'It’s possible that nuclear power will turn out to be as indispensable in fighting global warming as its promoters claim. It’s inaccurate to say the jury is out — it hasn’t even been seated yet.' Column by hiltzikm:
No one would have believed this possible only a few years ago, but nuclear energy has been creeping up in public estimation, despite its long record of unfulfilled promise and cataclysmic missteps.Billions of dollars in incentives to keep existing nuclear plants operating and to get new nuclear technologies off the drawing board were enacted asYou don’t compromise safety to keep a nuclear plant open so you can meet a carbon target—you need to have minimum, stringent safety standards.
, not less, increases quality of life for all.” But that’s only true if you set aside the question ofThe explicit rationale for the repositioning of nuclear power as a “green technology” is concern about global warming. Nuclear proponents argue that as a non-carbon source of energy, nuclear fission is an indispensable alternative to the burning of oil, gas and coal and a transitional technology, on the path to fully renewable resources such as the sun and wind.
Then there’s the question of what to do with the existing reactors, many of which have lasted well beyond their design lives. Only 28 of these have remained “competitive” — that is, economically viable —That existing fleet includes Diablo Canyon, whose owner, PG&E, said the plant was facing an unprofitable future when it made the decision to abandon plans to seek a permit renewal from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The history of nuclear power in the United States has been marked by numerous milestones, many of them bad — accidents, construction snafus, engineering incompetence, etc., etc. “Pretty effective lobbyists” push the idea that “this is somehow a breakthrough technology that’s going to transform nuclear power,” Lyman said of sodium-cooled reactors.
But Navin acknowledges that the technology hasn’t been used in any commercial power plants, and TerraPower’s utility partner, PacifiCorp, a unit of Berkshire Hathaway , which is to take over the project once it’s operational, has no experience running a nuclear plant. By that measure, there’s hardly any doubt that Diablo Canyon should be shut down, and the sooner the better.Diablo Canyon, which is on the Pacific shoreline about 250 miles south of San Francisco and 190 miles north of Los Angeles, was the third location chosen by Pacific Gas & Electric Co. for a nuclear generating plant starting in the early 1960s.
The NRC’s decision in 1981 to allow construction to proceed after a fault discovery without reexamining the plant’s seismic engineering provoked two commissioners, Peter A. Bradford and Victor Gilinsky, to issueThey described the confidence of two NRC advisory boards in the utility’s reassurances as “almost mystical,” and charged that the boards’ rationales for accepting PG&E’s arguments as evidence that neither board “had any idea what it was talking about.
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