Iran + Nuclear Plants = Good Deal For US

It all depends on which dictator will kiss our ass. The Shah did, the current one will not.

#2,
We have already done Options 1 through 3, so we’re half way to number 6

Anyone who thinks Iran’s ultimate objective is nuclear power and nothing more is a fool. Iran wants the bomb so bad they can taste it.

They always want to build the most dangerous, least costly, easiest to meltdown, nuclear power plants. And never that Helium cooled, ball fuel pellet design. That can’t meltdown or explode. They proved it works. But it doesn’t pump out the wattage, they’d like to get. So they’ll take their chances with sticky safety values and overtemp relays. And hope another Three Mile Island or Chernobyl doesn’t happen.

I say, “Ok, you can build them, IF you can design them to be 100% safe.” and “Come up with some practical disposal method or site for spent fuel.” So far they’ve failed to do either. But they’ve exploited (maybe even funded) this whole global warming scare to promote nuclear over coal. Probably because the “wrong people” own the coal mines. With the reduction in its use in warheads, the ore’s investors are just hoping for a peacetime use to rocket its price up. Since most of it comes from Canada and Australia, I’m betting Rupert Murdock owns a chunk of the uranium mining.

Now Israel IS a problem… It’s a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t…” kinda thing.

#10 – me,

Damn! List tags don’t work. Each of the sentences was supposed to get a bullet point. Sorry if it just looks choppy now.
[Fixed -- ed.]

#12 – CarbonSasquatch,

Progress of that form is the definition of unsustainable. People need to start thinking in thousands and millions of years if we are to become a long lived species. Horseshoe crabs have been around for 400,000,000 years. Humans have been around for 200,000 years. And, we’ve had agriculture for only about 13,000 years. We’ve already got a number of unsolved problems that can kill our species in the very near future.

You’re up to thinking in terms of weeks or months. Want to try for decades and work your way up from there?

Is this the best simile you could come up with? what, no time or brain fart?

#13 MS

Where do you get this stuff?

You and Mr. Fusion must have taken the same class – How to rewrite history 101.

#10 I have spent my career (30 years +) in the electric power-industry fossil and nuke.
I haven’t the time at the moment to vet your sources but let me say that in the US, thanks to Jimmy Carter, the fuel reprocessing facility to be built in the US was canceled in the late 70′s. There is a significant amount of fuel remaining in the fuel rods when they are changed out on approx. 18 month cycles form the reactor.
The idea of fuel reprocessing is to reclaim this unspent uranium, enrich it and ship it back to the Utility. The Utilities currently store the spent fuel in their fuel pools having no way to reprocess it or any approved off site storage facility for this high level irradiated fuel. These pools were initially envisioned for temporary storage of irradiated fuel, tools and hot reactor parts and not long term storage as they are presently being used.
We’ve got an awful lot of this spent fuel accumulating in pools that needs to be stored some place for the long term like Yucca mountain as a consequence of our inability to reprocess.
The French, which get more than 70% of their electricity from nukes has been reprocessing for years.
The answer to our energy problems for the near term should include a number of different energy sources, green, fossil, AND nuke.
Nuke plants can be built and brought on line in about 5 years thanks to off the shelf designs.
Utilities and not the government pay to build these plants and and when a Utility is determining their cost to build, operate and maintain these units life cycle costs do include decommissioning.

What evidence can anyone put forth that Iran is developing nuclear weapons?

From memory==they have bought equipment that can be used for nothing else but the development of nuke energy.

From memory==their nuke facilities don’t have any relationship to their electrical power distribution grid.

From memory==that nuke expert guy from India met with Iranian scientists several times?

From recent news==they are threatening to wipe Israel off the map and they haven’t bought any brooms or rags?

Oh–they refuse UN inspectors access?

“So I guess the question really is, noam, why do you think Iran is telling the truth?”

Because there’s NO evidence that they they’re lying about it, that they’re actually developing them.
It they are, show me some good evidence.
Suspecting that they are and providing evidence are two entirely different things.
No one yet has come up with evidence.
It’s very “in” these days to demonize Iran because it refuses to bow down to the US/Israel, the two REAL threats to humanity and world peace.

Plenty of evidence at the IAEA site at the UN. But it sounds like you’re too much on the anti-Israel/US bandwagon to see the light.

