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Kolesar

(31,182 posts)
Tue Apr 11, 2017, 07:00 AM Apr 2017

Nuclear Power's Original Mistake: Trying to Domesticate the Bomb (Bloomberg View)

Op Ed:
... The Shippingport plant soon began generating electricity, and the government pronounced the reactor a success. And on one level, it certainly was: it sparked the construction of dozens of nuclear power plants in the U.S. and abroad, a good number of them designed and built by Westinghouse. Everything miraculous about the nuclear power industry began at Shippingport.

But so did everything that is overwhelming it now. Aside from the cost overruns, the electricity produced by Shippingport was quite costly. Though Duquesne Light bought electricity from the government at the rate of 8 mills per kilowatt-hour, the actual cost ranged between 55 and 60 mills.

In succeeding decades, nuclear power costs declined, but the industry remained heavily dependent on subsidies. And in recent years, the investment cost of developing new nuclear plants ballooned from $2,065 per kilowatt in 1998 to $5,828 in 2015, according to a World Nuclear Association report.

All of this bodes ill for the future of nuclear power. But the failure for nuclear to live up to its potential should hardly surprise us. It began as an idealistic attempt to domesticate the bomb in peacetime; the actual economic cost and benefits of doing was a secondary concern at best.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-04-08/nuclear-power-s-original-mistake-trying-to-domesticate-the-bomb

Subsidies: http://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/legacy/assets/documents/nuclear_power/nuclear_subsidies_report.pdf

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Nuclear Power's Original Mistake: Trying to Domesticate the Bomb (Bloomberg View) (Original Post) Kolesar Apr 2017 OP
Don't forget "Too Cheap to Meter"... NeoGreen Apr 2017 #1
This is an incredible statement repeatedly used by the defenders of the so called.... NNadir Apr 2017 #2
Hey Kids!... NeoGreen Apr 2017 #3
It would be a mistake to assume that I am interested in winning the "mind" of a person... NNadir Apr 2017 #4
Nuclear Power Advocates Claim Cheap Renewable Energy Is A Bad Thing kristopher Apr 2017 #5
[x] Like for your post...eom Kolesar May 2017 #6

NeoGreen

(4,030 posts)
1. Don't forget "Too Cheap to Meter"...
Tue Apr 11, 2017, 12:23 PM
Apr 2017

...nuclear power has failed to live up to the implied promise, and consequently is culpable to the damage caused by Dangerous Natural Gas™ in the last 63 years.

Too Cheap to Meter
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_cheap_to_meter


Although sometimes attributed to Walter Marshall, a pioneer of nuclear power in the United Kingdom, the phrase was coined by Lewis Strauss, then Chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, who in a 1954 speech to the National Association of Science Writers said:

"Our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter... It is not too much to expect that our children will know of great periodic regional famines in the world only as matters of history, will travel effortlessly over the seas and under them and through the air with a minimum of danger and at great speeds, and will experience a lifespan far longer than ours, as disease yields and man comes to understand what causes him to age."




Or at least if one were to comprehensively apply the logic presented by some prolific intertube bloggers.

NNadir

(33,368 posts)
2. This is an incredible statement repeatedly used by the defenders of the so called....
Thu Apr 13, 2017, 06:54 AM
Apr 2017

..."renewable energy" scam that would die without the subsidies it soaks up...for no meaningful result, and of course without the huge subsidies to the dangerous natural gas industry on which the so called "renewable energy" industry depends.

Thirty or forty years ago, many of the very stupid defenders of so called "renewable energy" industry used to go around telling everyone this energy source would be "free."

It just soaked up two trillion dollars of precious resources on a dying planet for solar and wind alone, and did nothing meaningful.

The continuous citation of the 1954 remark about "too cheap to meter" made by a Government syndic with no engineering or scientific training - a person nearly as stupid as the average anti-nuke -who among other things smeared the nuclear scientist Robert Oppenheimer is so idiotic and so pernicious as to border on criminal.

Nuclear energy saves lives. Of all forms of energy developed by government assistance, it has saved more lives than any other approach.

If there is anyone anywhere who can point to any form of energy that is "too cheap to meter" we'd love to hear from you. The evocation of this idiotic remark made by a non-scientist in 1954 merely is yet another case of "nuclear exceptionalism" wherein people attach to nuclear energy criteria they attach to nothing else.

Unfortunately this kind of propaganda kills people, about 7 million per year who unnecessarily die from air pollution.

I invite all of the world's anti-nukes to have a very pleasant typically stupid and evil day.

NeoGreen

(4,030 posts)
3. Hey Kids!...
Thu Apr 13, 2017, 11:15 AM
Apr 2017

...take this as an object lesson on how not to win hearts & minds for a particular argument:


I invite all of the world's anti-nukes to have a very pleasant typically stupid and evil day.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winning_hearts_and_minds

NNadir

(33,368 posts)
4. It would be a mistake to assume that I am interested in winning the "mind" of a person...
Thu Apr 13, 2017, 01:07 PM
Apr 2017

...clearly lacking one.

I am unapologetic in regarding anti-nukes as anything but stupid and evil, and, am in fact, completely incapable of regarding them in any other way.

This is a function of the fact that I give a shit about the 70 million deaths every decade from air pollution while they burn oil, gas and coal to carry on about, um, say, Fukushima.

Among the many intellectually and ethically challenged ideas that seems to purvey the despicable anti-nuke mentality is the notion that people should kiss their asses to make them do the right thing.

In reality, one should do the right thing because it, um, is the right thing, and not for any other reason.

Have a nice Friday tomorrow.

kristopher

(29,798 posts)
5. Nuclear Power Advocates Claim Cheap Renewable Energy Is A Bad Thing
Thu Apr 13, 2017, 04:36 PM
Apr 2017
Dr. Joe Romm is Founding Editor of Climate Progress, “the indispensable blog,” as NY Times columnist Tom Friedman describes it.

Jul 28, 2016

Nuclear Power Advocates Claim Cheap Renewable Energy Is A Bad Thing

Nuclear power advocates are trying a new line of attack on solar and wind energy — it’s too darn cheap!

In the real world, however, the unexpectedly rapid drop in the price of cleantech, especially renewable power and batteries, is a doubly miraculous game-changer that is already cutting greenhouse gas emissions globally and dramatically increasing the chances we can avoid catastrophic climate change.

As I detailed on Monday, the New York Times in particular keeps running slanted articles talking up nuclear and talking down renewables — articles that totally miss the forest for the trees. That culminated in a truly absurd piece last week, “How Renewable Energy Is Blowing Climate Change Efforts Off Course,” which is the exact opposite of reality, as Goldman Sachs has detailed in its recent reports on “The Low Carbon Economy.”

This post will focus primarily on the big picture, the forest. I will deal in later posts with a few of the more interesting trees, such as whether, the U.S. should consider give existing nukes some sort of short-term carbon credit so they are not shut down prematurely and replaced by natural gas.

The big picture reality of the clean energy revolution
The big picture reality is this: The world is finally starting to take some serious action to avoid catastrophic climate change, which means first the electric grid will decarbonize, and then the transportation system...

https://thinkprogress.org/nuclear-power-advocates-claim-cheap-renewable-energy-is-a-bad-thing-a20e065d99e6



Nnadir is in the process of learning an economics lesson on adoption of new technologies - and 'the renewable S curve' is not going to help him sell the basement nuclear reactor he's been trying to hawk for 15 years (said failure is the true source of the bitterness and anger he continually displays).
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