Nuclear energy

[speaker]

Let me say I think nuclear power is the energy of the future, expensive to initiate, but possibly cheap and plentiful in the long run. When scientists and engineers formulate a method to dispose of the waste there's no doubt in my mind it would be the way to go.

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/aug2006/2006-08-04-insrei.asp

Is Sen. Reid a Republican? a Democrat? who cares?

[colossus27]

Let me say I think nuclear power is the energy of the future, expensive to initiate, but possibly cheap and plentiful in the long run. When scientists and engineers formulate a method to dispose of the waste there's no doubt in my mind it would be the way to go.

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/aug2006/2006-08-04-insrei.asp

Is Sen. Reid a Republican? a Democrat? who cares?

This country- especially those NIMBY tree-huggers in CA that keep messing w/my electric bill- needs to grow up and face reality. Nuclear power is long overdue.

You don't want windmills spoiling the view of your $50M horizon on Hilton Head, you gotta find another option, Senator. Nuclear is the only option that'll work transparently, within the existing infrastructure. Waste disposal is the major issue, for certain. But those same enviro-zipperhead politicians that get into a froth over EMFs, Chromium 6, and Love Canal ain't exactly funneling money into fusion R&D either, are they?

[DR_GONZO]

The Chernobyl accident killed more than 30 people immediately, and as a result of the high radiation levels in the surrounding 20-mile radius, 135,00 people had to be evacuated. Currently, there is no permanent population in the city. Hell on earth. Yeah nuclear power is long overdue.

[colossus27]

The Chernobyl accident killed more than 30 people immediately, and as a result of the high radiation levels in the surrounding 20-mile radius, 135,00 people had to be evacuated. Currently, there is no permanent population in the city. Hell on earth. Yeah nuclear power is long overdue.

And how many nuke-deaths in the USA with how many 30+ year old power plants? That's not even mentioning the many plants in Western Europe with flawless operating records. Everybody on the planet knows Chernobyl was a badly run plant with poor controls. Yet, for some reason, that's always the first one mentioned whenever somebody mentions fission as a viable power source.

If the same logic applied to aviation, nobody have tried anything after Otto Lilienthal died.

Care to comment about the lack of fusion R&D funding?

[Right Wing]

And how many nuke-deaths in the USA with how many 30+ year old power plants? That's not even mentioning the many plants in Western Europe with flawless operating records. Everybody on the planet knows Chernobyl was a badly run plant with poor controls. Yet, for some reason, that's always the first one mentioned whenever somebody mentions fission as a viable power source.

If the same logic applied to aviation, nobody have tried anything after Otto Lilienthal died.

Care to comment about the lack of fusion R&D funding?

There is much more to the nuclear problem then you let on.

This is from Allen Lutins:

If you set aside Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, the safety record of nuclear [power] is really very good.
-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, June 2001

Contrary to Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's assessment, nuclear power and nuclear devices have not enjoyed a safe history at United States facilities. At least 50 nuclear weapons lie on the ocean bottom due to U.S. and Soviet accidents. A large number of incidents mar the safety record of nuclear plants, facilities, bombers and ships, of which Three Mile Island is only the best remembered. Numerous deaths and injuries resulted from these incidents. In addition to accidents, the day-to-day operations related to nuclear materials processing and handling have led to massive contamination of this country's landscape. The U.S. Department of Energy spends over $4 billion each year for the restoration and management of sites contaminated by nuclear materials. Their 2000 Federal budget noted: "The Environmental Management (EM) program is responsible for addressing the environmental legacy resulting from the production of nuclear weapons. The nuclear weapons complex generated waste, pollution, and contamination that pose unique problems, including unprecedented volumes of contaminated soil and water, radiological hazards from special nuclear material, and a vast number of contaminated structures. Factories, laboratories, and thousands of square miles of land were devoted to producing tens of thousands of nuclear weapons. Much of this is largely maintained, decommissioned, managed, and remediated by the EM program, which is sometimes referred to as the 'cleanup program.' EM's responsibilities include facilities and sites in 30 states and one territory, and occupy an area equal to that of Rhode Island and Delaware combined - or about 2.1 million acres."

