AG Lynch Testifies: Justice Dept. Has ‘Discussed’ Civil Legal Action Against Climate Change Deniers

[Skull Pilot]

Its not even debatable anymore that wind and solar will forever be a fantasy of the left......they've been touting both for 20 years and its still a joke. Will be for decades too......

I am no nuclear advocate though that's for sure........the devastation from Fukishima will be effecting us all for years to come.

What devastation?

Don't confuse tsunami damage with the plant failure

Background radiation in the surrounding areas is no higher than anywhere else in the world and is even lower than many places. You would get more radiation exposure on a cross country flight than you would standing 2 kn away from the fukishima reactor site

 

[Skull Pilot]

Except no one has built a fourth generation nuke. And there is a good chance that no one will. Economics will decide that, and right now, economics favor renewables.

Actually we did build an integral fast reactor in the 1990s and it was tested under a complete power failure exactly like what happened to Fukishima and guess what it shut itself down

Then the exact conditions of Three Mile Island were recreated and guess what the reactor shut itself down

The entire reactor site was self sufficient recycles its own spent waste and could do so for years and years

But idiots like Clinton and Kerry shut it down

 

[Old Rocks]

Its not even debatable anymore that wind and solar will forever be a fantasy of the left......they've been touting both for 20 years and its still a joke. Will be for decades too......

I am no nuclear advocate though that's for sure........the devastation from Fukishima will be effecting us all for years to come.

Really?
Solar Industry Facts and Figures

Download the Q2 2015 Solar Market Insight Fact Sheet

The U.S. solar industry continued on its record-breaking trajectory in Q2 2015 with 1,393 megawatts (MW) of installed solar capacity, making this the largest Q2 in history. As has been the case over the last 18 months, the residential and utility-scale markets led the way, installed 463 and 729 MW, respectively.

Through the first half of the year, the solar industry has supplied 40% of all new 2015 elecric generating capacity - more than any other energy technology. With more than 5,000 MW of installed solar capacity projected over the second half of 2015, the U.S. solar industry is expected to reach nearly 8,000 MW for the year, and 28,000 MW in total.

Other key takeaways:

• There are now over 22,700 MW of cumulative solar electric capacity operating in the U.S., enough to power more than 4.6 million average American homes.
• With over 135,000 installations in the first half of 2015, nearly 784,000 U.S. homes and businesses have now gone solar and a new solar project was installed every 2 minutes.
• Growth in Q2 was led by the utility-scale sector, which posted its largest quarter of the year at 729 MW, and the residential sector, which grew 70% over last year to install 473 MW and will likely surpass its 2014 total in Q3.
• Since the implementation of the ITC in 2006, the cost to install solar has dropped by more than 73%.
• While residential costs have dropped by 45% since 2010, utility-scale costs have dropped more significantly, with recent contracts at prices below $0.05/kWh.

 

[Skull Pilot]

Its not even debatable anymore that wind and solar will forever be a fantasy of the left......they've been touting both for 20 years and its still a joke. Will be for decades too......

I am no nuclear advocate though that's for sure........the devastation from Fukishima will be effecting us all for years to come.

Really?
Solar Industry Facts and Figures

Download the Q2 2015 Solar Market Insight Fact Sheet

The U.S. solar industry continued on its record-breaking trajectory in Q2 2015 with 1,393 megawatts (MW) of installed solar capacity, making this the largest Q2 in history. As has been the case over the last 18 months, the residential and utility-scale markets led the way, installed 463 and 729 MW, respectively.

Through the first half of the year, the solar industry has supplied 40% of all new 2015 elecric generating capacity - more than any other energy technology. With more than 5,000 MW of installed solar capacity projected over the second half of 2015, the U.S. solar industry is expected to reach nearly 8,000 MW for the year, and 28,000 MW in total.

Other key takeaways:

• There are now over 22,700 MW of cumulative solar electric capacity operating in the U.S., enough to power more than 4.6 million average American homes.
• With over 135,000 installations in the first half of 2015, nearly 784,000 U.S. homes and businesses have now gone solar and a new solar project was installed every 2 minutes.
• Growth in Q2 was led by the utility-scale sector, which posted its largest quarter of the year at 729 MW, and the residential sector, which grew 70% over last year to install 473 MW and will likely surpass its 2014 total in Q3.
• Since the implementation of the ITC in 2006, the cost to install solar has dropped by more than 73%.
• While residential costs have dropped by 45% since 2010, utility-scale costs have dropped more significantly, with recent contracts at prices below $0.05/kWh.

