How many

[Mr.Fitnah]

Have we even decided on a waste storage site?

Personally I think they should all be required by law to be within 1 mile of a state capitol, that way we know they would be safe.

What do you think they dew with it now?
They make Mountain Dew.

Bull! I check every can I drink with a Geiger Counter.

You havent had a fresh set of coppertops in 20 years.

 

[Mr.Fitnah]

National parks are fed lands. Let's build one in each park.

Road widening more parking + 1

 

[uscitizen]

Why not use Detroit?

 

[elvis]

Why not use Detroit?

Hey, I like Detroit.

 

[uscitizen]

Why not use Detroit?

Hey, I like Detroit.

Ohh? so sorry.

 

[daveman]

And like most other actions of this Administration, it hasn't been transparent as questions are raised about the loans.

U.S. taxpayers are being denied timely access to information that could be used to assess the risk to their pocketbooks posed by the controversial $8.33 billion federal loan guarantee for two proposed nuclear reactors at Southern Company’s Plant Vogtle in Georgia, according to a lawsuit filed yesterday by the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE). Despite the fact that the President announced the Vogtle taxpayer-financed loan guarantee on February 16, 2010 amid much fanfare, all meaningful details of the deal have remained shrouded in secrecy.

--

Stephen Smith, executive director, Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, said: “This is too large a sum of taxpayer's money, being spent on too risky a project for there to be this much cover-up and secrecy. This is the first award of what could be tens of billions of dollars more in new federal subsidies for the nuclear industry – setting the precedent of hiding the financial ball from the public in round one is a bad start. We need openness and transparency. Obama's Department of Energy, Southern Company and the public power companies which are part of this cover-up need to set the record straight and tell the truth about what is going on here; that they are socializing the risk and privatizing the profits for big power companies."

--

The March 25, 2010 SACE FOIA request covered such items as: the Southern Company loan guarantee; related correspondence between DOE and Southern Nuclear Operating Company, Georgia Power Company, Oglethorpe Power Corporation, Municipal Authority of Georgia, and the City of Dalton, Georgia; environmental review records related to the loan guarantee request; any credit analysis conducted by DOE in relation to the loan guarantee; all records related to the general terms and conditions of the loan guarantee; and all records related to issuance of the loan guarantee.

Of the seven areas addressed in the SACE FOIA request, DOE has failed entirely to respond to five items. DOE’s partial response to two items in the request yielded only five responsive documents, months after the FOIA deadline. Most documents responsive to SACE’s request remain hidden from public view. Even where the tardy responses were provided, the documents were so highly redacted as to make them largely or entirely meaningless.​

 

[saveliberty]

I think you guys are overlooking a few things.

Consider the number of saved/created nuclear plants.

Pray the government doesn't start any of them. Energy companies should.

Imagine the infighting of liberals and environmentalists if they actually tried to start a plant.

 

[Mr Natural]

Texas is mostly barren wasteland.

Dump it there.

 

[Vanquish]

Why don't we shoot all the nuclear waste out into space? Heck, go one better...shoot it out into space then detonate an atomic bomb to disintegrate it.

 

[saveliberty]

Can't do anything with until Congress decides. Just mail it to DC.

Not in Diet Mountain Dew either. I'd be glowing by now for sure.

 

[Samson]

Have we even decided on a waste storage site?.

I thought this was why God made A-stan and Iraq.

 

[daveman]

Why don't we shoot all the nuclear waste out into space? Heck, go one better...shoot it out into space then detonate an atomic bomb to disintegrate it.

Because it doesn't work like that.

Space launches are still not 100% guaranteed successful. Launching a load of nuclear waste into space brings with it the chance that the launch vehicle will fail. Bad news for anyone living in its path.

Detonating an atomic bomb in nuclear waste will not destroy it -- it will just scatter it over a large volume, AND make it even more radioactive.

 

[Vanquish]

Interesting info. Thanks for that. So why don't we work on getting space launches to 100% success rating? Beats contaminating the Earth. What's the current success rating? Are they mostly launch failures or propulsion problems? (If it's launch failures, just relaunch)

 

[saveliberty]

Not sure how detonating nuclear material makes it more radioactive. It certainly does not effect its half-life at all.

You only need one Challenger to spread radioactivity over an area and make it a problem for 100s of years.

 

[editec]

Per usual when this subject comes up, I'll point out that the biggest obstacle to building nuke plants is STILL insurance against catastropic disaster.

The MARKET is a bigger obstacle than politics, folks.

Now we could change that dynamic by giving businesses that want to build those things still more protection from being sued than they already have, but seriously...do we really want to do that?

Do we really want to hold a nuclear power plant company free from all potential consquences if one of their plants goes China?

I think that would be a very bad idea.

It would create an enormous moral hazard to do that.

 

[Bill O'Olberman]

Instead of blowing it up or shooting it into space, why dont we just recycle the spent nuclear fuel? Processing of Used Nuclear Fuel I mean, there are the obvious challenge of reversing policy and nuclear proliferation concern but it sounds like a better alternative.

 

[daveman]

Interesting info. Thanks for that. So why don't we work on getting space launches to 100% success rating? Beats contaminating the Earth. What's the current success rating? Are they mostly launch failures or propulsion problems? (If it's launch failures, just relaunch)

I don't know the stats. But think of the horrific damage a catastrophic launch failure, at any point in the vehicle's course from launch pad to orbit insertion, would do to the environment.

Plus, the sheer cost of space launches. Most of the weight of a used-reactor fuel cannister is shielding, not the waste itself.

What the US needs to do is reprocess waste fuel like Europe does. France has been doing it for decades.

 

[daveman]

Not sure how detonating nuclear material makes it more radioactive. It certainly does not effect its half-life at all.

Think about it: You have a pile of nuclear material that's suddenly bombarded with more radiation from an even more radioactive material: plutonium.

You only need one Challenger to spread radioactivity over an area and make it a problem for 100s of years.

Yup. Bad idea all around.

 

[Bill O'Olberman]

Have we even decided on a waste storage site?.

I thought this was why God made A-stan and Iraq.

Let me get this one straight? You want to bring nuclear materials that can be processed into weapons grade nuclear materials into the Middle East and deposit them in two countries directly adjacent to Iran? Great idea. You must be one of the freshman republican members of congress.

 

[Mr.Fitnah]

Instead of blowing it up or shooting it into space, why dont we just recycle the spent nuclear fuel? Processing of Used Nuclear Fuel I mean, there are the obvious challenge of reversing policy and nuclear proliferation concern but it sounds like a better alternative.

Can do that . Then the anti nuke crowd wont have a leg to stand one and cheap clean energy will be available.