Yes WE taxpayers should own all power sources. Why?
Because it is you and me that guarantee construction costs and insurance. Construction costs are famous for their large cost over runs.
Bottom line: It is best for taxpayers and ratepayers to demand termination of all existing coal and nuke plants as both produce radioactive waste and cost billions to replace.
A combination of new energy sources would produce cleaner and more efficient energy. Additionally this combination would not only provide way more jobs throughout the states but also safer employment.
Benefits of a 20 Percent by 2020
National Renewable Electricity Standard
Job Creation - 355,000 new jobs—nearly twice as many as generating electricity from fossil fuels
Economic Development - $72.6 billion in new capital investment, $16.2 billion in income to farmers, ranchers, and rural landowners, and $5.0 billion in new local tax revenues
Consumer Savings - $49 billion in lower electricity and natural gas bills
Healthier Environment - Reductions of global warming pollution equal to taking nearly 71 million cars off the road, plus less haze, smog, acid rain, mercury contamination, and water use
Rebuilding economies:
The Plan:
Renewing America's Economy (2004) | Union of Concerned Scientists
Wind
How Wind Energy Works | Union of Concerned Scientists
Solar
How Solar Energy Works | Union of Concerned Scientists
Bio Mass
How Biomass Energy Works | Union of Concerned Scientists
Geo Thermal
How Geothermal Energy Works | Union of Concerned Scientists
Hydro Power
How Hydrokinetic Energy Works | Union of Concerned Scientists
Ok First, Coal Power plants do not produce Radioactive Waste.
Second the French have perfected ways to re process the spent fuel, and safe systems can be used to store the long term waste. who's danger actually diminishes much faster than most try and say. Spent fuel rods are Radioactive for Thousands of years. But the need to keep them Cooled by water only Persist for a few years not Decades or Centuries.
Safe Responsible Nuclear power is the only power source out there, Green or not, New or old. That can Replace all of our Coal fired power plants and really lower demand for fossil fuels. The Dangers of Nuclear power have been sensationalized by Hollywood and anti Nuke nuts. Even The accidents at 3 Mile Island, Chernobyl and in Japan all have been over stated in magnitude, as far as their actually effect on the earth and threat to peoples health world wide.
When those Reactors were in Danger in Japan, people were acting like it could kill us all or something. The only real high danger was never to anyone further away than 20 miles or so of the place. People act like 3 mile island was terrible yet all the Experts agree nobody got any more Radiation dose than you would from an Xray or 2.
Even Chernobyl was over stated bad as it was for those close to the Area, and that accident was a direct result of shoddy work, and poor safety standards. I still remember watching a total idiot on CNN who was suppose to be an expert actually say it could burn not only all the way to the core of the earth, but through it.
I was like, does he not know about Gravity? Once you fall to the core of the earth, how the hell do you go through it and out the other side with out defying Gravity? lol
Really?
Coal Ash Is More Radioactive than Nuclear Waste: Scientific American
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Strange but True | Energy & Sustainability
Coal Ash Is More Radioactive than Nuclear Waste
By burning away all the pesky carbon and other impurities, coal power plants produce heaps of radiation
By Mara Hvistendahl | December 13, 2007 | 112
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CONCENTRATED RADIATION: By burning coal into ash, power plants concentrate the trace amounts of radioactive elements within the black rock.
Image: ©ISTOCKPHOTO.COM
The popular conception of nuclear power is straight out of The Simpsons: Springfield abounds with signs of radioactivity, from the strange glow surrounding Mr. Burn's nuclear power plant workers to Homer's low sperm count. Then there's the local superhero, Radioactive Man, who fires beams of "nuclear heat" from his eyes. Nuclear power, many people think, is inseparable from a volatile, invariably lime-green, mutant-making radioactivity.
Coal, meanwhile, is believed responsible for a host of more quotidian problems, such as mining accidents, acid rain and greenhouse gas emissions. But it isn't supposed to spawn three-eyed fish like Blinky.
Over the past few decades, however, a series of studies has called these stereotypes into question. Among the surprising conclusions: the waste produced by coal plants is actually more radioactive than that generated by their nuclear counterparts. In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy. * [See Editor's Note at end of page 2]
At issue is coal's content of uranium and thorium, both radioactive elements. They occur in such trace amounts in natural, or "whole," coal that they aren't a problem. But when coal is burned into fly ash, uranium and thorium are concentrated at up to 10 times their original levels.
Fly ash uranium sometimes leaches into the soil and water surrounding a coal plant, affecting cropland and, in turn, food. People living within a "stack shadow"—the area within a half- to one-mile (0.8- to 1.6-kilometer) radius of a coal plant's smokestacks—might then ingest small amounts of radiation. Fly ash is also disposed of in landfills and abandoned mines and quarries, posing a potential risk to people living around those areas.
In a 1978 paper for Science, J. P. McBride at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and his colleagues looked at the uranium and thorium content of fly ash from coal-fired power plants in Tennessee and Alabama. To answer the question of just how harmful leaching could be, the scientists estimated radiation exposure around the coal plants and compared it with exposure levels around boiling-water reactor and pressurized-water nuclear power plants.
The result: estimated radiation doses ingested by people living near the coal plants were equal to or higher than doses for people living around the nuclear facilities. At one extreme, the scientists estimated fly ash radiation in individuals' bones at around 18 millirems (thousandths of a rem, a unit for measuring doses of ionizing radiation) a year. Doses for the two nuclear plants, by contrast, ranged from between three and six millirems for the same period.
And when all food was grown in the area, radiation doses were 50 to 200 percent higher around the coal plants.
