Posted on 05/27/2023 7:27:09 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Way back in October 2021, Vox released a video about nuclear power featuring Cleo Abrams. The gist of the video was that New York’s then-recent decision to shut down Indian Point nuclear reactor was a bad idea. As Abrams pointed out in a 10-minute clip, shutting down nuclear reactors is completely counter-productive, especially for anyone who believes climate change is a problem that has to be dealt with immediately.
What happened when NY shut down Indian Point? The state suddenly lost a major source of electric power which was soon replaced by power created by burning more natural gas. As Abrams pointed out there’s no explanation for the push to shut down perfectly good nuclear power plants except for decades of lingering and largely irrational fear, an unfortunate leftover from the 1970s which the left has never quite relinquished.
Cleo Abrams doesn’t work for Vox anymore but she is still making videos. This week I came across one which feels like a follow up to that one from 2021. It’s titled, “The Big Lie About Nuclear Waste” and once again it’s an argument that one of the big problems people point to with nuclear power is largely a problem because of how we’ve approached it. In fact, there is a solution for nuclear waste which we’ve know about for many decades. Here’s the clip, which is about 14 minutes long, and then I’ll have a bit more commentary below.
If you stuck with it through the end, you’ll notice that a lot of this seems to hinge on a decision that Jimmy Carter made back in the 1970s. The concern at the time was that these fast breeder reactors would create a bunch of plutonium which could be used to build bombs. Abrams notes that President Reagan reversed course and she briefly shows a NY Times headline “Reagan Nuclear Policy Is Called Irresponsible.” I found the story, which was actually a United Press International story (UPI) and here’s what it said in 1981:
President Reagan’s decision to revitalize the nuclear power industry was assailed today as an irresponsible safety and economic policy that could lead to the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
William Winpisinger, president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, said, ”In terms of economics, nuclear power is the most expensive, most inefficient and most Government-subsidized way to boil water ever designed by man.”
”In terms of the nation’s health, each nuclear power plant, with its potential for radiation release and on-site nuclear waste dump, is a communal cause of cancer,” he added, calling the new proposals ”a kamikaze act.”
Mr. Winpisinger’s remarks were made at a Capitol Hill news conference at tended by several members of Congress, Ralph Nader and other critics of nuclear power.
I don’t know does this feel biased to you? I mean, in the first sentence they accuse Reagan of nuclear weapons proliferation and then they spend the next two graphs quoting a union president from a press conference set up with Ralph Nader. By the way, the story doesn’t redeem itself later on because the whole thing is only 5 paragraphs. So what you see above is nearly all of it.
Anyway, the partisan hackery aspect of the story probably didn’t interest Cleo Abrams but it was of interest to me.
Generation IV reactors will completely nullify any sincere concern about nuclear waste. What is left over amounts to a few pounds and has a half-life of a few decades.
“Generation IV reactors will completely nullify any sincere concern about nuclear waste. What is left over amounts to a few pounds and has a half-life of a few decades.”
Citation, please.
If the technology works, they can reprocess all the stored fuel that is currently in Yucca Mountain and reprocess it to near nothing. That’s what makes Generation IV so vital for the nuclear industry.
But you can’t have a neo-feudalist society with cheap, abundant energy.
Wikipedia?! Really?!?
Even it admits, “No precise definition of a Generation IV reactor exists.” Much less a selected candidate... Much less commercial plans... Much less getting through the licensing and public comment process... Much less getting past all the lawsuits and legal roadblock from leftists... Much less a company actually deciding to build such a plant.
In fact a solution for nuclear waste has been know since the 1980s, but politicians and kakistocrats have thwarted the solution at every turn, eventually demanding scientists accurately predict the stored rad waste safety for the next one million years.
And the billions of $$$ from a surcharge on ratepayers for their electricty generated by nuclear power for the last four decades to find a waste storage solution? It’s been spent.
Well, that ship has sailed...
I have a childhood friend whose parents (yes, both of them) were nuclear physicists. They are well into retirement now. I know that they say nuclear energy is the cleanest stuff out there, but that people are very afraid, largely because of 3 Mile Island and Chernobyl. I haven’t talked with them about this, per se, but in general, I would say that they believe nuclear energy is clean, safe, and reliable. Not trying to put words in their mouths, but that’s the way I recall our discussions on the topic in the last 15 years.
William Winpisinger was the “Chuck Schumer” of professionally angry, young, and then older, socialists who sought control over the AFL-CIO in opposition to Jimmy Hoffa (Teamsters, before the divorce from the AFL-CIO) and in opposition to George Meany.
I’m a proponent of nuclear power and for years have absorbed as much information on the subject as a lay person is able. That said there are big drawbacks with waste. Many smart people say Thorium reactors are the solution to the waste problem as a thorium reactor will burn waste fuel down to a small percentage.
Problems is, there are no working Thorium reactors. It’s all theory. If this country had spent the money we have on the unworkable green energy programs on reactor technology we very well have been the world leaders in a technology that leaves very little waste but produces massive amounts of energy to power the future.
Instead the Marxist communists led the sheep down a garden path of unworkable green energy that will end in the destruction of our quality of life. It’s all going according to plan. They fill their pockets while subjugating us to satisfy their power fetish.
“If the technology works, they can reprocess all the stored fuel that is currently in Yucca Mountain “
What fuel stored in Yucca Mountain? The Biden Administration has cancelled the project.
I thought they had some there.
My bad, if that isn’t the case.
When I attended the University of Arizona in the 1970’s, the anti-nuke kooks were on campus trying to stir up everyone to stop the Palo Verde nuclear power plant from being built. They were on campus every day.
The plant has been in operation for over 30 years without any problems that I’m aware of.
Best solution for high level non-recyclable nuclear waste is to bury it in a subduction zone on the ocean floor. No one will be able to access it there, and it will be safely stored for hundreds of thousands of years, until it is incinerated below the tectonic plates.
The plan was that when Yucca Mountain got stocked, a reprocessing facility would start up.
Reactor fuel rods are pulled when about 1/2 of the energy has been spent and then it’s up to the facility to store the fuel rod assemblies for eternity.
Imagine that every time your car got to 1/2 tank, you went and all the remaining fuel was pumped out, you were sold a full tank of new fuel and you had to pay to store what was pumped out for eternity.
We had a waste reprocessing facility that Carter shut down on day 1.
State run media and the democrats (redundant) would have you believe that Yucca Mountain was just a big hole excavated in the ground where bulldozers were just going to push waste into.
Actually plan was to bore holes in the floor of huge tunnels and each fuel assembly would be cased in stainless steel containers that would be labelled as to what it is and where it came from. It would be a bank of raw material for the reprocessing facility.
Most particularly, the life of tritium, necessary for the hydrogen bomb, has very short life and needs to be continually manufactured to replace that which is no longer usable or reliable. This generates a lot of long half-life-cycle waste, if I recall correctly from meetings on it and how to deal with it.
Waste from power plants should not be a concern of the vox populi or the even less-well-informed media, IMHO.
On the other hand, the nuclear physicists that were my professors in college indicated that nuclear power was too dangerous to put into the hands of people who get bored with routine. On a slightly different topic, they also scoffed at the notion that fusion would be a clean source of energy. They said, “My God, man, where do you think all of the heavy elements come from? They come from the solar forge!”.
But you can’t have a neo-feudalist society with cheap, abundant energy
/\
I only disagree with one part of that statement
There’s no “ neo” about it.
We have ogliarch aristocrats that use us as they want
And what was once called guilds are now called unions.
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