Who says DC is sleepy in the summertime? With two nuclear energy-related hearings scheduled for 10:00 am, the Hill is a busy place this morning. Click on the links below to view webcasts of the testimony.
Financing for Clean Energy Technology
Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
Witness List:* John Denniston – Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
* Jeffrey Eckel – President & CEO, Hannon Armstrong
* Jeanine Hull – Counsel, Dykema Gossett PLLC
* Alexander Karsner – Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, U.S. Department of Energy
* Dan Reicher – Director, Climate Change & Energy Initiatives, Google.Org
Not much to add to this, just want to track some of the mischief occurring under radar.
Personally I can’t wait for my nuclear powered car!
Nuclear power is going to be huge over the next 30 years, and that would be good. Nuclear material, encased in a ceramic matrix, is much less dangerous, and the pollution potential is much much reduced. The
Patrick Moore, founder of Greenpeace, is now a leader of PRO-NUCLEAR development.
My son is starting Univ of Illinois in the fall. His major will be Nuclear engineering, and he is interested in jobs in the nuclear industry. I believe that he made a good choice, since the costs of hydrocarbons is going to continue to rise.
Rather than reflexive rejection of nuclear, you should rethink the situation. If you believe that Americans are going to go to a wood-based energy system or solar or wind, that is simply inadequate. Each will play its part, but nuclear will as well. Nuclear is the best of all from the carbon standpoint as well.
And where do you suggest we store the waste?
Yucca Mountain. All them whiners in NV can just stuff it.
We in the east have given millions and millions of dollars to the red states like NV. Now it’s time to give back.
the sad irony: dataguy is probably serious.
I am 100 % serious.
All the NIMBY stuff coming out of NV can be boiled down to one thing:
NIMBY
the infinitely more harmful waste from the burning of carbon based fuels?
In my air. That’s where.
without costs.
Wind is good, but limited.
Solar is good, but limited.
Oil, NG, coal – tremendous polluters of CO2.
Nuclear has many problems, but so do all the rest.
I say we go with nuclear, and manage the risks.
Where do we store the waste? Easy. In a reactor. What most people think of of nuclear waste isn’t really “waste” except that it’s been put through inefficient, obsolete reactor designs. Modern reactors, IIRC, are capable of using their fissionables much more efficiently, resulting in waste that is notably less dangerous.
Yes, it’s still dangerous, but as covered… It’s less dangerous than most other options. Hell, do you know how much toxic waste is produced by the manufacture of photovoltaic cells?
Nuclear is, at this point, a vital component of a long-term energy policy. Nuclear fission for baseline load, solar, wind, and tidal for additional capacity, and well-funded research into viable fusion for long-term needs.
I just read how the US Dept of Defense is going to let the radioactive waste from the Hanford reactor leak into the Columbia River because remediating the site would be “too expensive.”
For those who haven’t been following this, it will make the Columbia river radioactive and unfit for human use (water, irrigation, fishing). Not to mention altering the ecosystem unpredictably.
Well, some things can be predicted: Insects hold up better in high radiation-environments than mammals, amphibians, and fish. Draw your own conclusions.
I guess we can just write off the river as a dead zone, like Chelyabinsk, or the tar-sand pits of northern Alberta!
To the subject at hand: Having become disenchanted with the old (formerly untried) reactor technologies, which variously burned and melted, you now want us to put our faith in a NEW untried technology. So pebble-bed reactors can’t jam? Won’t burn? You are taking me for a sucker, plain and simple.
And the waste–good old Yucca Mountain! If Yucca Mountain met specs, they would be using it already, despite any protest a few hippies would make. Hippies they can ignore. What they can’t ignore is that they already know it won’t work: That is slowing them down.
But, hey! Got to keep those ACs running!
Total crackhead logic. Like when a drunk starts drinking sterno.
Do you really believe this? it just sounds like Chicken-little city to me.
That the Government is not going to clean-up the Hanford site? Yeah, I believe it. This is the kind of thing where you can take the Government at its word.
Yes, because as we all know, the proliferation of nuclear reactors in France has lead to the entire country becoming a radioactive hellhole, fit only for habitation by insects. We just don’t hear about it on the news, because the government suppresses it.
their waste (except for that which they dumped in the Atlantic Ocean). So the problems will not turn up until the casks start leaking, in about a century. Then they WILL turn up. In modern life, this is called think ahead–where you lay insoluble problems for your descendants a century out, so that you can continue doing whatever stupid, pointless thing you have been doing.
Solar will have huge problems. After all, deserts have plants and animals too, and most of the deserts (which are not sterile environments) will have endangered species. Plus, there are serious problems with power transmission – suffice it to say that moving power from Nevada to New York City is not possible in a cost-effective manner.
Wind also has limits. Plus, wind turbines are bird-shredding machines.
Coal has carbon problems.
Oil is running out, plus carbon.
NG is running out, plus carbon.
What is your solution?
Nuclear is the best option. In 20 years, we will be dependent on nuclear to a level unimaginable today, and that will be good. WE NEED NUCLEAR, and NOT JUST BECAUSE MY SON IS GOING INTO NUCLEAR ENGINEERING.
My solution? There are no solutions. That is a window that has closed. Still, wisdom is seeking sustainability. (Nuclear isn’t.)
Keeping doing what you are doing guarantees failure. Like a terminal drug binge, it ends in the morgue.
Is that what you are trying for?