Obama Wants More Nuclear, But Do You?

I looked all over…cant find your Nuclear poll mentioned in the news…site designers need to be fired.

No no no no no
There is no where to put the waste! There is no way to clean up a disaster! Why would anyone want this???? What job could be worth this?

Do not build nuclear power plants. Spend the money on wind, solar and water power.

About time!! Yes we do want nuclear power!! Until there is a more effective alternative nuclear power is the way to go…all the panic about nuclear power backfires when there is no good alternative..and we should all be tired of fear tactics by now

I came to this site to vote on the poll discussed on your news this evening. I have looked for 15 minutes. What’s the deal?
For the record, there is no such thing as clean nuclear energy. It is a farce. And Mr. Obama, you have lost more than my confidence, you have lost my vote.

The true story is the financing of this new plant. Government guarantee program and their restrictions themselves add to the cost vs just a financing and letting the construction company cover the labor and construction costs. Do some real in-depth research on this. Talk to the power plant finance players (Prudential Capital as one example) and learn about all the different ways it could be done vs will be done. We have to have more nuclear power plants. Rolling black-outs will be the norm if we don’t……. Good work Nightline!

Its about time, we should be building 30 of these plants. Solar and wind only make about 3% of our needs and will takes decades to make a difference. Coal and natural gas make about 80% of our needs now and we have not build any of them in 10yrs. We need nuclear Now and mass transit in the South and let the oil cartel eat their oil.

I support the creation and use of nuclear energy. I live in North Alabama near the Brownsferry Nuclear plant that operates successfully and provides cheap TVA energy for our area. What I don’t understand is why is Obama spending so much money to build a new nuclear plant when there is one also nearby me… the Bellefonte Nuclear Plant in Scottsboro Alabama…that has never been completed but is nearly built to completion and sits idly by (except for a skeletal crew to keep the rust and weeds at bay)? Much fewer dollars would put the Bellefonte plant…already built and ready for operation…into service. Bellefonte has been sitting in its present state for YEARS!!! What the heck is Obama thinking?

Nuclear Energy can be safe. Remember, Chernobyl happened because they’re were doing an experiment on the reactor. As long as the people who are watching and developing the power plant are doing their job responsible then we will be fine.
Besides traditional energy is not safe either. Dams can rupture, Coal plants can release dangerous CO2 omissions and destroy the water, Gas plants can blow up. It all depends on who is working at the plant. Their could have been an Chernobyl at Three Mile Island if it wasn’t for the men/women who worked there.

Better late then never! This countries alleged leaders have been IDIOTS!!!

No! I’m a registered Chemical Engineer with 35 years experience in the energy industry and a life long Democrat. The economic and environmental consequences are far too expensive!
Originally conceived as providing power that would be “too cheap to meter,” nuclear energy was seen as the future of the electric industry. Reality quickly overtook this utopian vision in what has been called “the largest managerial disaster in business history,” leading to two bailouts of the industry in the 1980s and 1990s.
Advocates of nuclear power are now promoting a “nuclear renaissance” based on claims that a new generation of reactors will produce relatively cheap electricity while solving threats posed by global climate change. The industry has proposed building almost 30 new nuclear reactors, with some calling for 300 new plants by mid-century. The rapidly escalating and still highly uncertain costs of new nuclear plants—along with the stated unwillingness of Wall Street to finance them—has sent the industry back to the federal government for financial assistance. In response, Congress authorized a package of subsidies in 2005 that included federal loan guarantees and production tax credits. The industry is now asking for more!
When will General Electric and the other nuclear technology advocates have enough of our tax dollars?
When will the American public finally understand that Nuclear Energy is more expensive, centralized and therefor vulnerable than any other energy technology?

Fred Shirley: Yes you did miss the following huge technological advances:
1. Recycling nuclear fuel. We recycled in the old days. Then some spent fuel wound up in Israel, proving that private industry can’t be trusted with the recycling process. It has to be done by the government. Recycling multiplies the fuel supply by 100 or much more. France recycles nuclear fuel. Israel recycled the spent fuel and now has reactors and bombs. Note: Plutonium made by power plants is Pu240 which does NOT work in bombs. Bombs need Pu239, which governments make in special reactors.
2. Generation 4 reactors that use up all of the fuel, leaving no so-called “waste.”
3. When you get prostate cancer, where do you suppose they get the radioactive grains they use to treat your cancer?

yes,yes,yes,yes.why the fear talk all the time.