On 23 October 1999 directors of the Radiation and Public Health Project released a report which found that the cancer-causing radioisotope Strontium-90 has been found in the teeth of children born in the 1980's at levels equal to those of the middle 1950's, when the U.S. and the former Soviet Union were conducting routine above-ground bomb tests. The elevated levels were attributed to accidents such as those at Three Mile Island (in 1979) and Chernobyl (in 1986), with contributions from ongoing releases at other nuclear reactors. Dr. Ernest Sternglass, Professor Emeritus of Radiological Physics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, noted, "Strontium-90 is a known carcinogen and a marker for other shorter-lived fission products and simply should not be present at all in our children’s teeth."

[mikewrona]

The Chernobyl accident killed more than 30 people immediately, and as a result of the high radiation levels in the surrounding 20-mile radius, 135,00 people had to be evacuated. Currently, there is no permanent population in the city. Hell on earth. Yeah nuclear power is long overdue.

One of the big nuclear cleanup problems in this country is the Savannah River.

The Savannah River at Grievous Risk
Analysis of the Proposal to Allow the Department of Energy to Leave a Significant Portion of Its High-Level Radioactive Waste at the Savannah River Site in the Savannah River Watershed

Arjun Makhijani, Ph.D.
President, Institute for Energy and Environmental Research
17 May 2004
The U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee has passed a proposal that would allow the DOE to leave virtually any fraction of the high-level waste, now stored in large tanks, at the Savannah River Site in grouted form, if approved by the State of South Carolina. This proposal would convert SRS into a vast high-level radioactive waste dump in the watershed of the Savannah River. The State of South Carolina has already allowed high-level waste to be grouted in two tanks.

I have performed some calculations to illustrate the potential effect on the Savannah River of this proposal. In principle the proposal would allow any fraction of the radioactivity in the tanks to be left there permanently in grouted form in the tanks at SRS. There are currently about 400 million curies of radioactivity in the high-level waste tanks. Strontium-90 and cesium-137 each are about 100 million curies, plus an equal amount of the decay products of each in equilibrium with each of these radionuclides.

If only 10 percent, i.e., about 10 million curies, of the strontium-90 presently in the tank farms were left behind and grouted, the grout would have to work nearly perfectly for hundreds of years to prevent the Savannah River from becoming polluted above the present Safe Drinking Water limit of 8 picocuries per liter. Leakage of even a small fraction of the strontium-90 at SRS into the Savannah River would be disastrous to the river. This threat will persist for centuries.

Strontium-90 has a half-life of 29 years. Even after decaying for 100 years, a leakage of just 1 part in 10,000 per year of strontium-90 into the river would cause the Savannah River to exceed the Safe Drinking Water limit. This estimate is based on median river flow.

In the past (1991) major economic damage has occurred when the drinking water standard was exceeded for only a few days due to a tritium leak, even though the standard is calculated as an annual average and there was no annual violation. Maintaining the river within drinking water limits every month, even in low flow years and months, will likely require containment many times stricter -- on the order of 1 part in 100,000 per year. Even after 200 years a high degree of containment, better than 1 part in 10,000 per year would be needed to meet this goal. Further, containment would have to be ten times better that these figures if essentially all the strontium-90 were left in the tanks.

There is no experience with grout for such periods of time that can allow confident projections of containment of such perfection. On the contrary, experience with grout so far has been unsatisfactory, as we have discussed in the recent IEER report on SRS (Nuclear Dumps by the Riverside, an excerpt of which is reproduced below). For instance, waste cast into cement blocks at Rocky Flats disintegrated in a few years. The tanks themselves were not designed to last for hundreds of years. Grout simply cannot be relied on as a waste form to protect the river even if grout quality is improved. Shallow land burial of waste by grouting in the tanks or by creating grouted vaults onsite is a dangerous idea.

These problems will be exacerbated by the vast amount of cesium-137 now in the tanks. Due to gross mismanagement, the Department of Energy wasted 16 years and $500 million before abandoning as dangerous a process to extract and concentrate the cesium-137. A replacement process is needed. If the DOE simply abandons the Cs-137 in the tanks and leaves behind 10 percent of the strontium-90, then containment roughly twice as stringent as that estimated above for strontium-90 alone would be needed to maintain the usability of Savannah River water.

