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Federal Energy Regulatory Commission chair Jon Wellinghoff says forget about coal and nuclear power, they’re too expensive, renewable power is what we need. Wellinghoff said renewables like wind, solar and biomass will provide enough energy to meet baseload capacity and future energy demands. Nuclear and coal plants are too expensive, he added. “I think baseload [...] Why? Because coal must be stopped if we are to halt global warming. David McLellan at SolveClimate crunches the numbers and shows that wind is closing the gap with nuclear in cost per kilowatt. Further, the price of proposed nuclear plants keeps soaring, sometimes doubling or tripling, while the cost of wind doesn’t. However, the primary reason for the gap closing is that nuclear plants take many years [...] The Hyperion nuclear power module is the size of a hot tub, gets buried in the ground, and creates enough power for 20,000 homes. Hyperion modules have no moving parts to wear down, and are delivered factory sealed. They are never opened on site. Even if one were compromised, the material inside would not [...] CleanTechnica thinks so, detailing how Pickens’ planned mega-wind farm and Ogallala water rights could be used, at least in part, to power nuclear plants in Texas Panhandle. Thus he would have steady nuclear power and intermittent wind power traveling on his new transmission corridor from the Texas Panhandle to urban areas. Texas has their [...] Red Charlie comments in our recent post about nuclear power. Nuclear waste is the elephant in the room when it comes to nuke power. Everything else pales in comparison. A nuke plant has at most a 50 year lifespan, the high level waste will remain “worse than natural ore” for at least 10 to 100 [...] Pete Domenici (R-NM) is calling for recycling of nuclear waste in the US. Many other countries already do this. If you’re going to have nuclear power, why not use as much of the fuel as possible? There are currently 31 application for new nukes in the US, which will no doubt create monumental opposition [...] The Oil Drum points out that while coal is falling into disfavor in the US, it is widely used by developing countries because it is freely available and cheap. The reality is that many of the nations that are switching to coal to provide the power for the next 20 years or more [...] Scan the recent posts on Idaho Samizdat and you’ll see how nuclear power is enjoying a huge renaissance worldwide, with a multitude of countries – Turkey, Japan, South Africa, Britain, the US, and more – planning to build new plants. Why? Nuclear plants create prodigious amounts of cheap energy and emit very little carbon. The state of New York wants to shut down a nuclear plant. They and Connecticut currently oppose an offshore LNG platform in Long Island Sound. Electricity and heating costs in the northeast US are already extremely expensive. Development of alternative power is puny. Yet any attempt to get more power, whether it be nukes, [...] |  | ||||
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