Gauging the Prospects for Nuclear Power in the Obama Era

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Probably not in the foreseeable future. Yhy? Because they can't win the race against renewables for emissions reduction We still have 104 existing nukes, with a total capacity of about 100 GW, and most of them are likely to keep on chugging for some time. Then what? Many new nukes have been proposed, but no construction has yet (early 2010) begun, and is generally viewed that no more than a handful could be placed in commission by 2020. Wind power capacity, however, is already more than a third that of the entire nuclear fleet, and if its present growth rate persists it will far outstrip nuclear by then, even with allowance for wind fluctutions.

C. J. Swet of MD 7:13PM February 10, 2010

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hotel buchen tuerkei of 8:15AM January 23, 2010

xbkNWX

Txoxzhmv of TN 2:40PM July 14, 2009

Blaming nuclear plants for radioactive waste that is likely from coal fly ash is stupid. Sternglass is junk science, correlation does not imply causality. Sternglass's "research" is not accepted in the scientific community.
While Obama kicks the can and anti-nuclear zealots run rampant in this country, France laughs their ass off at us.

Lee of FL 8:25PM July 10, 2009

I find it ironic and sickening at the same time ... both Waxman and Markey have not included nuclear power as a renewable source of energy.
Someone earlier mentioned reprocessing. If we reprocessed all of the fuel sitting at the power plants, we could power the USA for 50 more years.
Let's get past the China Syndrome / Three Mile Island / Chernobyl fear. More people have died in plane crashes than from the generation of electricity from nuclear.
Let's get to building the already approved Westinghouse AP1000 design. Safe and efficient. Build many and bring the price down.

Mark Richards of NM 10:34AM June 25, 2009

i dont approve it because its reall not going to make a difference. it cost too much money and how is the president going to pay for it all. hopefully not with our hard working money that we need to support our kids and college funds.

Allena Quick of IA 1:59PM May 13, 2009

Lindilu Ashbury of NH:
Steam power is a "wonderful use of water" and it is emmission free. It's what coal and nuclear power plants use to create power. There is no such thing as "steam power" by itself, you cretin. Water doesn't spontaneously combust.
After you used that little brain to come up with a response, it would probably sound like this: "Steam power is geothermal power!"
But you would still be ignorant of the fact that geothermal power is actually a product of uranium and thorium nuclear reactions going on in the earth's crust all the time. These reactions heat the water and create steam!

Joseph of NC 2:33PM April 28, 2009

I'm all for solar and wind, but the simple fact is that current technology cannot meet the demand for energy. Solar energy is approximately 10 times more expensive per unit of electricity. Not to mention solar powered system work about 12% of the time in places like Maine and about 19% of the time in places like arizona. Dust, clouds, and angle of incidence all drastically reduce efficiency. Not to mention night time.
These are our options:
Option A. Only renewables. Well why we technically choose to do this, we'll have to survive on at max about 20% of the power we currently use. We will pay 10 times as much for it. The enviroment will be clean but our economy will collapse. The only way to do it would be a massive population reproduciton. And as long as everyone keeps having babies that's not going to happen. Therefore, by relying on just the sun, we're gonna live in the dark.
Option B. Continue what we're doing. Coal makes up about 50% of the U.S. energy production. It's economical, but it pumps its byproducts directly into the atmosphere. Pollution is a definite.
Option C. A balance of energy sources that attempts to shift more toward renewables and other low greenhouse emitting sources of energy. Nuclear power can make up the 80% of the electricity that renewables in the near term future can't. Yes nuclear wast will be created. But the relative amounts compared to coal are small. The entire amount of spent fuel for the past 40 years in the U.S. is 56,000 tons. We burn 1 billion tons of coal every year. Reprocessing would further increase the amount of energy we could get out of the fuel and we would be left with even less waster that would have to be stored for a much shorter length of time. What most people aren't aware of is that there was a natural nuclear reaction in Oklo, Africa about 1.7 billion years ago. The fission products of that reaction moved 10 feet or less over that time period. I think one can surmize that a geolocial depository can be done safe.
And to the last argument, there are two ways to weapons grade material. You can reprocess it which nearly every major country with Nuclear power does including, France, Japan, etc (Some of the few countries that actually met the Kyoto Protocol). Reprocessing is stripping out certain isotopes that can either be used to form a bomb or put back into a reactor to get even more energy. The other way is to enrich natural uranium (.7% U-235 to above 90% U-235 through a centrifuge system. Both systems are expensive. We can however, develop reprocessing methods that are incapable of producing weapons grade process. However, I must say that if the argument against nuclear is that some day some one can use nuclear energy to make a nuclear bomb, then I say yes that is true. If this is the position, then we must also address medical facilties where technology exists to make bio weapons
The number one problem with nuclear energy is unjustified FEAR.

Arlo of FL 9:25PM April 15, 2009

It actually is renewable using breeder reactors. This phenomenon was explained in "Breeder reactors: renewable energy source" by Bernard Cohen.

Zack of OR 12:47AM April 05, 2009

Since I can't seem to post a couple of links, I'll just say that the Union of Concerned Scientists (ucsusa.org) and Public Citizen online have very good summaries of the problems with nuclear power. A recent report by Craig Severance analyzes the exorbitant costs also. When insurance companies won't touch them you know there are liabilities. Three Mile Island has yet to be outed and properly recorded, and never will, since the monitors were pegged and 'official' reports used monitors not in locations that measure the huge releases. Power plants routinely release a great deal of radioactive emissions that go into the upper atmosphere (where we should be testing the atmosphere for toxic conditions). Ernest J. Sternglass spent decades studying the effects of nuclear radiation, and it is not a pleasant history to read (SECRET FALLOUT, 1981).

Craig of KY 1:24PM March 31, 2009