In addition, there are large amounts of various transuranic isotopes, including plutonium-238, plutonium-239, and americium-241. In Tank 17, for instance, the residual radioactivity of transuranic radionuclides planned to be left in the tank exceeds the low-level waste limit by more than 600 times (before dilution).

There are over 2 million curies of plutonium-238 in the Tank Farms at SRS. If only ten percent of the plutonium-238 were left behind in the tanks and diluted with grout 6 feet deep, the residual radioactivity in both tank farms would exceed the maximum Class C limit allowed for low-level waste by about ten times. Other residual transuranic radionuclides, such as americium-241 and plutonium-239, would add to the extent of the violation.

In sum, the performance of the grout would have to be such that leakage would remain at one part in 100,000 per year or better for a hundred years or more. If the grout fails to meet this test, the river may have to be written off for drinking water use. This is because once the tanks are grouted, it will be essentially impossible to remediate them. In other words, if the grout fails, South Carolina and Georgia will likely have to write off one of their most precious water resources. The resultant health and economic and ecological harm would be incalculable, far greater, in my view, than any benefit to be derived from shortening the cleanup period for SRS or reducing high-level waste management expenditures. Nothing less than the future of the Savannah River is at stake in the current debate over the management of tank wastes at SRS

[colossus27]

There is much more to the nuclear problem then you let on.

This is from Allen Lutins

Lutins writes for The Nation. :rolleyes:

This is a very hot-button topic and there's more junk science here than there is with global warming. Thus, it's on both sides of the coin, so finding real information here is gonna be a mother of an undertaking.

Interesting that a search for the phrase "Radiation and Public Health Project" on Google only seems to be showing advocacy groups.

[colossus27]

There is much more to the nuclear problem then you let on.
1) At least 50 nuclear weapons lie on the ocean bottom due to U.S. and Soviet accidents.
2) Numerous deaths and injuries resulted from these incidents.

1) What does this have to do w/nuclear power?

2) Numerous deaths also result from logging. Should we stop using wood as a building material?

[Right Wing]

1) What does this have to do w/nuclear power?

2) Numerous deaths also result from logging. Should we stop using wood as a building material?

Well, when it comes to comparing apples to oranges your analogy is about a good as it gets - the potential danger to public safety from the nuclear industry and the timber industry?

You are just looking to argue.

[DR_GONZO]

Nuclear waste, no one wants it. That crap lasts for thousands of years. Even at closed down or off-line operating plants, no one wants to pay for cleanups. The feds point the finger at the states. The states point the finger at the feds. This stuff far outweighs any benefits. Most just stay with that same old tired, "who cares about the by-product, as long as it's not in my backyard". We'll just keep ignoring it away, lol!

Disaster wise, like Chernobyl, you just can't wash away the accident. It will contaminate everything for close to forever. The risks are enormous. Throw in your little war on terror and possible reactor targets, your risks are even higher now. Even after the nuclear industry admits they have no full proof security measures against terrorists.

I find it interesting all this talk of Helium3 as a not too distant nuclear fusion fuel source. There is word that the moon is indeed not made of cheese, as the intelligent designers would want you to believe, but the surface is loaded with Helium3. This is why China is trying their damndest to get up there. The hell with China! Creating a viable mining operation and delivery capability remain an obstacle that this nation should not only strive for, but subjugate. American ingenuity should lead the way.

[colossus27]

Nuclear waste, no one wants it. That crap lasts for thousands of years. Even at closed down or off-line operating plants, no one wants to pay for cleanups. The feds point the finger at the states. The states point the finger at the feds. This stuff far outweighs any benefits. Most just stay with that same old tired, "who cares about the by-product, as long as it's not in my backyard". We'll just keep ignoring it away, lol!

Disaster wise, like Chernobyl, you just can't wash away the accident. It will contaminate everything for close to forever. The risks are enormous. Throw in your little war on terror and possible reactor targets, your risks are even higher now. Even after the nuclear industry admits they have no full proof security measures against terrorists.