People say that there is no way of storing the spent nuclear fuel. And, by the way, I am for nuclear electric production. Why hasn’t anyone thought about it? It is true that storing spent nuclear fuel in/on this Earth, can be hazardous, and will remain a hazard for a very long time. However, since I was much younger I thought that one way of handling spent nuclear fuel was to park it into outer space. When there is enough of it, bundled together, put a rocket engine on the bundle, and send it to the largest nuclear furnace known to man. Namely our Sun! Once the nuclear material gets close enough to our Sun, it will disintegrate, and become part of the Sun. And someone may mention about a possible disaster while the rocket is transporting the nuclear fuel into deep outer space orbit. I’ve seen containers that they place the radioactive material in, to transport it. They’ve tried many things to these vessels, and found them very safe. If that is the case, then should the rocket explode, it seems that the containers will remain intact. And in outer space, the radioactivity will not harm anybody. And a cheap rocket to sent the package into the Sun, will not break any bank.
Who says that there is not a safe way of disposing the old radioactive material? I think that I found the answer. It will take us off the overseas oil dependency, and cheaply supply the power needed to satisfy this nation’s needs.

Yes,Yes,Yes ! Its safe and when the waste is properly “recycled” one years worth of waste from a nuclear plant will fit in a 16 oz. bottle.. France is almost 100% nuclear with-out any accidents or problems. And I believe with continued advancement we will find a way to recycle all the waste.

Yes, I support building more nuclear power plants. I live within 20 miles of the Duane Arnold Nuclear power plant at Palo, Iowa and feel very “safe.” There are trade offs with any source of energy, but nuclear energy has less impact on the environment than burning fossil fuels. We need to develop new sources of enrgy or step back in time and shut off our televisions, computers and lights.

I applaud President Obama for understanding that we need to develop more clean energy resources. But…Oil, Coal and Nuclear energy are the last millennia energy industries that had been destroying our world for far too long.
I understand that Nuclear power can be made clean and safe but I lived in Philadelphia PA during the seventies so I lived through three mile island event and I’m not 100% convinced that it’s 100% safe. Plus what do you do with the spent radioactive rods?
And It’s funny to me that the oil industry wants to drill for more oil in the gulf of Mexico, but every year when a hurricane hits the gulf, the oil rigs have to be shut down driving up the cost of producing oil for them which is passed on to us. Not to mention the Global warming effect, pollution and environmental hazards. This doesn’t make sense to me.
Basically Oil, Coal and Nuclear are environmentally harmful way to boil water to turn a turbine and create electricity. That’s so last millennia. Isn’t there a cleaner way to turn a crankshaft?
Well Wind Turbines are the cleanest method to achieve this but they don’t help to clean-up the environment.
There is a way to end a basic daily problem we face everyday, clean up the planet and produce energy at the same time.
I ask you “How many people have had their waste disposal costs go up? You have to pay more to have your trash taken away. Why? Because, for one, there are less and less locations to dump it. And people don’t want a Land Fill in their back yard, do you?
It’s hard on your pocket and even harder on the environment. What can we do?
I read an article five years ago about something the Japanese have been doing for ten years to create electricity and clean up the environment.
“Plasma-Arc Incineration”
The process of burning “Land-fill Garbage” at extremely high temperatures creating heat that turns a turbine to create electricity. And eliminating land-fill waste while not emitting any harmful gases and the only byproduct is an exotic ceramic to be used in roads and buildings?
That’s a win-win for me.
How come the Japanese can be doing this for the last ten years and we can’t? Even Toyota has a mini Plasma-Arc Incinerator.
Brendan said…
As an engineer, the only reservation I have is that Plasma Arc is not the same as incineration. The incineration process involves burning garbage which creates problematic exhaust. Plasma arc occurs at much higher temperatures and transforms matter instantaneously into it’s primary elements to create a energetic gas called “syngas” (sort of like natural gas without the oil drilling). The easiest way to say it is that incineration creates exhaust and arc plasma creates fuel.
“Syngas”, another resulting resource that I didn’t even think of.
((( In Fort Pierce, St. Lucie County, Florida a Plasma Incineration electric plant was to be built and would have been the largest in the world.
The Synthetic, combustible gas produced in the process would be used to run turbines to create about 120 megawatts of electricity that will be sold back to the grid. The facility will operate on about a third of the power it generates, free from outside electricity. And no byproduct will go unused.
The 100,000 Sq. Ft. plant was expected to vaporize 3,000 tons of garbage a day. County officials estimate their entire landfill — 4.3 million tons of trash collected since 1978 — will be gone in 18 years.)))
Glenn

It’s about time our country get’s it’s head out of it’s rear! We are so far behind at 20 percent nuclear electric power, 44 percent coal fired. France is at 85 percent nuclear, with westinghouse nuclear plants designed in the USA.

