Skip to main content

Others Fighting No Nukes Crew

Shortly after we posted a video response by Elizabeth King to a new appeal from the "No Nukes" crew, we saw a number of other folks hop onto YouTube to post their own responses. One person posted the audio of a Dennis Miller interview with Dr. Patrick Moore. Someone else posted a clip from Penn & Teller's Showtime program on nuclear energy. But best of all, a computer science student posted a point by point counter to the original video:



It's always good to find out that you're not alone out there. In the meantime, be sure to stop by the YouTube page where the original "No Nukes" video is hosted and be sure to leave a comment.

UPDATE: Rod Adams recorded a video of his own.

Comments

Anonymous said…
A couple of points in response to the spin from this anonymous “environmentalist.
On the difference between nuclear "subsidizes" and "loan guarantees" --- the United States Office of Budget and Management has identified that there is at least a 50% chance that the nuclear industry will default on these loans. Given a history of more than $150 billion in stranded investments in cost overruns and abandoned nuclear projects the risk of default is even higher. This is more appropriately a government “give away” or a “bail out” program to a 50-year old and aging industry that still cannot stand up on its own two feet.
Contrary to his claim that the reason for nearly half of the nuclear construction projects being abandoned or “going belly up,” it was not public legal challenges to safety and environment problems. Wall Street continues to recognize that the real reasons were industry financial miscalculations on capital intensive construction costs and industry’s failure to meet construction deadlines; both of which still plague the new construction projects in Finland, Taiwan and Japan today.
Regarding the claim that “the barriers to waste disposal are political” we need remember that it was the politics of the nuclear industry Political Action Committees that got Congress that singled out Nevada in 1987 as the only site that would be characterized for a deep geological repository. A scientifically-based process would have continued the characterization of multiple geological sites and mediums. However industry and congress abandoned the scientific process due to the firestorm of public opposition created by broader Department of Energy searches among a dozen sites in states east of the Mississippi River where the brunt of nuclear waste is being generated. It is a foregone conclusion that should broader searches resume for another or more nuclear waste sites, nuclear power generation will become more unpopular. Thus, continued pressure to not only open Yucca Mountain but lift the scientifically modeled caps on the amount of nuclear waste from 70,000 to 135,000 metric tons or more to be stored in this volcanically and earthquake active site makes its ultimate operation ever more dubious.

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...