If you had bothered to acquaint yourself with the fact that a nuclear reactor is nothing like an atomic bomb, the reasons for the lack of outrage on that particular score would not be such a mystery to you.  Furthermore, since we’ve taken such a cavalier attitude toward global warming for the past several decades we’re now faced with a situation where the nuclear power alternative cannot be so easily dismissed any more (i.e., while it has risks, they may be lower than those of continuing to burn fossil fuels with gay abandon during the period before other, less risky alternatives can fully come on line).

That said, the entrenched interests should not be allowed to build new nuclear plants that mirror the problems we have experienced with the existing ones as long as nuclear alternatives exist that promise much better short- and long-term safety.  Nor should such new nuclear plants of safer design be seen as a replacement for renewable energy sources instead of complementary to them.

Great observation, Kick.  $100 billion sounds like a lot, but not by comparison with the cost of building nuclear plants.

Eliminating the entire grid, however, may not be very feasible, which is why cleaner, safer nuclear plants still deserve study.

Not all locations can make use of solar and wind generation.  When we built our home 20 years ago on a wooded lot that slopes down to the North the only way to get solar access was via our South-facing attic, and here in NH sunshine is far from constant.  So we use solar for heat when the sun is out, combined with 13” of fiberglass insulation in walls and roof to minimize heat load.  For 13 years a wood stove met our supplementary heating needs, but we finally got tired of middle-of-the-night stokings and occasional chimney fires and put in the smallest propane furnace we could buy - it uses about 600 gallons of propane per heating season - though considerably less this year! - for our 4000 square foot home (yes, we did get a bit carried away there) and we’re looking into replacing most of that with a standing-column ground-source heat pump well unit (our well is nearly 400’ deep, which should suffice) though pellet stoves have also come a long way over the past 20 years and the problems of available pellet quality in our area seem to have disappeared now.

In sum, there are a great many different ways to eliminate or at least minimize use of fossil fuels by homes, regardless of their location - and all them would help generate employment as well as otherwise being highly cost-effective (our solar and insulating facilities added well under $10,000 to the cost of our home even if you include the value of the work we ourselves did installing them, and have paid for themselves many times over since).

I’m currently pricing the cost of installing a
solar/wind combination in my 1500 sq foot home. It
looks as if about $100k will just about get me to the
100% level. According to census figures, there are
about 102 Million private homes in the USA. So the
cost of fitting every one of them with such a system
would be just over a hundred billion dollars.
Strategically, the advantage of making the nation
less dependent on an antiquated centralized grid
should be obvious. Recover the INVESTMENT by charging
a lien against each house with payments equal to the
current average electric bill. How many jobs created?
Many, I’m, sure. Benefit to the environment?
Inestimable. And, of course, like fiber optics, which
were incredibly costly prior to the internet, the
cost will plummet as a result. Who loses? Greedy
energy companies, and the corrupt politicians whose
pockets their bribes fill. Way to get there?
KickThemOut.org!

Thanks, Aaron and Sebastian, for noting that much less objectionable nuclear reactor alternatives to the ones we seem hell-bent on continuing to use may well exist (and for providing links to descriptions of them).  If indeed they are a lot better (I’m not qualified to evaluate that), the question becomes why they’re not being pursued (rather than yet more of the designs that are known to be unsafe and to create large amounts of very, very long-term radioactive waste).

Yes, that question’s only rhetorical, since the obvious answer is that vast profits can be made immediately by using established (no matter how dubious) technology rather than taking the time to develop something better.  And expecting our elected leaders to, well, lead in this area rather than kowtow to their major donors doesn’t seem very realistic these days.

On Jan. 22, 2012 the background radiation count in Santa Monica was 538% of normal.

On March 7, 2012 the background radiation count was 668% of normal, indicating an
upward trend. Still there are many hot particles continuing to
be emitted by Fukishima, with plans to burn radio active debris in the open air and dump
more in the Pacific Ocean.

Tepco is truly sorry over all of this….....So go back to sleep, don’t worry everthing is
under control.

And that is why BOTH parties need to be eliminated! FREE BRADLEY MANNING!!!!

Yes thanks, I have looked at that site and watched the program for many years, but I don’t see anything which raises the issues I have mentioned about the basic underlying rules which govern the American industry. We all know the plants aren’t safe and the industry is corrupt, but no is mentioning the fact that they aren’t breaking any laws when they risk meltdowns. They can do whatever they want and there is no legal recourse because the laws are a dereliction. No one ever one mentions that anymore since Larry Bogart died.  Few people even know who Larry Bogart was.

Oops, I meant “NRC” how silly of me.