Installed capacity NEVER equals actual output

 

[Skull Pilot]

Top 10 reasons nuclear power will be the key to America's energy future

By Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) - 09/23/10 01:23 AM EDT

The prevailing “wisdom” on America’s energy future is leading us down the wrong path. Renewable electricity sounds good, but with current technology, it means higher energy prices and less-reliable electricity. America invented the best answer to our energy needs: nuclear power. Here are ten reasons why nuclear is the key to America’s clean, reliable, low-cost energy future:

1. Zero Emissions: Nuclear power produces 20 percent of America’s electricity and 70 percent of our carbon-free electricity today. In contrast, wind and solar power provide only 2 percent of our electricity and only 6 percent of our carbon-free electricity. Nuclear also produces none of the air pollution that comes from burning fossil fuels.
2. Reliable: America’s nuclear reactors operate 90 percent of the time, making nuclear our most reliable source of electricity. Renewable energy is intermittent, with power available only when the wind blows or the sun shines — about a third of the time. It’s hard to imagine a strong economy that can run its computers, factories and air conditioning only one-third of the time.

3. Low cost: The National Academy of Sciences says nuclear can produce electricity at or below the cost of wind, solar or coal with carbon capture. Renewable sources seem cheap only because they are subsidized with billions in government money and because they have not yet been built to scale. At current rates, taxpayers would have to shell out $170 billion to subsidize the 186,000 wind turbines necessary to equal the output of 100 reactors.

4. Land Conservation: Renewable sources create what the Nature Conservancy is calling “energy sprawl.” They consume staggering amounts of land. An unbroken line of 50-story wind turbines along the 2,178-mile Appalachian Trail would produce no more electricity than four nuclear reactors on four square miles.

5. Fewer new transmission lines: Nuclear power’s tremendous energy density not only produces a small footprint but means reactors can be located where they are needed. And new small modular reactors being developed today could easily power the electricity needs of a small town. Producing 20 percent of America’s electricity from wind would require 19,000 miles of new transmission lines through backyards and scenic landscapes.

6. Jobs: Much has been made of “green jobs” created by renewable energy, yet, according to an American University study, 80 percent of the $2 billion in renewable subsidies from the “stimulus” package went to overseas manufacturers. More red, white and blue jobs will be created by low-cost, reliable nuclear power than by high-cost, intermittent power from renewables.

7. Reducing nuclear arms: In 1996, America pioneered a remarkable deal with the post-
Soviet government to buy uranium from old Soviet bomb stocks. For the last two decades, old Soviet weapons material has supplied half our nuclear fuel. As a result, one in 10 light bulbs in America is now powered by a former Soviet weapon.

8. International competitiveness: France gets 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear and has among the lowest electricity rates and carbon emissions in Western Europe. Russia is using nuclear to replace natural gas, which it can sell to Europe at six times the price. There are 55 reactors under construction around the world — none in the United States. Are we the only country that doesn’t recognize the value of low-cost, reliable energy?

9. Safety: While we have recently experienced a coal mine tragedy, a devastating oil spill and the deadly explosion of a natural-gas pipeline, there has never been a death from a nuclear accident at an American commercial reactor. There has never been a nuclear-related death aboard an American nuclear Navy vessel, either. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration reports that working in the nuclear industry is safer than working in the finance, insurance and real estate sectors.

10. Public Support: According to a Gallup poll in March 2010, 62 percent of Americans favor nuclear power — an all-time high. In communities that already have reactors, support runs even higher.


And I thought you said all republicans are anti science

 

[Old Rocks]

They still don't know where or how deep the reactor cores at Fukushima are.

Fukushima 2016 « nuclear-news

Reuters, Mar 11, 2016 (emphasis added): Today, the radiation at the Fukushima plant is still so powerful it has proven impossible to get into its bowels to find and remove the extremely dangerous blobs of melted fuel rods, weighing hundreds of tonnes… The fuel rods melted through their containment vessels in the reactors, and no one knows exactly where they are now… Tepco has been developing robots [to] negotiate obstacles in damaged tunnels and piping to search for the melted fuel rods.

Reuters, Mar 9, 2016: Five years on, melted fuel rods still spew radiation…

DW, Mar 11, 2016: The melted nuclear fuel and the destroyed pressure vessel in the nuclear reactors 1 to 3 continue to be major problems… “So far, nobody knows what exactly happened in there and how to solve it,” [Heinz Smital, a nuclear physicist] told DW. “Until now, there is no solution to recover the melted fuel rods from the reactors.”

News Corp Australia, Mar 11, 2016: Today, the radiation at the Fukushima plant is still so powerful it is impossible to extract and remove deadly melted fuel rods… [Tepco is] grappling with the fact that they don’t have the technology to find missing melted fuel rodsin three reactors at the plant. The rods melted through containment vessels in the reactors.

