How did I miss this? Neither The Freep nor The News mention this item.
The Biden administration is poised to lend $1.5 billion for what what would be the first restart of a shuttered US nuclear reactor, the latest sign of strengthening federal government support for the atomic industry.
[…] More than a dozen reactors have closed since 2013 amid competition from cheaper power from natural gas and renewables, and the Energy Department has warned that as many of half of the nation’s nuclear reactors are at risk of closing due to economic factors.
Holtec [International Corp.] acquired the [Covert Twp, MI] 800-megawatt power plant in 2022 after Entergy Corp. closed it due to financial reasons, but began pushing forward with plans to restart after pleas from Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
Holtec has said a restart of the reactor is contingent on a federal loan. Without such support, the company has said it would decommission the site.
Have I got this straight? Is this the only way we have to generate the needed electricity without leaning on “dirty” sources? The energy required can’t be fulfilled by existing clean sources?
Nuclear, beside being a clean and abundant source of energy, is also safe, like air travel is safe. Also like air travel, it’s safe…until it isn’t.
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Nuclear problem is costs, not safety. If safety was the primary goal you would be arguing that we should be shutting down solar arrays and wind turbines, given they kill far more people than nuclear. They’ve also wiped out a lot fewer towns than dams and coal plants have, but those don’t have big scary words attached to them and so people don’t care.
It is eminently reasonable to try and keep clean power operating instead of continually shuttering it for more natural gas plants.
we should be shutting down solar arrays and wind turbines, given they kill far more people than nuclear.
I’m gonna need some objective backup on that, chief. It’s easy to make things up on the internet.
They’ve also wiped out a lot fewer towns than dams and coal plants have
You’re also gonna have to back this one up, too. Eminent domain and Three-Mile Island are two completely different things.
Let’s play a game: solar == bicycle, wind == motorcycle, coal/methane == automobile, hydro == train, nuclear == airplane — admittedly, the
metaphorsanalogies aren’t perfect but they’ll do for today. Although it would be regrettable having an accident with any of these transports, which one’s “worst case scenario” would you prefer?Sure, I’ll bite.
There’s a nice table a few paragraphs down. Solar and wind definitely have much smaller death rates than any fossil fuel, but nuclear still wins.
Also, planes are the poster child of things that seem scary and get a lot of news, but are actually much safer on a mundane basis. You’re literally arguing that we should do the thing with a higher death toll because the other thing looks scary.
That article’s a little stale, ain’t it? Even Forbes says so. And “deathprint per trillion kWhs”? What is that in months? Years? What does solar’s “deathprint” ultimately work out to? 8 people fell off their roof installing panels in, what, 10 years?
Yeah, even rocks know that air travel is statistically the safest way to travel. I still say I’d choose other forms of renewable than reopening a rickety old power plant because it is scary. Did you see the Fukushima tsunami coming? Your crystal ball tune in on the Russian forces bombing the largest nuclear power plant in Europe?
There are other options, are there not? Options that don’t involve USD$1,500,000,000,000.00.
It lists deaths per kwh to normalize over how much power you gain. A power source that kills 10 people and gives you 1 million kwh is safer than a power source that kills 3 people and gives you 100 kwh.
Deaths due to solar are hard to estimate. Most people just point at roofing (which is pretty dangerous even compared to most construction jobs) and assign a percentage of roofing deaths based on how many panels are being installed. This article estimates 100-150 deaths a year just in the US.
Again, your logic is false. The size of a particular accident is irrelevant. What matters is total deaths over a long time, averaged out over how much energy they generated. If there is a demand for X amount of power over a decade, whichever energy source meets that demand with the fewest deaths should be the one we pick. Anything non-fossil fuel is two orders of magnitude better, so that is what we should be building.
Quite bluntly, you seem allergic to big numbers. That is not an argument.
Can you not find an article to sustain your claims that aren’t less than ten years old? “Oh, that newfangled solar is killin’ everybody!”
Apparently, we’re not gonna see things eye to eye on this one, chief. I do agree “what matters is total deaths over a long time.” What doesn’t matter to you is the rate or the circumstances. To you, 100 deaths over 100 years or 100 minutes is irrelevant. To you, dying from old age or radon poisoning is the same thing. I also agree with “anything non-fossil fuel is two orders of magnitude better, so that is what we should be building.” You just happen to have your geek on for atomic power.
And I do like big numbers. Unlike you, I love breaking them down into readily digestable amounts of comprehensible information. Ciao.
Awesome news
Why are we constantly rebuilding our grandparents reactors? Has nuclear science not advanced since the 50’s?
It’s far cheaper and much faster than starting from scratch.
Nuclear is viewed really poorly by the public, so it would be hard to get support for building a brand new one.
It has. Nuclear plants are just obscenely expensive to build. If we sat down and logically agreed to do the thing with the most long-term benefit, we’d have a bunch of them. But in a capitalist society, that’s not how decisions are made.
Actually, not much…much like the automotive industry, the same basic principles apply.
