[mitchntx]

Katrina is gonna cause a $.20 spike in fuel costs .....

[gillbot]

Nuclear energy (Fission) has an unproven life cycle cost.  Waste that is toxic for 25,000 years and so on.  Fusion holds great promise but it doesn't exist yet.

Will not argue about the long term toxicity of high level radioactive waste. A real problem.

But it is extremely manageable.

The nuke where I work generates about 500 cubic feet of high level waste in a fuel cycle (18 months). About 1/3 of that is recycleable (fuel reconstitution). That 350 cubic feet is a problem, granted. But realize just how big 350 cubic feet really is ... it will fill a room that measures less than 8' x 8' x 8'.

That's a small room filled problem for 12,000,000,000,000 watts of electric power generated over an 18 month cycle. (1200Mw/hr unit with a 98% capacity factor on an 18 month cycle)

The rest is considered low level and our nuke generates about 1/3 the amount that a large research type hospital generates.

The nuclear industry and technology has come a lot further than the hype of the '70s surrounding nukes. and one has to believe in the future ... a belief that the industry will continue to grow with technology and the amount of high level waste will continue to decline and the same technology will help dispose of what's left in a safe manner.

Most nukes generate somewhere in the $12-14 per megawatt hour.
A coal burner generates in the $11-13 per megawatt hour.
Gas/oil fired units are in the $18-24 per megawatt hour.

The difference between the 3 is the coal burners require a LOT of fossil energy to deliver the fuel to be burned. Gas and oil have obvious issues dealing with market trends.

A nuke is designed as a base loaded plant. It works best at 100% power. And they are designed and run for 18 or 24 month cycles. Of the 100+ nukes in the US, the industry had fewer than 20 scrams last year. That's a capacity factor well above 98%.

Not all is rosey. There are a handful of US plants that have had problems over the years ... 3 major problems since the nuke industry was born in the 60s. Three Mile Island, Milstone and Davis Besse. But, by design, nothing was released to the public, no one was ever in danger and the system has proven itself to work.

In each of those cases But those issues are being resolved.

And don't even bring up Chernobyl ... The US, France and Canada have no graphite moderated plants, the inherent problem that caused Chernobyl to pop. Only a few of the former Soviet owned plants are graphite moderated.

I suggest, if you are really interested, do some research, using data authored in the 90s and not rely on information gleened in the early 80s.

The biggest problem in nukes is the people running it. I definately think nuke is a great source for power, I just wish the red tape was worked out.
EDIT> I forgot to mention, I used to work at a Nuke plant so yes, I AM BIASED. I was highly concerned as many are but after I worked there, it's a really great source of energy. There also really is NOT that much waste generated either. The plany I worked at was Beaver Valley Power Station in Shippingport PA and all of the spent fuel was stored onsite. That plant has been running since the 70's or something like that and ALL that used up fuel was contained in a storage pool about the size of an average americans backyard pool. That's not very much for 30+ years of power IMHO.

As for Ethanol, there's alot of info here:
http://e85fuel.com/index.php

E85 gives me more work so I'm ok with it!

This post has been edited by gillbot: Aug 30 2005, 09:48 PM