@ Peter Pitchford

I urge you to do a “URC” search on the Democracy Now website.

You may have to spend some time and go back a little ways, but I guarantee you will be gratified in the end.

Have a good time, there is lots of juicy stuff in there.

Amy Goodman, I challenge you to do the right thing!

In 1986, shortly before Chernobyl, the NRC testified to Congress that there was 45% chance of a severe core meltdown in a twenty year period, but that the plants can still be considered “safe”. They went on to explain that their definition of “safe” was that even with a meltdown, there was little chance of any prompt offsite fatalities.  That was the official testimony of the NRC and their staff to Congress. It wasn’t just 1 token commissioner.

You can see the original documents here: http://peaksanity.com/nrc/
On each page is the content in text form, and below that an image of the original document.

Most people are under the mistaken impression that the NRC says there is a low chance of a severe core meltdown, but that’s not true. Even most anti nuclear activists I have talked to are under that mistaken impression. I have written to the NRC and talked to numerous people in the industry and the opposition but I have never been able to find any statement by the NRC that there is a low chance of a meltdown. The only thing they can come up with are statements that say there is a low chance of a meltdown as long as the plants meet the NRC’s safety requirements. But hardly any plants meet those requirements, and most are far from meeting them. In fact, since the 1986 estimate numerous problems have come to light that the NRC was not aware of at the time, such as the proliferation of substandard counterfeit parts. Instead of requiring the plants to replace the parts, the NRC simply lowered the standards.

This is the dirty little secret of America’s nuclear industry - they let these plants run even though they openly admit that there is no reliable study, assurance guesstimate, anything that says the chances of a meltdown are anywhere near low. When ever anyone looks into the details, it becomes apparent that there are just too many possible avenues for simultaneous multiple failures that could lead to severe core meltdowns to be able to say the risk is low. Study after study has fallen by the wayside. Read Cult of the Atom by Daniel Ford for the best history. They have presently disavowed all previous studies, and they have been working on a new one which they keep putting off. They presently accept no study which can credibly support the fantasy that the risk is low, yet they continue to allow these monstrosities to operate. I challenge you to find 1 study which the NRC accepts as an assurance that the risk is low.

The question is then, if they admit there is a significant risk, how can they claim the plants are safe? Well it not hard to do if safe is defined as “little chance of any prompt offsite fatalities”. There were no prompt offsite fatalities from Chernobyl or Fukishima, so even if we were in the middle of a Chernobyl or Fukishima style meltdown, the NRC could claim the people living next store were “safe” and still be well within their stated definition of “safe”.  The 1954 Atomic Energy act says the NRC is required to make the plants “safe”, but it doesn’t say what “safe” is supposed to mean, so they are legally free to make up their own definition. At the very least, the 1954 Atomic Energy act ought to be amended to say that “safe” should mean there is a low chance of a severe core meltdown.

There is little chance of that happening because that would effectively close the industry down, but thats no reason no point out what is correct and obvious - that the 1954 atomic energy act which still to this day defines the industry is extremely out of date. Wheres the outrage? Where’s the anti nuclear movement? They have given up even trying to shut the industry down and concentrate instead on 1 plant at a time.

You are geing exposed daily to highly radio active paricles from Japan. Avoid being out
in the rain, And avoid the beach, for the next 20,000 years.

The $8 billion is merely a down payment, most nuclear plants wind up costing three times the amount originally estimated and take twice the time to construct.  The easiest (and regularly done) way to increase profits at nuclear plants is to cut safety and maintenance budgets.  There is nothing green about nuclear power, the spent fuel on its own negates any “green” advantage, with the addition of the green house gasses emitted in the mining, and refining of uranium, and in the construction of and materials in the plants themselves, nuclear “green” becomes illusory.  There is not enough uranium available to make nuclear a truly viable alternative.

On the domestic side, the plants will be built by a Japanese company (the American sounding Westinghouse) and there will be hardly any American manufacturing involved.

What nuclear power does do well, is socialize risk and privatize profit, it makes the politically connected a great deal of money.  It also points out more of the illusion that the duopoly is two separate parties.  The “Everything on the Table” energy policy of both “parties” has once again been exposed as being, “Lets poison the planet with carbon and radiation as fast as we can for fun and profit”.  One of the fun facts about this deal is that Robamaney and the Dimocraps tacked it on to the back of a bill to supply body armor for the troops.

If I remember correctly, it’s water-cooled reactors which are dangerous. Other
designs exist, but have seldom been built because they can’t be used to produce
fuel for nukes. These other designs are much less likely to produce a meltdown,
and produce less nuclear waste.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_nuclear_safety
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor