From: Jay Willingham (jaywillingham@cfl.rr.com)
Date: Thu Nov 28 2002 - 10:26:55 EST
Excellent thumbnail analysis.
I call the "irrational fear" of nukes the "Godzilla Syndrome".
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
Jay
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dr. Blake Nelson" <bnelson301@yahoo.com>
To: "Walter Hicks" <wallyshoes@mindspring.com>; "Glenn Morton"
<glenn.morton@btinternet.com>
Cc: "Dr. Blake Nelson" <bnelson301@yahoo.com>; <RDehaan237@aol.com>;
<asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, November 27, 2002 9:36 PM
Subject: Re: oil
>
> 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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