From: Dr. Blake Nelson (bnelson301@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed Nov 27 2002 - 21:36:30 EST
Not to get into the details of all this, there are
manifold things not taken into account by Glenn's dour
attitude toward fission, including:
1. Improvements in technology for fission reactors
2. Economies of scale, a company like Toshiba, if it
has a fleet of advanced boiling water reactors to
build for a couple of companies can build them pretty
cheap and almost cost-effective in today's cheap
fossil fuel market,
3. The decline of fossil fuels will make nukes more
economically viable as the cost of fossil fuels go up
to reflect the higher cost of fossil fuels,
4. Governments will adopt pro-nuke policies. For
example, in the US the biggest single inhibiting
factor to new nukes (after the fact that fossil fuels
are cheap and building only one nuclear plant is
expensive) is that an unregulated (e.g., can't be
guaranteed to get the costs of construction and
decommissioning included in a regulated base rate)
utility has to put up ALL the decomissioning costs up
front. At hundreds of millions of dollars, you can't
finance that easily, it is a deal breaker.
5. The megawatt plant Glenn assumes is one that has
flopped on the world market as the perfect price point
for inefficiency. Plants will come in two varieties
-- 1,200+ megawatt behemoths, and modular plants with
each modular unit somewhere on the order of 100MW --
both methods will make the plants more cost efficient
to build, operate and maintain.
6. Building and operating new nuke plants will
increase GDP and make money for countless private
businesses and the government. GDP is not a zero sum
game.
I can go on... if you assume the ludicrous convert
tomorrow scenario Glenn postulates and have today's
fixed pie to pay for it, yes, the numbers look bad.
But what will happen is really more akin to the
transition from coal to natural gas, and this is what
would be happening now if it were not for the huge
capital costs of doing a single plant, the cheapness
of fossil fuel and the continued (albeit diminishing)
irrational concern over nuclear plants.
Regards,
Blake
--- Walter Hicks <wallyshoes@mindspring.com> wrote:
> Glenn,
>
> If you do this for fission, how much does this
> improve?
>
> Walt
>
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