I find it interesting all this talk of Helium3 as a not too distant nuclear fusion fuel source. There is word that the moon is indeed not made of cheese, as the intelligent designers would want you to believe, but the surface is loaded with Helium3. This is why China is trying their damndest to get up there. The hell with China! Creating a viable mining operation and delivery capability remain an obstacle that this nation should not only strive for, but subjugate. American ingenuity should lead the way.

All valid points, certainly. Fusion gets around all of the waste disposal nightmares- your points about that are completely justified...

my issue is that there is no ^$^&%&&$ Federal funding in fusion R&D. This administration has done little to impress the scientific community and- by having two of the 'big three' in the federal gov't, they could have made this the energy-equivalent of the next moon shot. They didn't and won't.

He3 is getting lots of support by Mr. Wilson Greatbatch, who donates something like $300K a year to this research. They need some fundamental breakthroughs before it'll happen but it certainly has promise.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium_3

[colossus27]

Well, when it comes to comparing apples to oranges your analogy is about a good as it gets - the potential danger to public safety from the nuclear industry and the timber industry?

You are just looking to argue.

And citing an article written by a columnist from The Nation isn't?

[Right Wing]

And citing an article written by a columnist from The Nation isn't?

It does appear that you are unable to dispute what he wrote.

[colossus27]

It does appear that you are unable to dispute what he wrote.

Dispute? I'm just curious why vague phrases and non-sequiturs are used instead of hard numbers. Particularly given the source.

1) "A large number of incidents mar the safety record of nuclear plants, facilities, bombers and ships, of which Three Mile Island is only the best remembered. Numerous deaths and injuries resulted from these incidents."

Large number? What exactly is this large number? And how many deaths and injuries are we talking about here? Did an epidemiologically valid study prove this or are we going to get more Brockovich logic? Are these deaths/injuries due to the release of nuclear material? If so, why didn't he mention it instead of using a catchall vague phrase? I mention the logging industry because it is more dangerous than working in a nuclear plant. You call this comparison apples to oranges. I'm sure OSHA would disagree, but what do I know?

2) "Contrary to Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's assessment, nuclear power and nuclear devices have not enjoyed a safe history at United States facilities. At least 50 nuclear weapons lie on the ocean bottom due to U.S. and Soviet accidents." Again, what does mentioning "at least 50 nuclear devices" have to do with fission as a power source?

[Right Wing]

I did do a google and the Radiation and Public Health Project topped the list.

www.radiation.org

"Mission

The Radiation and Public Health Project (RPHP) is a nonprofit educational and scientific organization, established by scientists and physicians dedicated to understanding the relationships between low-level, nuclear radiation and public health.

RPHP's mission includes:

* Research: Studying the links between low-level radiation and world-wide increases in diseases, especially cancer and those affecting the newborn and children and to become the leading, world-wide source of information on radiation and public health issues.

* Education: Publishing the results of research dealing with the impact of low-level radiation on public health and to disseminate this information to the public, media, policy makers and the scientific community.

* Public awareness: Promoting public awareness and responsible public policy related to radiation and public health, in the areas of freedom of information...objective medical and scientific investigation... institutional accountability...independent oversight...and responsible public health and environmental policy.

History and Accomplishments of the Radiation and Public Health Project

RPHP was established as a non-profit 501 (c)(3) organization in 1995, after many years of work by its founders--Jay Gould and Ernest Sternglass--as part of other nonprofit environmental and public policy organizations.

Given RPHP's threefold mission in the areas of research, education and public awareness, the history of RPHP can best be traced through its books and articles on radiation and nuclear issues--by Jay Gould, Ernest Sternglass, Joseph Mangano, Bill McDonnell, Janette Sherman and Jerry Brown.

During the first half century of the Nuclear Age a growing body of medical and scientific evidence has emerged to demonstrate a probable causal link between low-level internal radiation from the ingestion of man-made fission products and world-wide increases in immune deficiency diseases, especially cancer and those affecting the newborn. RPHP has assembled much of the epidemiological evidence documenting these links.

