–122 for 90–300 yrs*

*Low available energy is for once-through thermal reactors; high number is for light-water and fast-spectrum reactors, which have very low penetration currently. Low number of years is for known reserves. High number is for expected reserves.

...As of April 1, 2008, 439 nuclear power plants were installed in 31 countries (including 104 in the US, 59 in France, 55 in Japan, 31 in the Russian Federation, and 20 in the Republic of Korea). The US produces more electric power from nuclear energy than any other country (29.2% of the world total in 2005).20 France, Japan, and Germany follow. France uses nuclear power to supply 79% of its electricity. At current nuclear electricity production rates, there are enough uranium reserves (4.7–14.8 MT16) to provide nuclear power in current once-through fuel cycle reactors for about 90–300 yr (Table 1). With breeder reactors, which allow spent uranium to be reprocessed for additional fuel, the reprocessing also increases the ability of uranium and plutonium to be weaponized more readily than in once-through reactors."

http://www.rsc.org/delivery/_ArticleLinking/DisplayHTMLArticleforfree.cfm?JournalCode=EE&Year=2009&ManuscriptID=b809990c&Iss=Advance_Article

"...Nuclear power puts out about 24 times more lifecycle carbon and other pollutants
per kWh than wind energy. For nuclear, carbon emissions include those due to the mining
and transport of uranium, the opportunity-cost emissions due to the time-lag between
planning and operation of a nuclear power plant (10-19 years), and the risk (between 0
and 1) of carbon emissions due to the burning of cities associated with nuclear war or
terrorism that is linked to the future increase of nuclear fuel production in nuclear power
plants worldwide. For example, the explosion of 1.5 MT of nuclear weapons material, or
0.1% of the yields proposed for a full-scale nuclear war, during a limited nuclear
exchange or a terrorist attack in a megacity would burn 63-313 Tg of fuel in city
infrastructure, adding CO2 and 1-5 Tg of soot to the atmosphere, much of it to the
stratosphere, and killing 3-17 million people based on a recent paper (Toon et al.).

As stated in a Los Alamos Report in August 1981, “There is no technical
demarcation between the military and civilian reactor and there never was one.”
Currently, 42 countries have fissionable material to produce weapons; 22 of these
countries have facilities in nuclear energy plants to produce enriched uranium or to
separate plutonium; 13 of these countries are active in producing enriched uranium or
separating plutonium; 9 of these countries have nuclear stockpiles. Having a nuclear
reactor facilitates the basis for obtaining uranium that can then be used either for energy
production and either secretly or openly for weapons production. The U.S. would need to
add 200-275 850 MW nuclear power plants to power all U.S. electric vehicles, and once
the U.S. started to do this, most countries of the world would try to follow, increasing the
risk of nuclear weapons proliferation. Any solution to global warming, air pollution, and
energy security on a large scale must involve technology that can be disseminated
worldwide. As such, this technology cannot be nuclear. If the U.S. uses alone nuclear,
this will undercut international efforts to slow global warming and air pollution mortality.
..."

Review of Solutions to Global Warming, Air Pollution, and Energy Security
Briefing to Senator Jeff Bingaman
Chairman, Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee
October 8, 2008
MARK Z. JACOBSON

Trying to claim that nuclear power produces carbon because of the burning of cities due to nuclear war? Please. That's like saying that eating beef is directly equivalent to genocide because methane contributes to global warming.

The way to do a full assessment of the technologies. None of the other technologies pose even a risk of promoting nuclear weapons proliferation - spreading nuclear energy technology ensures it. Since we are looking 100-300 years ahead with the assessment, and since there is no indication that a means of controlling the warlike nature of humans is a foreseeable part of our future; then it is a reasonable part of a proper analysis to include this risk - properly weighted for probabilities. I personally think that if nuclear were to be the energy choice of source, within the 300 year time frame considered there would be a hell of a lot more use of nuclear weapons than presumed in the paper.

Prior to the emergence of the deterrent of mutually assured destruction (MAD) we used them twice. If they reach the hands of paries where MAD isn't a factor (non-state actors for example, or a madman) then there is a significant danger of them being used.

A good place for information on the topic would be
BELFER CENTER FOR SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
JOHN F. KENNEDY SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

They had a large project titled "the Nuclear Threat initiative" and produced a lot of good work. It is also an ongoing topic of their research.

With that "pseudo-information" I actually provided numbers that more or less support your claims regarding supply of fuel. Don't you feel a little bit foolish for not actually reading for meaning?

Merry Christmas.