Ohio faces a decision soon about its two nuclear reactors, Davis-Besse and Perry, and on Wednesday, neighbors of one of those plants issued a cry for help. The reactors’ problem is that the price of electricity they sell on the high-voltage grid is depressed, mostly because of a surplus of natural gas. And the reactors do not get any revenue for the other benefits they provide. Some of those benefits are regional – emissions-free electricity, reliability with months of fuel on-site, and diversity in case of problems or price spikes with gas or coal, state and federal payroll taxes, and national economic stimulus as the plants buy fuel, supplies and services. Some of the benefits are highly localized, including employment and property taxes. One locality is already feeling the pinch: Oak Harbor on Lake Erie, home to Davis-Besse. The town has a middle school in a building that is 106 years old, and an elementary school from the 1950s, and on May 2 was scheduled to have a referendu
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A vision of nuclear propulsion to send humans to the planets is taking shape on the high desert of the Snake River plain in eastern Idaho even though there is no spaceport here. A design from the 1960s to send space payloads to the Moon, Mars, and beyond using a nuclear reactor is being updated with new ideas and technologies. Stephen Howe, Director of the Center for Space Nuclear Research (CNSR), in Idaho Falls, ID, says his design ideas could, if implemented, carry an additional eight tons of payload on a mission to send astronauts to the Moon.
If you are thinking in terms of moving coal or grain along the Mississippi in a river barge, eight tons is a sneeze in the scheme of things. However, in the rocket ship business, where payloads are measured by the pound, and with costs at lift off measured in the tens of thousands of dollars per pound of payload, eight tons is a very big number.
http://djysrv.blogspot.com/2007/07/new-life-for-nukes-in-space.html
Furthermore, chemical rockets are simply inadequate for space travel. Either you need to use energy from somewhere else (which means some form of solar), or a more energy dense fuel, which means nuclear. And solar energy is simply too diffuse in the outer solar system.
If we want to do substantive exploration of our solar system, we'll have to continue to use nuclear energy. It's that simple.
http://www.nuclearspace.com/