Should L.A. Build A Nuclear Power Plant?
By Walter Moore, Candidate for Mayor of Los Angeles, MooreIsBetter.com
Mayor Villaraigosa is on yet another trip, this time to New York to talk about reducing L.A.'s carbon footprint.
For those of us still in the city, let me ask you a question: should L.A. build a nuclear plant?
I'm leaning towards "yes," because France and Japan have used them for years to generate electricity without burning coal or fossil fuels, and without any significant safety problem, as far as I know. General Electric, moreover, is in the process of getting plans for plants pre-approved by the federal regulatory authorities, and can apparently build a plant for around $1.5 billion, and in just a few years.
To put that price-tag in perspective, the plans to remodel LAX call for an expenditure of $11.5 billion for a process would result in the airport having three fewer gates. Nuclear power could also help pave the way, so to speak, for electric cars, buses, etc.
On the other hand, we DO live in an area that gets hit by earthquakes. Also, we're on every terrorist's "Top 10" list, so we have face a risk of intentional attack, too. Plus, like you, I grew up watching "Godzilla" and movies like it from the 1950's. The last thing I'd want to see is giant ants attacking the city after mutating. Plus, science fiction aside, we need to know that we're not going to have a Chernobyl or Three Mile Island here. I gather modern plants have much better safeguards, but still, one nuclear accident can ruin your whole city for a few thousand years.
What do YOU think? I'd be especially interested in hearing from people who know what they talk about, i.e., people with some facts and figures. Also, please limit yourself, for this discussion, to the pro's and con's of nuclear power per se, rather than advocating conservation, solar, wind, etc. We can talk about those another time. Right now, I'd like to know more about nuclear power.
Posted by Walter Moore @ 5/16/2007 06:38:00 AM
15 Comments:
I thought Antonio was in Washington this week at least that's what the papers are saying. Could it be he wanted to be out of the city AGAIN because of another immigration march tomorrow?
Read these poll figures:
Do you think the mayor is doing a good job?
Yes - 21%
No - 79%
I don't know.
MY best friends father worked for Bechtel as a general contractor on the south Texas nuclear project, one of the reactors was built ass backwards and had to be redone because the Federal Nuclear regulatory agency changes the rules constantly on construction during Construction , it was brown and root that screwed that reactor building up so bechtel was called in.
At that time in the late 80's construction was well done.
Now a days people want to skirt every building code on everything .
No ,LA should not build a reactor , never. The construction job would be done half way and shotty.
ALso where would we bury the waste. The sout texas nuclear project sits on salt domes and the exhausted pellets are sent to be buried there because the half life is forever.
This is why I will never understand why people say depleted uranium is not radioactive , if it wasn't why would they bury it miles under the earth to decay?
now they use it in the manufacture of armor penetrating ammunition for tanks and machine guns,
Yes
PASS
I gather the French pretty much have it down to routine. They build the same proven design over and over. As for spent waste, if I understood a recent 60 Minutes segment correctly, they've even managed to recycle it.
I am gonna check this out.....
http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?channel=60Sunday
Well, we have come along way. If you can keep the bureaucrats out of the process it sounds great....
But the final byproduct of creating weapon's grade plutonium after recycling it is not a good thing.
It is green and if we can recycle the waste after it has been recycled , we may find we can become non-dependent on coal and oil.
Walter , one of the things you like to bring up on this blog is the way our governments mismanage money and let developers get away with much that they shouldn't at the expense of even the safety of tax payers. This is what worries me , some politico that allows the contractor to make shortcuts.
I love it though , 4 major designs , instead of a whole process , streamlined regulatory stuff. It sounds good. But if we can keep the lights on I don't see why we can't come up with a solution for the waste later on.
I am in the arena of yes..... only if we don't let the shady politicians in california let the contractors take shortcuts.
Readers with memory (especially dgarzila) should remember the Japanese reactor accident of 1999 a month before the movie GODZILLA 2000 coincidentally depicted the fictional giant radioactive dinosaur attacking the same reactor.
Read about the accident here: http://www.isis-online.org/publications/tokai.html
My favorite sentence is "Sodium 24, a radioactive substance, was detected in the vomit of three of the victims."
Have a nice day!
Nuclear power plant??? Where would it be located?
Idea: Right next door to AV?
Walter,
First, you would have to get the entire California Legislature and then the Gov's approval for your new nuclear plant.
In order to do that, you would have to have shown clear evidence that the French have a way of circumventing the 240,000 years it takes for the nuclear waste to become nontoxic to all living things.
Of course, maybe you also should wait for the whole Rocketdyne/Santa Susana Field Lab thing to die down -- after all, they did release 459 times more of the deadly radionuclides iodine-131 and cesium-137 than Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island meltdown did in 1979. (credit to Michael Collins, journalist, for the research).
No no no.
The United States’ one hundred-plus nuclear reactors have created in excess of 50,000 tons of high-level radioactive trash. This material is so deadly it can deliver a lethal dose to a person standing three feet away in just seconds. Even after decades of radioactive decay, a few minutes of exposure is enough to kill.