Yes we do!!!
We need to be more self reliant as a nation!

Obama is scary (as in Un-American), but nuclear energy is very American and very needed. Nuclear waste – we’ve already figured out what to do with it (if any — bring back the Breeder Reactor that our fav Pres [Jimmy Carter] quashed…), see the “glassifacation” plant in Eastern WA.

Yes – we need nuclear power – The US should take the lead in developing it and in providing technique to minimize the waste and find a way to store it. Given the rest of the world will develop nuclear power anyway, we need to be there to lead the research and technology related to nuclear energy development so the world does it safely. Remember the world needs enormous amounts of energy (even after improving our energy efficiency improvements), we need cheap energy so we can be competitive, and the process to produce energy and store waste must meet the strictest of environmental standards. These are technical problems and we need to solve them – even take the lead in solving them. Definite yes to nuclear energy, the same definite yes to wind and solar too. I am not too sure about coal and oil in the long term because of the carbon problem, but research should be done to sequester CO2 from coal plant emissions too.

Savings Account versus Income.
Radioactive elements are the rarest of the elements, never mind their dangers. It may be imprudent to base Energy Generation on Rare Elements.
Available tools and resources mark the milestones on the road to civilization. Number one on the list of tools is energy utilization, then number two, natural resources. Energy resources are not the same as natural resources? Natural resources as Energy Fuels occur in the Earth as a Savings Account collected many millions of years ago, or in the case of radioactivity, billions of years ago. We (Humans) are withdrawing from this Savings Account millions of times faster than the rate of deposit. Radioactive Elements are simply degenerating without being replenished.
Logic dictates that continually withdrawing assets from our Savings Account eventually assets must fall to zero. Bankruptcy means getting another chance. Completely depleting our Natural Resources is terminal with no second chance, never mind pollution and Environmental changes.
If we are to progress or even just survive, we must wean ourselves from dependence on our Savings Account and transfer Energy dependence to our Income, the Income of energy to the Earth.
Almost everything currently runs on Energy Resources. The efficiency of utilization and recycling is the cost of living. Therefore, the Scale of Civilization is gauged on this efficiency. Currently it is around 2.3%. All of Civilization with all that this entails have been developed and runs with 2.3% efficiency. Raising this efficiency lowers the cost of living. By only doubling efficiency to approximately 5%, all of humanity will receive all it needs to continue without toil. Raising the efficiency even higher will produce an abundance never before realized even at today’s opulent standard.
The US government has no project or comprehensive long-term program to relieve us from the shackles of energy fuels dependence. Even after so many problems caused by Fossil Fuels, our Government Leaders still look to Industry to make their decisions for them on Energy Policy. Technology now exists that can relieve Civilization completely from all dependence on Energy Fuels, Nuclear Power, and Monetary Institutions. Energy harvesting can and will do this; it is inevitable or our civilization is doomed at least as we now know it. Claims of current Fuel reserves lasting for Centuries is shortsighted and specious. Many arguments against the idea of Alternative Energy are heard containing the words Impractical and Lack of Infrastructure. I contend that We can solve these problems unless greed, vanity, and weakness distracts us from our resolve.
To begin, the idea is to increase our efficiency and reduce our dependence on our Energy Savings Account better known as Fossil Fuels and Nuclear.

Let’s see.. why did we stop building and using nuclear power plants. Can you say Chernobyl, Three Mile Island? We have more nuclear waste in Idaho than we will ever be able to “store”. Like we are saving is for something special… What about the aquifer? Maybe someone will make a gazillion dollars selling super powered atomic water. Then we can kiss the human race good bye. Follow the money that’s whose going to make out on this deal.

Nuclear power is the only reliable power supply outside of carbon-based fuels. Assuming we endeavor to reprocess the nuclear waste to reduce the quantity that actually has to be stored in Yucca Mountain or elsewhere, I completely agree with the decision to provide loan guarantees for the construction of a dozen new plants. I also think there should be a mandate for the NRC to complete their review in 6 months or less.