Five books published by RPHP research associates summarize hundreds of articles in peer-reviewed journals dealing with these impacts of ingested, low-level fission products--products which did not exist in nature prior to the Nuclear Age. In addition to the effects upon the immune response of all age groups, the very young have been especially affected. RPHP has repeatedly pointed out the radiation-induced damage apparent in official vital statistics, tracing changes in infant mortality rates and underweight live births in the postwar period, especially during the aboveground nuclear test years of the 1950s and the 1960s.

RPHP has also been able to track the radiation-induced damage done to the hormonal and immune systems of the 80 million baby boomers born between 1945 and 1965 in each of the post war decades, revealing the various epidemiological anomalies: In the 1950s, children born after the enormous initial exposure to nuclear fission products began to experience epidemic increases in childhood cancer in the ages 5 to 9.

In USA Newborn Deterioration in the Nuclear Age: 1945-1965 , RPHP found

...a cumulated excess of about 1 million infant deaths over the 50 year postwar period, attributable to exposure to all post-1945 releases of chemical and radioactive pollutants.

In 1963, when children born in the traumatic initial year of 1945 reached the age of 18, there began a mysterious 20-year decline in Scholastic Aptitude Scores (SAT), which only improved when the tests were taken by those born after the cessation of aboveground superpower nuclear bomb tests, which had exploded the equivalent of 40,000 Hiroshima bombs between 1945 and 1963.

With the onset of another wave of fallout in the form of accidental and 'normal' releases of low-level radiation from civilian nuclear power reactors, rapidly coming on line in the 1970s, RPHP found a linkage to the emergence of immune deficiency diseases in the 1980s, including AIDS, as well as early breast cancer (for women baby boomers reaching age 35).

Concerning America's cancer epidemic, RPHP has analyzed official National Cancer Institute, age-adjusted, breast and prostate cancer mortality rates, available since 1950 for every county in the United States, and demonstrated highly significant correlations between high cancer death rates and proximity to nuclear reactors.

In The Enemy Within: The High Cost of Living Near Nuclear Reactors, RPHP showed that of the over 3,000 counties in the United States, women living in about 1,300 nuclear counties (located within 10 0 miles of a reactor) are at the greatest risk of dying of breast cancer."

[tomac]

And how many nuke-deaths in the USA with how many 30+ year old power plants? That's not even mentioning the many plants in Western Europe with flawless operating records. Everybody on the planet knows Chernobyl was a badly run plant with poor controls. Yet, for some reason, that's always the first one mentioned whenever somebody mentions fission as a viable power source.
If the same logic applied to aviation, nobody have tried anything after Otto Lilienthal died.
Care to comment about the lack of fusion R&D funding?

About a half-dozen technicians have died at nuclear power plants since 1944, and all happened at a time when the perameters of handling radioactive materials weren't fully understood.
Most were accidents like one in 1945 when two workers were killed in the Manhattan Project in two separate incidents when hand-assembled fissile material got too close and reached partial criticality. Or in 1961 when three workers were killed in Idaho Falls as they adjusted fuel rods in preparation for a routine reactor startup. They became so heavily contaminated that their hands had to be treated as high-level radioactive waste and their bodies were buried in lead coffins.
As for Fusion R&D, I agree, we should be going full-tilt looking to get THAT on line. Too bad power companies are content collecting loadsabucks doing things the "old fashioned" way. And paying politicans to make sure that the status quo remains.
:rolleyes:

[tomac]

Well, when it comes to comparing apples to oranges your analogy is about a good as it gets - the potential danger to public safety from the nuclear industry and the timber industry?
You are just looking to argue.

Claiming that nuclear weapons have anything to do with nuclear-powered generation of electricity is the same as citing spears or bows and arrows when talking about the lumber industry.

[colossus27]

I did do a google and the Radiation and Public Health Project topped the list.

www.radiation.org

"Mission

The Radiation and Public Health Project (RPHP) is a nonprofit educational and scientific organization, established by scientists and physicians dedicated to understanding the relationships between low-level, nuclear radiation and public health.

That was my point exactly- the first thing you cite probably shows bias. I didn't see any papers that appeared on this site that weren't pay-to-play, including the strontium-90 and teeth subject.

Why is it that a peer-reviewed paper, all of 462K as a .PDF, isn't shown as a complete document? You cannot see how the conclusions were drawn, how the data was analyzed (or cherry-picked), nor the significance or confidence intervals of the study.