Scientists Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen and Philip Smith look at the carbon burden of the nuclear cycle step by step.
The first step in producing nuclear power is mining uranium – a process requiring heavy machinery, and loads of energy, to dig, crush and mill the radioactive rock. The key uranium-mining areas in North America are on the Colorado Plateau, in central Wyoming and on the Athabasca Basin of Saskatchewan. It takes an average of 162 tons of uranium ore to fuel a standard power reactor for a year.
The next step in the fuel cycle, refining the uranium, similarly uses loads of energy. Then, enriching the uranium – increasing the proportion of U235 – entails the costly and energy-rich endeavor of converting uranium into a gas, uranium hexafluoride. Enrichment facilities also vent vast amounts of chlorofluorocarbons, a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Next step, fabricating fuel elements, and placing them in the rods, gobbles up still more energy.
The story does not stop here. The massive thick-walled containment vessel that houses the reactor entails years of work. And when the plant is finally open, reactors require an outside energy source to operate the cooling system. In California, the reactors at San Onofre and Diablo Canyon are subsidized by electricity made from coal, gas, and wind power. That’s right, we send a portion of our renewable energy to operate nuclear plants.
Once nuclear power plants run their course, enormous amounts of energy will be needed to decommission, dismantle, cleanup, store, transport and dispose of reactors and their deadly detritus. How much energy will be expended in shuttering a major power plant? Nobody knows for certain – as these cleanup activities have yet to performed.
Van Leeuwen and Smith estimate that per kilowatt nuclear energy emits about one-third as much carbon dioxide as a gas-fired plant.
But Van Leeuwen and Smith's calculations fail to fully factor the energy used in cleaning-up uranium mill tailings. One massive cleanup project which directly affects LA is the Atlas mine in Moab, Utah -- currently leaching thousands of pounds of radiation directly into the Colorado River -- a source of drinking water for 20 million people. The Metropolitan Water District convinced the federal government to haul ten million tons of uranium tailings away from the river and haul the junk thirty miles into the desert. When it comes to factoring nuclear power’s carbon footprint, we need include the carbon output of such things as the Atlas mine’s bulldozers, trucks, and trains.
Another strong argument against nuclear power’s purported carbon-savings is economic. According to energy guru, Amory Lovins, “nuclear power buys less climate solution per dollar.” Smaller power plants out-perform large centralized plants. Lovins understands that every dollar spent on nuclear power is a dollar not spent on renewables. If the U.S. were to build new nuclear plants, each plant would cost at least $4 billion apiece.
Energy efficiency improvements, for example, are seven times more effective at reducing greenhouse gases, per dollar spent, than nuclear power. Yearly costs per 1000 kg avoided CO2 emissions are $68.90 for wind but $132.50 for nuclear power.
Nor is nuclear energy “renewable.” High-grade ores – those rich in U235 – are finite. At the current rate of use, these high-grade stocks will run out from anywhere from 40-100 years. Mining low-grade uranium or thorium uses up so much energy that it’s not worth the effort.
Nuclear’s other deficits makes this energy unappealing. For nuclear waste can be turned into nuclear bombs. Nuclear plants are vulnerable to attack and accident. A ruptured reactor or storage pool would be catastrophic to human health and the environment – a mistake that would be felt for millennia.
3:23 pm cut and paste from here:
http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:-AIJRkwkLesJ:www.psrla.org/documents/Fall2006PSR-LANewsletter.pdf+The+story+does+not+stop+here.+The+massive+thick-walled+containment+vessel+that+houses+the+reactor+entails+years+of+work.+And+when+the+plant+is+finally+open,+reactors+require+an+outside+energy+source+to+operate+the+cooling+system.+In+California,+the+reactors+at+San+Onofre+and+Diablo+Canyon+are+subsidized+by+electricity+made+from+coal,+gas,+and+wind+power.+That%E2%80%99s+right,+we+send+a+portion+of+our+renewable+energy+to+operate+nuclear+plants.&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us
I guess you can't come up wit your own arguments ou have to cut and paste from another source and claim it as your own.
Seriously....
Ah yes,, those wih only the knowledge of pseudoscience will believe the crap above.
This is the year 2007 and in science things are always subject to change because as long as there are scientists who refuse to accept the things as they are , then they will come up with solutions for these problems.
There is an environmental imperative here and an incentive to get our grid off of the dependence of oil and coal....but in this country there is also a economic incentive that will and could cause the disasters that have not been seen in europe...and on another note .....I said yes if only... not yes an imperative.
Thanks to all of you. I haven't had time to study your comments, but I will. I have no axe to grind one way or another. I would just REALLY like to see us become independent of the Middle East, and get clean air to boot.
I appreciate your input and research.
how you gonna be mayor if you don't have time to study the comments you just asked for?
how's the campaign finance looking?
tell us the current total, so we know how much we need to kick in.
The waste disposal issue is crucial. The fact that essentially no jurisdiction wants to accept it, no matter what safeguards are promised, should tell you something.
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