BTW, those new perfectly safe Reactors you hear about ????
-OUR LATEST
ONE-THOUSAND GALLON
(1000 gal.)
RADIO-ACTIVE WASTE WATER LEAK
here in
Raleigh, North Carolina
was
was- just- in- this- past- 30 days !!
—-
don’t believe me look up radioactive leak…see what pops up…just since internet days, -forget the earlier century.
Don’t Let them sell you a bill of goods.
JUST as there is no ‘SAFE’ airplane, there will never be a ‘safe’ reactor on the same planet as a human.
THAT’s cause HUMANS are failible (sp.)…just as are the materials the reactor is made of. PERIOD
The Difference is – the consequences of failure.
a terrorist PLANE crash – A couple hundred or a thousands of useless human souls…
vs.
reactor failure…. BILLIONS of years for recovery of the affected territory,
and depending of Locale of Reactor…Like Downtown New York and other metro reactors- 100′s of MILLIONS of people.

Yes of coarse we do so many other country’s are getting cheap dependable nuclear energy I see a lot of comments against nuclear but these people probably have never paid for energy in there lives leave the serious discussions to the adults kid’s

Thanks to the discovery of Thorium, a modern nuclear power plant could be far cleaner than many of you are expecting, and a clear choice for Obama’s clean-nuke panel.

I really don’t know how Obama can sleep at night. Sending more troops to Afghanistan and funding nukes. The people don’t want war and the people don’t want nuclear power plants. Put the $8 billion into natural gas, wind, solar, tidal & geothermal energy. This country needs a revolution. The USA is the most corrupt government in the world. VIVA REVOLUTION

We (the opponents) do not have our head in the sand. Quite the opposite we are looking forward to a clean SAFE means of power generation and Nuclear is not one of those. As I have seen mentioned here in more than one instance we (The USA and everyone else for that matter) have not come up with a way to safely deal with the wast material. the actual generation of the power is not the problem it is the WASTE. Wind does not leave us with toxic waste, Solar does not leave us with toxic waste. Forget Nuclear let it die and we will just have to deal with the waste generated so far but NO MORE Thank you!

Terrible Idea, a Deadley Accident waiting to happen!!!

It’s time to step into the future. Following a post above by Mojo, how many times (and be honest) have we as Americans all said to ourselves, “Why do WE have to be the ‘police’ of the Middle East?” Well, it’s the OIL we are policing.
The sooner this country moves towards an ALTERNATE fuel (and currently, nuclear is technically the most efficient & cost effective), the sooner we will be able to leave all the chaos of the Middle East to the tribesmen, mullahs, & dictators to fight amongst themselves as they have done for since the dawn of time.
PUBLIC OPINION holds the key to this country’s independence from foreign oil. If we were 100% non-reliant on foreign oil, the comments of Hugo Chavez, Ahmadinejad, and Saudi Princes would only be worthy of TMZ.
If we can drive around little remote control robots on Mars on 10 year old technology, there’s no reason we cannot have alternative fuel vehicles. This is why I honestly hope that someday gasoline hits $10/gallon…for only THEN, will the public DEMAND alternative fueled vehicles as a society.

Yes. I agree with Obama. We should be building nuclear plants aggressively. I wish his plan to develop nuclear was more aggressive, but at least it is a start.
Nuclear is the only safe option for generating the mass amounts of electricity that this country will need. We have shot ourselves in the foot big time by becoming so reliant on coal. Coal plants have more radiation emissions to the atmosphere (uranium and thorium) in their exhaust stacks and slag piles than nuclear power, which emits virtually none.
We should get whatever electricity we can from renewables, but we need to get real about the limited role that renewables will play. We are getting to the point where the large land areas that are being consumed by solar plants will eliminate entire species of desert wildlife. Wind turbines kill birds. Solar on rooftops looks hideous. Wind turbines look hideous.
We need to get real and develop nuclear power from fission. That will give us a clean plentiful source of electricity and reduce global warming. It will reduce our dependence on imported oil and it will preserve our natural gas that is being squandered as fuel in power plants. That will also give us the time we need to develop nuclear fusion as a power source.
These things would have long since come to pass if it weren’t for failed government

I don’t want nuclear, too dirty. I prefer coal. A 1 GWhr coal plant only emits 30,000 pounds of mercury directly into the environment. Along with the Mercury, Arsenic, Chromium and lead, you also get Uranium and Thorium. This has the advantage of raising the levels of ionizing radiation detectable in the people living in the smoke shadows of coal fired plants. Coal only kills 12,000 Americans a year due to its micro-particulate pollution, of course that is according to the Bush administration, so we can only assume it is an exaggerated number. The top estimate for the Chernobyl disaster is 4,000 over the lifetime of the accident, under 60 individuals acutely, Coal can clearly do better than this. Coal combustion also leads to a reduction in the pH of rain and the CO2 emitted has started to do the same for the ocean. Nuclear on the other hand gives me the willies. Think of all that waste, in intact fuel assemblies inside of overly engineered casks to be either recycled and used in PRISM reactors or buried deep within concrete, deep within the earth. Now that is dangerous stuff, because I don’t understand it.
Okay, is that the anti-nuke argument? I think so. Thanks for killing the planet with your emotionally charged ignorance.