Guardian, Mar 11, 2016: [It’s] the most daunting task the nuclear industry has ever faced: removing hundreds of tons of melted fuel from the plant’s stricken reactors… something no nuclear operator has ever attempted… Of greatest concern, though, is reactor 1, where the fuel may have burned through the pressure vessel, fallen to the bottom of the containment vessel and into the concrete pedestal below – perhaps even outside it – according to a report by the International Research Institute for Nuclear Decommissioning… Masuda and Tepco engineers who spoke to the Guardian conceded that they still didn’t know where the fuel is located. “To be honest, we don’t know exactly where the fuel is”… Masuda said… “No one has ever done what we’re doing”…

PBS Newshour, Mar 11, 2016 (at 35:15 in):

• Miles O’Brien, PBS correspondent: What about the melted fuel in the reactor cores? They aren’t even sure where it all is.
• Lake Barrett, Tepco advisor: Is it in one big vertical lump on the floor underneath it? Or did it come down and flow like lava in a volcano and move out to the sides? We don’t know yet… Nothing of this magnitude [i.e. the attempt to remove Fukushima’s melted fuel] has ever been done by mankind…

Interview with nuclear engineer Hiroaki Koide (translation by Prof. Robert Stolz, transcription by Akiko Anson), published Mar 8, 2016: We simply do not know where the core is or in what state it is… [The government and TEPCO] are convinced that the melted core fell through the bottom of the pressure vessel and now lie at the bottom of the containment vessel―basically piling up like nuggets of the melted core [See Lake Barrett’s statement above]. There’s no way this would be the case. (Laughs)… It should have been scattered all over the place… Though the containment vessel is made of steel, if the melted core has come in contact with that steel, just as it ate through the floor of the pressure vessel, it could possibly have melted through the containment vessel… There are situations in which the containment vessel can suffer a melt-through. I think this likely has already happened.

 

[Old Rocks]

Top reason it won't.

 

[Skull Pilot]

Top reason it won't.

Of course it matters not to you fear mongers that the LWR design is outdated and that in the US a Fukishima type accident is most improbable and all you really said is they don't know the state of the core or if it indeed poses any danger at all to the public

Certainly radiation levels just 2 km away from the site are well within normal ranges.

The facts are there has never been a death in the USA attributed to any nuclear mishap
The nuclear power we do produce has saved more people from early deaths due to fossil fuel pollution than have died as a result of all nuclear power the world over
Half of our nuclear power is provided by Russian nuclear warheads which we purchased
All the nuclear waste we have produced even with the horrible design of our LWRs would fit within a single football field and over 95% of that can be reused in next generation reactors

 

[Old Rocks]

Benchmarks: Three men die in nuclear reactor meltdown | EARTH Magazine

January 3, 1961
Of the hundreds of thousands of caskets buried in Arlington National Cemetery, only one is lined with lead to prevent the body from leaking radiation. It holds the radioactive remains of Richard Leroy McKinley, one of three men killed when a nuclear reactor exploded in the nation’s only fatal nuclear accident.

The disaster occurred one frigid night in 1961, on a remote patch of desert about 65 kilometers east of Idaho Falls at what is now known as Idaho National Laboratory. The reactor, called SL-1, was part of a prototype nuclear plant designed for the military. The Army envisioned using nuclear power to fuel some of its far-flung radar stations, so engineers designed the plant to be easy to operate, easy to transport and easy to assemble.

The reactor, housed inside a large steel silo, was powered by uranium-enriched fuel plates. These plates sustained a nuclear chain reaction, which produced enough heat to turn water into steam, thereby generating electricity. The plant operators could control the reaction by raising or lowering the reactor’s five control rods. When lowered between the plates, the control rods absorbed enough neutrons to stop the chain reaction.

Research before bloviating.

 

[Skull Pilot]

Benchmarks: Three men die in nuclear reactor meltdown | EARTH Magazine

January 3, 1961
Of the hundreds of thousands of caskets buried in Arlington National Cemetery, only one is lined with lead to prevent the body from leaking radiation. It holds the radioactive remains of Richard Leroy McKinley, one of three men killed when a nuclear reactor exploded in the nation’s only fatal nuclear accident.

The disaster occurred one frigid night in 1961, on a remote patch of desert about 65 kilometers east of Idaho Falls at what is now known as Idaho National Laboratory. The reactor, called SL-1, was part of a prototype nuclear plant designed for the military. The Army envisioned using nuclear power to fuel some of its far-flung radar stations, so engineers designed the plant to be easy to operate, easy to transport and easy to assemble.

The reactor, housed inside a large steel silo, was powered by uranium-enriched fuel plates. These plates sustained a nuclear chain reaction, which produced enough heat to turn water into steam, thereby generating electricity. The plant operators could control the reaction by raising or lowering the reactor’s five control rods. When lowered between the plates, the control rods absorbed enough neutrons to stop the chain reaction.

Research before bloviating.

Military

Says it all

Since when does military reactor research equate to civilian power use?