By the way, if Iran really wishes not to be scrutinized, they should probably avoid comments like “Israel should be wiped from the map.”

It’s been their open, abject hate of Israel that has brought this microscope down upon them.

You’re in poor company, naom.

#18 Imagine that, a left wing nut who defends his radical muslim brothers. Who knew!

#22 My thoughts exactly.

#26. Wiped from the pages of history is a meaningless phrase. Statements and actions by Iran, Syria, Egypt etc.. in the past has shown that their idea of “wiped” is more like what Rome did to Carthage than what the west did to the USSR.

Sorry, but the issue of SUPPOSED Iranian nuclear weapons development is really just a pretext for US geopolitical control of Iran and control of its oil, nothing more.

Bobbo: Good point! My intent was not to lead anyone to believe that reprocessing would mitigate the need to dispose of radioactive waste but to reduce same through reprocessing and enrichment. I believe near term we must be opened minded to a variety of energy sources and nukes work great for large base load plants and should form an integral part of our energy strategy going forward. Nuclear energy is not a panacea and therefore does have drawbacks like many other energy sources.

#24 Bobbo: “Tried to avoid biased sites like greenpeace.”

Depends what you mean by biased. Many Greenpeacers favor nuclear energy as the best current solution for large scale electricity production.

#19 Don’t worry, Scott has no engineering background. He’s just a nuc chicken little. He only favours high kw/hr priced, non-base power generation technologies.

#19 – Specul8,

You are indeed correct in your statement that reprocessing reduces the amount of waste. The French have been doing this for many years.

However, even France has not yet properly and permanently disposed of a single gram of the waste that they do indeed still produce.

Here’s the link to the article supporting that claim.

http://www.physorg.com/news119978134.html

#37 – Paddy-O-Furniture,

#19 Don’t worry, Scott has no engineering background. He’s just a nuc chicken little. He only favours high kw/hr priced, non-base power generation technologies.

I am indeed not a nuclear engineer. However, if you had actually clicked through to some of the links, you would have seen that there is no power source more expensive than nuclear power. Remember to calculate the full cost of the plant, the full cost of decommissioning the plant at its end of useful life, and the cost of the fissionable material, and the cost of waste disposal.

Two of these costs are still only building and can only be estimated as we have not yet disposed of any nuclear waste nor decommissioned any power plants.

As for costs in human health from mining uranium, they can and should be calculated as well. As for costs to maintain security at the plants and disposal sites, who knows? Our current security is not up to the task. Neither is France’s.

Guess I’m just Chicken Little saying we have cheaper, safer, cleaner energy sources we can focus on.

#30–UD==thanks for revealing the code. – - – No==still too far removed for me. I think you are tripping.

I don’t think our selling nuke technology to Iran in the 70′s has ANYTHING to do with their current nuke plans. Do you?

More like sloppy word association in a drug induced miasma of faulty links than any cogent linking of cause and effect. So you think history is direct and lineal rather than chaotic and impossibly complex huh? Good to know.

And no nuclear power plants opened in the US since then. Of course they thought the oil was running out. The dollar collapse then led prices higher, causing various doomsday folks to say the world is ending. Since then oil reserves have increased.

Yeah a technology that constitutes 20% of US power generation is a waste and not worth pursuing. Better we should switch to various technologies that constitute 1% of usage.

Even if Iran had a nuke, do you George Bush fan boys really think they are crazy enough to commit suicide by attacking Israel or the US. Only one US Sub sitting off the coast of Iran would be needed to wipe them off the map. The Iranians are fully aware of this. All this despite the fact that Iran has never attacked of threatened any country in more then 200 years. By contrast, it’s the US and Israel that have committed unlawful acts of aggression. It’s the US and Israel that have the nukes and are ready and willing use them against Iran on very speculative grounds that they think Iran has a “nuclear weapons program”. This is the same Bush thinking that got you bogged down in Iraq. With all the lies the Bush regime has told you in the last eight years, you’d think you’d of wised up. I guess not.

#45–Mike==where are your “values?” Nuke power might be 20% of power source but if we build more of them, then their usage will go up!! Why not spend the same amount of money on renewables that don’t create 100% of the non-disposable 100K year poison known as nuclear waste?