This is all you get after digging around on radiation.org:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V78-49FXHJC-3&_coverDate=12/30/2003&_alid=129201815&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_qd=1&_cdi=5836&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=7c37a8e55235069bcb5d1f1715036557
I might be off base here, I freely admit that...but if they had a slam-dunk on this subject, why don't they prove it? Just because it is established by scientists and physicians doesn't necessarily mean anything unbiased. How do we know this isn't like that group of luddites that call themselves the "Union of Concerned Scientists"?

[colossus27]

About a half-dozen technicians have died at nuclear power plants since 1944, and all happened at a time when the perameters of handling radioactive materials weren't fully understood.
Most were accidents like one in 1945 when two workers were killed in the Manhattan Project in two separate incidents when hand-assembled fissile material got too close and reached partial criticality. Or in 1961 when three workers were killed in Idaho Falls as they adjusted fuel rods in preparation for a routine reactor startup. They became so heavily contaminated that their hands had to be treated as high-level radioactive waste and their bodies were buried in lead coffins.
As for Fusion R&D, I agree, we should be going full-tilt looking to get THAT on line. Too bad power companies are content collecting loadsabucks doing things the "old fashioned" way. And paying politicans to make sure that the status quo remains.
:rolleyes:


Thanks. I've tried to find information on this that is more recent...no luck though. Not surprisingly, this leads some to believe there is a cover up ;)

[tomac]

Thanks. I've tried to find information on this that is more recent...no luck though. Not surprisingly, this leads some to believe there is a cover up ;)

Googling "Nuclear Accidents USA" gave me 9 million hits, the first five of which are:
Calendar of Nuclear Accidents9-1993: Radioactive release from leaking fuel rods at Perry nuclear power plant (USA) 10-1987: Nuclear transport accident in the UK ...
archive.greenpeace.org/comms/nukes/chernob/rep02.html - 29k - Cached - Similar pages


Nuclear weapons and the United States - Wikipedia, the free ...The United States nuclear program has, since its inception, suffered from a number of accidents of varying forms, ranging from single-casualty research ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_the_United_States - 110k - Cached - Similar pages


LET THE FACTS SPEAK"Accidents Near Accidents & Leaks in the Nuclear Industry", Penelope Coleing for Sydney MAUM). 23. 1958, 4th November - TEXAS, USA ...
prop1.org/2000/accident/facts1.htm - 18k - Cached - Similar pages


Nuclear power accidents - the effects of nuclear power accidents ...1979, Mar 28, The worst commercial nuclear accident in the US occurred as ... into the containment building of TVA's Sequoyah 1 plant in Tennessee, USA. ...
www.astrologyweekly.com/data-archive/nuclear-power-accidents-effects.php - 31k - Cached - Similar pages


Key Issues: Nuclear Weapons: Issues: Accidents: 1980'sNEVADA, USA - Nuclear accident in the Nevada desert has left one man critically ill and eight others in hospital. It occurred during an underground nuclear ...
www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/issues/accidents/accidents-1980's-04.htm - 34k - Cached - Similar pages

[biker]

As for Fusion R&D, I agree, we should be going full-tilt looking to get THAT on line. Too bad power companies are content collecting loadsabucks doing things the "old fashioned" way. And paying politicans to make sure that the status quo remains.
:rolleyes:

I don't think you can lay that at the feet of the power companies, tomac.

They are heavily-regulated monopolies. I would think the PSC would be leery of allowing those types of expenses to be included (that is, funded) in the rates by current customers.

The PSC's mission is to keep rates low (STOP LAUGHING!), while allowing a "reasonable" rate of return (read "lower than most other publicly-held companies") to the shareholders.

[Right Wing]

Claiming that nuclear weapons have anything to do with nuclear-powered generation of electricity is the same as citing spears or bows and arrows when talking about the lumber industry.

Does the production of electricty from nuclear energy, and the production of nuclear weapons product nuclear waste. I think so.

You draw an erroneous conclusion about what was written. Radiation is radiation. Go visit the Savannah River Project on the Georgia/South Carolina Border. Let us know what you think. The facility made weapons, not electricity.

