Skip to main content

Washington Times Endorses New Reactor at Calvert Cliffs

From Sunday's edition of the Washington Times:
While it's true that this technology brings inherent risks which must be carefully analyzed and addressed, we applaud the Calvert County Board of Commissioners for their enthusiastic support of the plan. The commissioners recognize the financial and environmental benefits of an additional reactor. Once the 1,600-megawatt, $4 billion reactor is built, an estimated 2.6 million customers could be served and the county would benefit from job growth as well as many millions of dollars in tax revenue. We hope Unistar's application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is processed in a timely manner.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Is it any wonder that the Rev. Sung Mung Moon would endorse nuclear power?
Anonymous said…
Nice argument, Gunter. Ad hominem at best, racist at worst.
Anonymous said…
Anon,

The Rev. Moon is notorious for his ultra-right wing politics and he just happens to own this right wing newspaper which supports the Bush Administration's Coal Oil Nuclear (CON) job energy policy.

Again, it's no surprise that they would come out editorializing in support of new nukes. I was however surprised that the TIMES went so far as to admit the "inherent risks" of nuclear power which is more than can be said for this blog.

Another nuke just outside 50 miles from the Beltway might raise some concern even for the Reverend.
Anonymous said…
Yeah, blah blah blah. Just like NIRS is "notorious" for their left-wing politics and opposition to every energy policy the Bush Administration has proposed. So what if Moon owns the newspaper? "Pinch" runs the NYT and they are "notorious" also for their left-wing views. So is the WaPost. Maybe the Times is just providing a little "diversity" (that favorite word of lefties everywhere)?

Another nuke outside the beltway would probably be a good idea. It would provide a clean, safe, reliable energy source at relatively low cost to an area that could use it. Certainly better than a coal plant, less radioactivity released to the biosphere and zero emissions. Better than windmills, which are expensive and unreliable. Certainly better than solar, which in that area is probably a losing proposition and tremendously costly to boot. A lot better than "conservation", which doesn't provide a single watt of capacity to a growing area that will need it in the years to come.

Popular posts from this blog

Activists' Claims Distort Facts about Advanced Reactor Design

Below is from our rapid response team . Yesterday, regional anti-nuclear organizations asked federal nuclear energy regulators to launch an investigation into what it claims are “newly identified flaws” in Westinghouse’s advanced reactor design, the AP1000. During a teleconference releasing a report on the subject, participants urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to suspend license reviews of proposed AP1000 reactors. In its news release, even the groups making these allegations provide conflicting information on its findings. In one instance, the groups cite “dozens of corrosion holes” at reactor vessels and in another says that eight holes have been documented. In all cases, there is another containment mechanism that would provide a barrier to radiation release. Below, we examine why these claims are unwarranted and why the AP1000 design certification process should continue as designated by the NRC. Myth: In the AP1000 reactor design, the gap between the shield bu...

How many nuclear plants does it take to meet the world's energy needs?

Several weeks ago Joshua Pearce at Clarion University in Pennsylvania released a study titled “ Thermodynamic limitations to nuclear energy deployment as a greenhouse gas mitigation technology .” In the study he stated... nuclear energy production would have to increase by 10.5% per year from 2010 to 2050 to both replace fossil-fuel-energy use and meet the future energy demands. This line, of course, made the headlines and has been picked up by several outlets and blogs . When looking into his calculations for this statement, he made one assumption error that overstated the above sentence by nearly a factor of three. Page 121, Section 4.1 of the study states: Richard Smalley pointed out that in 2004, the global economy consumed the equivalent of 220 million barrels of oil per day, which converted into electricity terms is the equivalent of 14.5 TeraWatts (TW), or 14,500,000 MegaWatts (MW) (2005). … With a nuclear plant having about 1000 MW (1 GW) of capacity, we would need 14,500...

What Happens During a Refueling Outage?

You may have noticed over the past few weeks that a number of nuclear plants are shut down for refueling outages or are resuming operations after just returning from one. This type of routine outage usually occurs in the spring or fall when electricity demand is low so that nuclear reactors can replace about one-third of the spent fuel rods with new fuel and conduct other routine maintenance and repairs at the plant. To get a better sense of how refueling works at a nuclear energy facility, I spoke with Marcus Nichol, NEI’s senior project manager for used fuel storage and transportation, and asked him to explain the basics. Why does a nuclear plant need to replace one-third of its fuel? Nichol: The main purpose of a refueling outage is to replace older fuel that is depleted—meaning it can no longer efficiently produce energy from nuclear fission reactions—with new fuel. This “used fuel” has typically been used in the reactor for four-and-a-half to six years before it is pe...