Why give terrorists a big huge target? Decentralized power production and storage makes so much more sense==I’m surprised at your anti-American willingness to expose ourselves to the enemy.

It’s ironic that the majority of Iran’s citizens would be comfortable with closer ties to the West. The radical form of Islam promoted by the government runs counter to Shia/Persian style of thinking in most of the country.

That’s where the opening is.

#52–UD==I think Paris Hilton summarized a good approach in her most recent ad for her Presidential run. I hope no one dashes her dreams. She’s Hot.

#48 The hostage crisis was aggressive.

On the war, Iraq tried to take advantage of a disbanded military following the Islamic revolution. In 1980 Iraq invaded Iran at Khuzestan to start the war.

The Iranians tried to push radical Shia Islam into Iraq during the war once they had driven the Iraqi army out. During the conflict Iran lost between 1/2 a million and 1 million including ~100,000 to chemical weapons. The US was supplying weapons to Iraq at the time or else they would have lost. Also the US was still pissed about hostage crisis.

It’s ironic that Iran hated Carter nearly as much as Repulicans. The wouldn’t release the hostages until Reagan was sworn in.

#57 Dead on. Which goes back to Mr Dvorak’s original point of the post.

If the US, and France, and Russia, and China, and England can all get their acts together and quit meddling in this stupid region then things will eventually sort themselves out.

Over 50 years of social engineering hasn’t worked yet and it’s not going to now. It’s like teenagers – you gotta treat them like adults with respect and give them real responsibility, eventually it works but you gotta be patient.

#57: John didn’t post this, I did.

#60–Mike==what color is the sky in your world?

#47 You forgot that little war with Iraq, but who cares.

#48 Beat me to it.

Anyone who thinks that Iran would build a nuke and then launch one against another country is kinda dense. If they want to build one it is to have it be delivered “anonymously” via a terrorist group.

Unless it could be ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY, be proven that they were the source, Iran would be safe from retaliation. The nut job religious types who actually hold power may think they could pull that off.

#66 “But, even concentrated solar and photovoltaics are now a bit cheaper than nuclear power and much faster and cheaper to build.”

Umm, no. Especially if you get rid of the needless bureaucracy that adds cost.

There is no large scale solar plant supplying base
energy that is cheaper or as cheap as a modern nuc facility.

#68 I have hopes for many things. Hope doesn’t power a large industrialized economy though…

#67 – Paddy,

Do you actually think that the bureaucracy involved in solar power is worse than the NRC??!!?

This table is a bit outdated and shows solar as a tad more expensive than nuclear, but not much.

http://tinyurl.com/5ujbhk

This article, which is also a bit dated at 2006, already shows solar as less expensive than nuclear.

http://www.doe.gov/news/4503.htm

And, remember, most numbers for nuclear power will not include the cost of health care for the uranium miners, the cost of waste disposal (still unknown since no one has ever disposed of nuclear waste), or the cost of decommissioning the plant at its end of life.

These are very expensive to ignore.

#72 – Paddy-O,

A mix of sources and storage techniques will give us base power.

This is not going to happen overnight, so to speak. We are speaking about an energy strategy. At present, solar is great because it provides its peak power right when we need it most, when everyone is cranking up their A/C.

Those peak kilowatt hours are also the most expensive, as they often involve powering up plants that were offline, a very inefficient and expensive thing. So, for now, the cost of solar should not be compared to base load costs. It should be compared to peak load costs. At such times, solar is already very cost effective.

Paddy-O,

Way to keep the big picture and transitions in mind. Keep up the good work. Let me know how long you think it will take to get a new nuclear plant up and running (hint, think 10 years or more) then try to figure out how much solar could have been built and at what price by then versus the cost of the nuclear plant that will first begin returning a small amount of power during testing. Then take the ever declining costs of solar as technology improves into account.

I think you’re horribly deluded.

#75 “I think you’re horribly deluded.”

Go get an engineering degree then give me a call.
You didn’t even know you had to take into account base power generation, double power conversion efficiency loss, etc. Deluded? Look in the mirror. LOL

Actually Paddy-O,

Why the hangup on base load anyway? We’ve got more than enough for base load with conventional power already. If we start adding wind and solar into the mix we can take some of the base-load generators offline.