Why don't you tell us why the timber industry is just as dangerous as the nuclear industry? I'm young. I know I'll be waiting until hell freezes over for that answer.

[tomac]

I don't think you can lay that at the feet of the power companies, tomac.

Who else, they pay huge amounts of "campaign contributions" to have laws shaped in their favor. Or do you honestly believe that the politicans will listen to you on an equal footing with them?

They are heavily-regulated monopolies. I would think the PSC would be leery of allowing those types of expenses to be included (that is, funded) in the rates by current customers.
The PSC's mission is to keep rates low (STOP LAUGHING!), while allowing a "reasonable" rate of return (read "lower than most other publicly-held companies") to the shareholders.

Let me tell you a thing about the Public Service Commission; back in the "old days" (1930s) the PSC was in place to determine unsafe railroad grade crossings and which needed to be replaced by bridges. The bulk of the men on the commission were from the boards of the various railroads in the state. They had an agenda to have the state build as many bridges for them as possible.
After WWII, the PSC was modified in scope to be the "watchdog" for the electric and gas companies. Guess who is on the commission?
That's right, gentlemen from the boards of the utilities.
That's why alternative fuels have been downplayed, alternative (green) power sources have been ignored and home generation of power has been actively discouraged in New York State.
New York State has about the most corrupt government in the United States, and has had it since the Constitution was written.
:mad:

[Right Wing]

Googling "Nuclear Accidents USA" gave me 9 million hits, the first five of which are:
Calendar of Nuclear Accidents9-1993: Radioactive release from leaking fuel rods at Perry nuclear power plant (USA) 10-1987: Nuclear transport accident in the UK ...
archive.greenpeace.org/comms/nukes/chernob/rep02.html - 29k - Cached - Similar pages


Nuclear weapons and the United States - Wikipedia, the free ...The United States nuclear program has, since its inception, suffered from a number of accidents of varying forms, ranging from single-casualty research ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_the_United_States - 110k - Cached - Similar pages


LET THE FACTS SPEAK"Accidents Near Accidents & Leaks in the Nuclear Industry", Penelope Coleing for Sydney MAUM). 23. 1958, 4th November - TEXAS, USA ...
prop1.org/2000/accident/facts1.htm - 18k - Cached - Similar pages


Nuclear power accidents - the effects of nuclear power accidents ...1979, Mar 28, The worst commercial nuclear accident in the US occurred as ... into the containment building of TVA's Sequoyah 1 plant in Tennessee, USA. ...
www.astrologyweekly.com/data-archive/nuclear-power-accidents-effects.php - 31k - Cached - Similar pages


Key Issues: Nuclear Weapons: Issues: Accidents: 1980'sNEVADA, USA - Nuclear accident in the Nevada desert has left one man critically ill and eight others in hospital. It occurred during an underground nuclear ...
www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/issues/accidents/accidents-1980's-04.htm - 34k - Cached - Similar pages





Silly argument you are making. When a lumber industry worker is accidently killed on the job, is the land where the accident took place cordoned off for years until the site is cleaned up, or, never used at all.

Radioactive Contamination at Clean-Up Sites: Over 1,000 United States locations, including both operational and abandoned sites, are contaminated with radiation. These sites range in size from small corners in laboratories to massive nuclear weapons facilities. The contamination may be found in the air, water, and soil, as well as equipment and buildings. These sites are closely monitored to prevent unnecessary exposure of the public.
From the location to the type of radiation, every clean-up site is different. The vast majority of sites pose hazards only to the people using them. Radiation levels in the air, water, and soil around these sites are closely monitored. In case of accidental spills or release of radioactive materials, clean-up response teams use modern technologies to assess the situation and take appropriate actions to limit potential hazards to people and the environment. http://www.epa.gov/radtown/clean-up.htm

I don't see this kind of security in the timber industry to protect the public do you?

[speaker]

No doubt about it.
When we discuss nuclear energy, we're almost talking science fiction.
It's functionality, right now as a benefit to humans, is nil. Makes me wonder about Iran's plans. Hmmmm.
But something to be worked on, when the world is in better shape.