We're Way Behind

http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid185.php

"RMI's position on nuclear power is that:

It's too expensive. Nuclear power has proved much more costly than projected - and more to the point, more costly than most other ways of generating or saving electricity. If utilities and governments are serious about markets, rather than propping up pet technologies at the expense of ratepayers, they should pursue the best buys first.

Nuclear power plants are not only expensive, they're also financially extremely risky because of their long lead times, cost overruns, and open-ended liabilities.

Contrary to an argument nuclear apologists have recently taken to making, nuclear power isn't a good way to curb climate change. True, nukes don't produce carbon dioxide - but the power they produce is so expensive that the same money invested in efficiency or even natural-gas-fired power plants would offset much more climate change.

And of course nuclear power poses significant problems of radioactive waste disposal and the proliferation of potential nuclear weapons material. (However, RMI tends to stress the economic arguments foremost because they carry more weight with decision-makers.)"

Governor

At last estimates there is approximately 30K years of uranium supply, between what we have in the ground and what is locked into salt water, very clean but an expensive form of power generation. Yet the truth is our problem with energy is not creating or providing it but transferring the power downstream. Both the embedded technologies and the prime producers have long influenced the problem since they, would have to invests in new technologies and loose some of the revenue stream created by Net Metered technologies.

All the new technology is sitting on the shelf waiting to be funded, built and implemented, but here in lies the problem, with the government spending all of the seed money, giving it to failing banks/financial institutions and then changing the rules on a weekly basis, NO ONE wants to step in and SOLVE the problem.

Since 2000 the technology has been in place, but in 2000 the need to change wasn't great enough; it still isn't. The environmentalist complain about the off shore drilling rigs ruining the landscape-how is 10K 180' high windmills going to effect the Central and Coastal US?

Good Luck;

Terry O'Malley, CEO
TOMA/PMI
800-345-0480

When it comes to nuclear waste it is better to just make less of it.

There is better proven but uncommercialized nuclear technology that would dramatically reduce the amount of nuclear waste produced by nuclear power plants. This improved technology is based on an alternate but more abundant nuclear fuel, Thorium.

It is time for America to make a significant technology shift and invest in upgrading to the best currently available nuclear fission technology that produces significantly less high level nuclear waste, Thorium Molten Salt Reactor technology (TMSR). TMSR reactors produce 1 part in 100 the amount of high level nuclear waste and the radio-toxicity of TMSR waste is only 1 part in 1000 the levels found in current Light Water Reactor waste [1].

We could replace all of the Coal Burning Green House Gas Generating Power Plants in America producing 45% of the nation's electricity with two hundred and eighty 1200 MW Thorium Molten Salt Reactors and generate less high level waste than one conventional 1200 MW Light Water Reactor.

Thorium Molten Salt Reactors are good science. Dr. Edward Teller, the founding director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, wrote his final paper a month before his death on the subject of the advantages of Thorium Molten Salt Reactors.

http://www.geocities.com/rmoir2003/moir_teller.pdf

[1] Le Brun, C., "Impact of the MSBR concept technology on long-lived radio-toxicity and
proliferation resistance", Technical Meeting on Fissile Material Management Strategies for
Sustainable Nuclear Energy, Vienna 2005

http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/04/14/97/PDF/document_IAEA.pdf

I would like to thank Governor OMally for his fine video submission - significant courage in the face of free floating fear.

Since the "used" fuel rods that are being stored at every operating nuclear plant in the US generally have about 90% of their potential energy remaining, it seems to be inane to continue a policy that prohibits reprocessing, particularly since reprocessing is being done by every other country that has nuclear reactors. The argument for not reprocessing simply does not make logical sense, since the US has the tightest controls and security potential, if we chose to do so. We are exposed to the danger of terrorists who could potentially infiltrate the numerous storage sites and create a large radiation footprint without actually moving the material. The sites are not guarded by high level security, but mostly rely on paid guard services who could be easily overrun. Spending billions of dollars to "inter" this potentially valuable fuel defies common sense. It would seem that we have again deferred to emotional, irrational fear, spread by individuals who have made up their minds about the subject without bothering to even consider the alternatives, which has resulted in creating more potential danger by insuring that nothing is done.

Somehow we managed to process nuclear warheads, resulting from the dismantling of obsolete nuclear weapons to usable nuclear fuel; why is there such opposition to reprocessing used nuclear fuel?

Used fuel is already being stored safely. It also can be trasported safely as proven by thousnads of used fuel shipments around the world and for military purposes.

O'Mally is right, "We are way behind"!!!

The United States needs to make a political decision with how to proceed with used fuel. We already know how to store it, reprocess it, and how to use it for medical treatments.

We don't have to live in the dark or melt all the glaciers.. we can simply use nuclear power.

If you don't like nuclear, then you had better read my submission. Quite simply, nuclear energy is the only technology we have that comes remotely close to meeting this challenge.

---Hydroelectric power is low-cost, but cannot be expanded.
---Geothermal power is only available in a few spots, and likewise cannot be expanded.
---Biomass as currently practiced (ethanol or soybean diesel) produces such small gains in net-energy that no amount of farmland could contribute significantly to reducing fossil fuel consumption.
---The average capacity factor for photovoltaic solar in the U.S. is 14%; wind 27%. The fatal flaw is that battery technology is not sufficient to store sporadic and unreliable power coming in off the grid for when it isn't sunny or windy.
---And finally, while the world still has a lot of coal, we have yet to demonstrate large-scale, long-term storage of CO2.

Luckily, we won't have to live in the dark or melt all the glaciers.

What to do with the nuclear waste? When that can be safely stored or used completely up, then I will be all for nuclear energy.

We get enough energy from the sun in one hour to power the earth for a year.

We can do solar for a fraction of it's initial cost, and that price tag keeps dropping. [A $40,000 install is now around $20,000 and in 5 years it will be closer to $5,000]

We don't have the facilities to build the reactor cores, the cost overruns on Nuclear are always huge, and the time to market is 10 years or better.

Solar is faster safer and empowers every individual to become an energy producer.
Nuclear only creates dependency for the many and a profit for a few, we have too much of this model in our economy already.

Power To The People

Actually - for the new unit proposed in Maryland the shareholders are bearing the risk. Maryland is a deregulated market and therefore, ratepayers do not pay to build new generating units. Instead, each power company has to finance the cost and pay for the new generation source.

Gov O'Malley, please don't make taxpayers take on the risk of building a new plant. Nuclear is a mature industry, and shareholders should bear that risk.

Besides, France doesn't have it figured out: http://www.nukefree.org/news/toptentalkingpointsDOEglobalnuclearpartnership

Martin, if nuclear energy is so safe, why aren't we helping North Korea and Iran build their reactors?

We need to be looking at newer, safer, more advanced technologies - like capturing and storing lightning power: http://peswiki.com/energy/Directory:Lightning_Power