We can also, as I pointed out above, use solar to heat water and store it in large tanks, which is very efficient as anyone who has ever used a thermos knows. Then we can pipe that hot water into conventional plants, thus getting today’s power, base load power, from conventional sources for a fraction of the fuel, whatever that fuel may be. The conventional power will only have to heat the water the last few degrees to boiling to make the steam.

That, by the way, would reduce our fuel use tremendously with very cheap and proven solar technology today.

But back to base load. Generally, when it’s sunny, it’s not so windy, and vice versa, on any given day. So a mix of wind and solar would greatly reduce the variability of either technology on its own.

And again, solar is great because it really does provide the peak power output exactly when it is both needed and most expensive from any other source. Starting up a coal or gas power plant is not efficient at all. But, right when we’d need to, there’s solar producing peak power output. It’s a beautiful thing.

Remember, there is a transitional time. You can’t expect to replace all of the power plants in the country overnight. And, certainly not with nuclear. You can’t even replace one with nuclear in under 10 years.

Scott, if solar is so viable, then why are all these countries known for scorching desert heat, India, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq in the 80s trying for nuclear power? Why aren’t they going for more solar power plants?

How is oil used for power generation?

Yes, but what happens when someday we don’t have any more oil?

#81 – MikeN,

Scott, if solar is so viable, then why are all these countries known for scorching desert heat, India, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq in the 80s trying for nuclear power? Why aren’t they going for more solar power plants?

I didn’t say it had been viable in the 80s. I said it is viable now. Lots of changes have happened in the last 25 years.

Sometimes developing nations are a tad behind the developed world. So, India may be a bit behind Portugal. But, here’s a company 100% devoted to solar power in India.

http://www.tatabpsolar.com/

Here’s what Portugal, a very sunny country has done already.

http://www.azobuild.com/news.asp?newsID=2279

The other three on your list have no interest in renewables. They are interested in nuclear power because from it they can make nuclear weapons. It really is genuinely true that these countries want to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth. They also have no love for the U.S. Don’t be too fooled by the fact that Bush is in bed with the Saudis. Remember that Osama bin Forgotten is of the house of Saud. And, 16 of the 19 terrorists on 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia. Remember also that this is a theocracy where Sharia law is still practiced heavily.

Meanwhile Algore has his houseboat: http://tinyurl.com/6dzdrp

#90 No, he’s not. He’s just talking the talk.

I am not against nuclear power. Yes, there are problems. They can be worked out though. Uranium mining and processing can also be done more safely. Where there is a will, we can find a way.

The problem with renewable energy sources is their dependability. The wind doesn’t always blow, the sun doesn’t always shine, and rivers sometimes dry up. While they may provide considerable amounts of energy to the grid, they will only be a supplementary source.

The problem with carbon based (coal, natural gas, and oil) is they emit sulfur, mercury, lead, arsenic, cobalt, radon, and a host of other heavy metals and noxious gases into the atmosphere, destroy the area they were extracted from, destroy the environment when spilled, emit CO2 gas and contaminated carbon soot, and also leave disposal problems. They also require transportation from the extraction site to the generator which also has its own issues.

So no single source is clean, dependable, or safe. A wise mix of energy sources is our best bet. Increasing the amount of cleaner, renewable sources is very smart. Creating a storage infrastructure for off peak times as well as retaining alternative sources for back up will help solve our problems.

What we do not need are the idiots like Lyin’ Mike (post #45 & 60) suggesting that because current wind and solar contribute 1%, they are not feasible. What we do need is to face the fact that we need to change ourselves from near total reliance on carbon based energy to renewable energy.

The solution to long term nuclear waste storage is simple. Only it is too complicated to do.

The problems with Yucca Mountain is that it exists in the Rocky Mountains. The problem here is that mountain ranges like the Rockies are sinking into the earth’s mantle. That makes them earthquake prone and unstable. In the long run, not a great place.

What is needed for permanent storage is a deep hole in very stable, hard rock. A high portion of Canada is covered in just this kind of area, the Pre-Cambrian Shield. Most of the area is sufficiently remote to impede egress by land to help reduce terrorist attacks and thefts. There are many deep, played out mines that could be used as is or enlarged.

The remoteness can also be a safety factor as any accidents would affect few people. Reprocessing could be done here. Canada also has their own nuclear power plants (different designs) and are capable of using processed American fuel.

