Wikipedia distorts nuclear history: Rutland Herald Online

Yea, I am also going to have to disagree with your assertion that the Wikipedia article on Nuclear Power is supporting an agenda.

Arguing that subsidies is the only thing supporting the nuclear industry is a pointless argument because subsidies is what is supporting just about every other energy industry there is. Those solar farms being constructed in California would not have gotten off the ground if it were not for subsidies.

Most of the other problems with this article are covered in other comments, so I will only make comments on the next quote.

"A 1982 study performed by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission for Congress predicted that a serious accident at the Indian Point nuclear power plant near New York City would kill 50,000 people and result in 100,000 "radiation injuries" and $300 billion in property damage. This study has never been updated. The Wikipedia article "Nuclear Power" does not mention it."

How is this relevant? The 'Nuclear Power' article is not going to mention the possible effects of every scenario imaginable. This has not happened, and frankly, will not happen. An encyclopedia's purpose is to report the facts, not raise conjecture. There are plenty of near-impossible scenarios that I could come up with, but they also have no place in an encyclopedia.

It seems that you either do not know what an encyclopedia is, or have such a negative bias towards nuclear power that your judgement is severely clouded. I am guessing it is the latter.

I absolutely support your right to be against nuclear power, but many of your beliefs on the industry are either half-truths or completely false. Just because someone says something as fact does not make it so. The reason this is such a hotly debated topic is because there are people out there willing to spread lies in order to support their opinion. I would love to see an open discussion between the pro and anti nukes, but I don't think that would happen. If you are not willing to listen to and understand your opposition's beliefs, you can never truly understand your own. Pro nukes are not crazy people bent on nuclear catastrophe. We are just as reasonable as the next person. I urge you to put aside your anger and at least consider the opposition and see the facts that back up those beliefs. If you still feel the same way, that is fine, but at least then you will know the facts and help stop the spread of lies and deception.

-- Posted by Ian Francis on Sat, May 3, 2008, 11:04 am EST [report this comment]

Spending one dollar on energy efficiency programs like Efficiency Vermont saves approximately three times as much energy as spending one dollar on nuclear power generates. That's according to a 2005 study by Amory Lovins in the journal Nuclear Engineering International. The dollar spent on energy efficiency also creates more jobs than the dollar spent on nuclear.

In other words, if Americans took the money they now give to corporations like Entergy Nuclear for electricity from nuclear power plants and instead spent it on programs like Efficiency Vermont, the nation's 65 nuclear plants could be closed, electricity bills would go down, and there would be a net increase in jobs.

And this shows exactly the problems with many editorials, and why Wikipedia remains a far better source than dubious polemics posted on the internet. You cited one source, a study without the name of the paper or a place where one can review it. Unlike Wikipedia where sources are usually easily available for personal reference, allowing people to reach their own conclusions.

(I am not providing sources as I do not pretend to be a substitute for Wikipedia)

Secondly, you reach an extremely dubious conclusion which can not be inferred from the study. That one dollar wisely invested in conservation will yield a greater return than a dollar invested in generation is a sensible conclusion. However, it does not follow that one can then invest an infinite amount of money and yield ever greater electricity savings. There is a point of diminishing returns. Even countries such as Germany which have very aggressive electricity saving programs have not even approached a 20% reduction in demand - especially combined with our growing population!

Finally, Americans do not "give" Entergy money. It is not a charity. Entergy supplies electricity in exchange for money. Entergy does this whether people demand more or less electricity, it's up to consumers to save energy. This has nearly nothing to do with nuclear power. By even bringing conservation into the argument you only muddle and confuse the issue, by presenting a false choice (Conservation OR Nuclear).

You then proceed to present more false choices, such as Nuclear or Renewable sources. You provide no sources for your conclusion that a 400% increase in government subsidies for non-hydro renewable energy (10B to 40B) over the last thirty years would have yielded a 2000% increase in modern day renewable energy capacity. This quite an ambitious claim, and really needs a strong source to have any believability whatsoever.

Wikipedia bends over backwards to downplay these problems. And it fails to mention that there are much cheaper, safer and more environmentally friendly alternatives to nuclear power. The article also fails to mention the taxpayer subsidies that created the nuclear power industry in the 1950s and 1960s, that allowed the industry to grow and that keep it alive today.

Have you read Wikipedia's article guidelines, or ever used a different encyclopedia? The article is not about the best source of electricity generation. It is about nuclear energy.

Secondly the taxpayer subsidies spent on nuclear may be argued about, but back in 1960 there were no other pollution-free base load generation possibilities outside of nuclear.

The Atomic Energy Act of 1954 effectively created the nuclear power industry. The government provided the industry with millions of dollars of free research, heavily subsidized fuel, discounted waste disposal, tax breaks, and, perhaps most significantly, taxpayer-subsidized insurance in case of an accident. The insurance was provided by the Price Anderson Act of 1957. Congress has renewed the act approximately once every 10 years, and it's still in effect.

Yes, and it's been a great investment. Tax payers have not paid a single cent out in compensation under the act. And it's saved rate-payers huge insurance charges.

There hasn't been a single one in the history of the US civilian nuclear industry. Compare this with the very real health care costs we are already paying which have been incurred during accidents which occurred during the construction of wind mills, or the massive health toll which coal power and coal mining incur (tens of thousands of deaths yearly).

A 1982 study performed by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission for Congress predicted that a serious accident at the Indian Point nuclear power plant near New York City would kill 50,000 people and result in 100,000 "radiation injuries" and $300 billion in property damage. This study has never been updated. The Wikipedia article "Nuclear Power" does not mention it.

