Re: Digest Number 1075

From: <Christopher>
Date: Wed Feb 04 2004 - 12:01:00 EST

>Are nukes the way to go for power generation (assuming my spam plan
>doesn't work out)? Are there safe nukes?
Depends on how it's done. Here in the states nuclear power is dead because people don't trust the government or the nuclear generating business any more. The US approach has always been to let any utility that wanted a nuke plant to have one, so long as they can meet the NRC standards. We ended up with was a hodge-podge of plant designs and approaches instead of an orderly development program. I grew up hearing that nuclear power was going to be so cheap that it'd cost too much to bill for it. I think we jumped into nuclear power before it was a mature technology. All the subsequent fumbling has made Americans deeply distrustful.

Some utilities have paid their (technical) dues and become extremely competent. Their plants are efficient and well run. Others took the attitude that all they really wanted to do was send out electric bills--they figured they could sub-contract everything including the responsibility for safe and efficient management. They got into financial and technical trouble real quick and found themselves whipsawed between their A&E firm, the NRC, and their banks. Managing nuke plants got very expensive and very scary for such utilities because they didn't know what they were getting into. If you read the Kemeny Report on the Three Mile Island accident, you can get a pretty good idea of the situation. Right now the operative philosophy in the US is that it's better to buy power from someone else than generate it yourself. The same philosophy that's cost us so much technical leadership elsewhere.

In hindsight, we can look at France's nuclear program, or the American nuclear navy as two examples of how it probably should have been done. Both approaches are government-run, which is anathema in Washington these days. Both programs show that it's possible to have safe and efficient nuclear power. France's electricity is mostly nuclear-generated and the French have a good system for waste disposal involving vitrification. The US nuclear navy has been careless about how it disposes of waste, like most military development programs, but there's no question that Rickover built a system that works safely and reliably. Most of the US nuclear business is Navy-trained.

The pollution issues can be handled with re-processing and vitrification but not in today's political climate. There's no real technical leadership or political will to have a properly run program that people trust, and when you add the experience with third world countries who use nuclear generation stations as a cover to build bombs, it's not something that people want to get into. Finanacial issues have scared most US utilities away from nuclear generation. Maybe if we find another Rickover...

Christopher Wright P.E. |"They couldn't hit an elephant at <a href="/group/PipingDesign/post?postID=KMKS94Rtw90k-E8nkt3J3CLe-Pd9ATUqUPHLrYs6lisSW2P6HaY1XHdrroKPiWuF2ALEdeh52hSfZt0">chrisw@skypoint.com</a> | this distance" (last words of Gen.

___________________________| John Sedgwick, Spotsylvania 1864)

<a href="http://www.skypoint.com/~chrisw">http://www.skypoint.com/~chrisw</a> Received on Wed Feb 04 12:01:00 2004