The downside to using the Pre-Cambian Shield is that it involves another country and trusting that it remains friendly to the US and benign in motive. And there might be something about Canada not agreeing to the long term storage of such toxic waste.

#94 “Storing waste that is poisonous for 100K years is not a “solution.””

Send it to the mantle. The storage problems aren’t technical, they are political.

#94, Bobbo,

Renewable are dependable. The sun does shine ALL THE TIME, and the wind does blow ALL THE TIME.

I have to ask. What color is the sky where you live? Around here it is sometimes blue, sometimes white/gray, sometimes a combination of the two, and black (with little spots of twinklies) about half the time.

Looking out the window, it is dead calm. The wind turbine in the distance isn’t turning and our neighbor’s flags aren’t moving. But on the other hand, there isn’t a cloud in the sky.

Oh I’m sure that somewhere the wind is blowing strong enough to power some energy. Only the few plants that are still open here require more power than what the wind has today.

#95 – Mr. Fusion,

The solution to long term nuclear waste storage is simple. Only it is too complicated to do.

I’ve gotta side with bobbo on this one. We’re talking about storing something safely with half lives on the order of hundreds of millions of years, in this case, I’m talking about the depleted uranium that we currently use to make armor piercing bullets. But, if I remember correctly, and I may not, the half lives of the radioactive waste is much longer than a mere 100K years as well.

So, we need to find someplace stable through major tectonic shifts. Such a place simply does not exist.

Let’s also not forget that as yet, not one gram has been stored in such a way that anyone would even claim that this has been done.

Humans are a very short-sighted species. Our short-sightedness may well be our death.

#99–Fusion==don’t avoid the point made.

!00–Paddy==don’t get so crusty. The mantle may be immune to ground water but depending on the magical spell you use to get nuke waste into the mantle could be the same magic also introduce water? Course, your magic is so very obviously different than my magic, so we can only tell with a spell off.

#101, Scott, and Bobbo,

So, we need to find someplace stable through major tectonic shifts. Such a place simply does not exist.

I agree with your first sentence but disagree with the second.

The Pre-Cambrian Shield is among the most stable rock formations on earth. Plainly put, it just ain’t going anywhere. It won’t be until North America collides with Asia is there expected to be any possible geological activity, and that won’t happen for several tens of millions of years. Being in the center of the continent, it is remote that the Shield would have any geological activity even then.

While I freely admit shit happens, burying radioactive waste in the Shield would be a safe course. BTW, much of the uranium used by the US currently comes from Canada and the Pre-Cambrian Shield.

While nuclear does have its safety problems I strongly believe they can be worked out with a little engineering. Renewable energy sources are great and should be encouraged, unfortunately they are too dependent upon weather to be a reliable, steady source.

If you ever visit Niagara Falls, compare it at 3:00 PM and then at 3:00AM. The daytime has about ½ the possible water flowing over it and in the early morning about 5-10%. The rest is diverted to the generators. While the Niagara generators are going full steam, the coal and gas fired generators power down and save money. We need generation capacity that is as robust and can supplement the renewable sources during time of higher demand and lower output.

Recently Marc Perkel posted a thread about using high capacity capacitors in vehicles to power cars, putting the excess energy back into the grid during the day (high demand periods), and charging them at low demand periods. All this would fit nicely with unpredictable renewable energy sources.

BTW, I’m on your side here.

Any energy policy that requires Americans to downsize is completely unacceptable. Period.

#107 “Any energy policy that requires Americans to downsize is completely unacceptable. Period.”

Here’s the way it works. There exists a political party in the US that relies on people NEEDING gov’t handouts. So, if you can shrink the economy, by whatever means, you have people lose jobs, $, etc. This then allows this party to then
“come to the rescue”. This means more votes and power.

Hi,I am one of the Iranian people who hate war all over the world.I can remember the Iran & Iraq war when i was a little child.
I don’t know why most of you just think about nuclear bombs and weapons.
We just need it for producing clean and non-polluting energy.
If you read the history of Iran you can find that we can not trust the other countries to give us the nuclear fuel for our power plant in the critical situation.so this is our right to have a cycle of reproducing the nuclear fuel.
please do not mix politic with this real right.All the Iranian people hate war,believe me.
thanks for your attention.