Yes we need Nuclear as it is the only non carbon system that can produce the large quantities needed with current equipment.
We need to keep studying and using wind But the wind does not alway blow and it takes many hundreds of acres of wind turbines to equal one nuclear power plant that will produce 24 hours aday.
Pleope other countries, France are using Nuclear power with no problems.

No More Nuke Plants until we figure out how to eliminate the long term waste managment. The public will be left holding the bag on these “glow in the dark” sites for how many thousand years? But here is the biggie…how come the news has ignored the Yankee plant releasing tritium into the Connecticut River? I would think this would be major news unless of course it steps on major toes.

Well, if the question is only “Do you want more Nuclear Power?” then the answer is “NO” since that implies the same old Nuclear Power we have had based upon either Enriched Uranium or Heavy Water. If, however, the question is rephrased slightly, “Would you consider any more Nuclear Power?” that question elicits a strong “YES” since the word consider implies that there might be change involved.
The change that is most promising is the change to Thorium based Nuclear Power. You need to look into this!
1) Thorim has negligible waste material and can be used to “consume” some of the waste by-products of Uranium. The waste it produces is also less long lived, less dangerous, and much more managable.
2) Thorium Power in its simplest and most effective form, CANNOT be used to breed Nuclear Weapons grade material. This should be what we offer to IRAN to abandon their Heavy Water AND Enriched Uranium Program (you only need BOTH to make weapons grade material) instead of just engaging in a war of spineless rhetoric. (BTW, I see this as a major obstacle in some sectors of America, since the Nuclear Weapons progam RELIES upon Uranium Based Power — and they want to be able to hide this!)
3) Thorium does not need to be enriched, although it can be, and is MORE plentiful than Uranium.
Check it out! Just google “Thorium” and see what you find! I dare you!
BTW robb’s comments on Feb 17, 2010 12:27:32 AM are my sentiments EXACTLY!!!
;’{P~~~

We should have been building nuclear power plants for the last 30 years. The sooner we get started the better. We should be drilling for more oil and developing new technology to cope with the carbon output from coal. We have a 1000 years of coal reserves available, its cheap and we should be using it. And those that think we don’t need to be using these resources should go freeze in the dark.

I agree with other poster. You mentioned in the story that we could vote in a poll but your site shows nowhere to do this. Your site is hard to follow also. I have over 30 years in the computer biz as well, fyi.
I am pro nuclear with proper clean up and safety. France is 80% nuclear. Think of setting up stations for recharging electric cars, powered by nuclear for pennies. Just imagine…

Does anyone remember Chernobyl or Three Mile Island ???

The risk of contamination from accidents at nuclear plants exceeds benefits. Disposition of nuclear waste is an even greater issue. Nuclear waste will need to be recycled to a harmless material, not stored as hazardous waste deep within the earth and inside mountains. We must not endanger future generations and life on the earth in pursuit of energy at any cost.

Thorium reactors have the potential to supply our energy needs for 1000 years. They also have the potential to burn up our existing nuclear waste stockpiles. We should be utilizing this technology for new reactors since the Navy already built a successful thorium reactor in the late 1960s. We should also be retrofitting existing reactors with the seed and blanket thorium reactor technology. President Obama and Energy Secretary Steven Chu need to do their homework in this area.

I think nuclear power plants is a bad idea. The risk of accidents is not worth the extra energy that more nuclear power plants would produce. If I found out they were building a nuclear power plant close to where I live, I would immediately plan to move far away from that area.

Liquid Fluoride Thorium – not magic bullet.
- Thorium is fertile not fissile: need to wait a month for radioactive Protactinium to radioactively decay to U233, and THEN use it.
- Technically, science is well proven and understood (prototype ran for 5 years in 60′s). And economies of scale are VERY good – and can easily scale from small $100mil to huge power plant.
- No pressure, self moderating, and can run 30 years non-stop (no refuelling outage)
- But its basically a bubbling pot of radioactive actinides.. and people freak out about radiation from smoke detectors – so HUGE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL hurdle.
Its a lot like segregated schools in the south – I’m not sure public is ready for a big 800C hot soup of radioactive salts and actinides. Too many Simpsons stereotypes to overcome.