I can't find this study. It was probably not well reviewed by peers. Otherwise it would be cited in scientific publications. I only find it referenced on a number of anti-nuclear websites.

Former federal prosecutor Kenneth McCallion wrote in his 1995 book, "Shoreham and the Rise and Fall of the Nuclear Power Industry" that "James Asselstine, a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, has concluded that there is at least a 45 percent chance of a meltdown of a nuclear reactor somewhere in the United States in the next 20 years."

Greenpeace and anti-nuclear activists love to play with words and exploit the publics lack of understanding about terminology. A melt down, a situation where the reactor core over-heats such that it is no longer functionally usable, is not Chernobyl. Despite what Greenpeace might like to believe, a Chernobyl situation is virtually impossible in a US reactor because US reactors have containment domes, an explosion of the reactor core with a massive outside release requires destruction of the containment dome.

Three Mile Island was a melt down, but demonstrated the efficacy of good safety systems. Furthermore, safety has improved even more since then.

It wasn't until 1987 that Congress decided where the federal government would dump the nuclear waste that Carter had offered to take: Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

The nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain still has not opened. The U.S. Department of Energy estimated in 2001 that the total cost of the dump would be about $58 billion. The waste is still being stored around the nation near the 103 reactors where it's created.

Oh, where to start? There's so much bad information here...

Yucca mountain is paid for by a tax which the NUCLEAR INDUSTRY paid on electricity that it generated. That is not your money. The US electricity market is in the trillions of dollars, $58 Billion for waste storage is almost meaningless. Actually, the further blocking of Yucca mountain is costing taxpayers money, as under the tax laws nuclear companies get compensation from the government for every year the government fails to develop a permanent storage facility.

In 1995 the National Academies of Science issued a report that said nuclear waste kept at Yucca could still be deadly in 1 million years. The waste needs to be protected by armed guards around the clock.

Those two statements next to each other are very misleading. For the short term, it would be wise to protect the waste to prevent (very stupid) terrorists from attempting to release it.

But that's not necessary anyway since anyone wanting to build a nuclear bomb or something would be better off just mining Uranium and running it through centerfuges, as Iran and North Korea have demonstrated.

For the million years statement, yes it could be deadly. However, uranium ore is also deadly. After 100,000 years un-processed "waste" reaches roughly the radiation of the ore it was originally mined from. So the 1 million statement is true, but leads one to a false conclusion. Also, if it were re-processed, as France does, then the waste reaches normal radiation levels within a few thousand years!

http://www.uwig.org/ewec06gridpaper.pdf

The biggest problems with your alternatives, Wind and solar, is intermittentcy. They can go from 60% of capacity to 1% over the course of two hours. This means it’s ability to replace coal power is essentially zero, the coal power plants cannot be brought up quickly enough to ever shut them down, whatever the wind production may be. Even if advanced forecasting methods enabled one to sometimes shut down coal power plants it would likely not be desirable to do so, since the heat up and cool down stages are the most environmentally damaging and economically expensive (coal used to heat up gigantic metal furnaces generates absolutely NO electricity, only CO2 and other nasty GHGs and cancer causing substances).

Wind and solar could complement natural gas pretty well, as it can be quickly cycled. Over the course of thirty minutes or so a natural gas plant may be brought online. Also this is not without losses, since the thermal mass of the turbines must be first heated up. But natural gas prices are already high and will only increase if we need to rely on them more to offset the uneven production of wind power. Add to this that the US is running very short of natural gas, to expand much more we’ll need to liquefy it, put it on a fossil fuel burning boat, and transport it from the middle east to the US.

Also, Germany is not taking coal power plants off line, despite the growth of renewable capacity they are actually still building coal power plants. Ironically they could reduce emissions more, but silly environmentalists stop the construction of any new coal plants, so they are just running dinosaurs from the 40s which have much lower efficiencies.

All said and done, renewable energy is useful for up to 20% penetration, but beyond that it becomes increasingly expensive to integrate it and returns begin to really diminish (see above report). Solar might compliment wind to some degree and increase maximum useful penetration, but on a cloudy overcast day it’s sometimes quiet still, and you’re getting about 5% of the light, so wind cannot really be depended upon to replace solar.

Just look to Denmark, they’ve already reached this penetration, and are seriously cutting back subsidies simply because there ISN’T enough of a return for further capacity expansion. Furthermore they are actually already overly penetrated, but they can rely on Sweden to provide hydro-power at low points. If Sweden decommissioned 20% of their nuclear capacity and replaced it with wind, as you would likely advocate, then Denmark would indeed be in dire straights.

Also the places where wind is plentiful, as mentioned, such as the mid-west, have few or no options for pumped hydro storage, because we don’t have big hills. The only significant one in the midwest, Taum-sauk, collapsed last year scaring what was a truly beautiful stretch of river and a very popular tourist destination (Johnson Shut-ins). Environmentalists are blocking the construction of a new one.

Take on the other hand France, which has even the most ambitious wind proponents beat since 1980 when it comes to carbon free power. They have some of the cheapest electricity in Europe, and it’s 95% fossil fuel free (and 80% nuclear)! Not a single person has died in either the civilian French or American nuclear industry. Unlike our wind industry, where something like 20(?) people have died during the upkeep of windmills, so much for safe power. They reprocess their waste, eliminating the long lived isotopes and reducing the dangerous life or the waste down to a few thousand years. You can thank Greenpeace and Carter that we’re forced to store our waste for 100,000 years in Yucca mountain.

-- Posted by Andrew H. on Thu, May 1, 2008, 6:24 am EST [report this comment]