Pay no attention to that man standing behind the curtain.
Ding, dong, the cause is dead.
Nuclear power has no clothes.
Those who support the myth of nuclear as faux environmentalists distract the world from what it should be focusing on. Like fuel cells, nuclear's only practical application is where no wire or smokestack is possible - submarines and spacecraft. And that's it, not cars or buildings.
And the practicality of nuclear and fuel cells for those limited applications only exist for now, a very limited time, until battery, capacitor and other storage technologies leapfrog themselves and drop in price as all good things do.
We don't have to suffer for art or energy.
See below.
Op/Ed by Scott D. Portzline, Security Consultant to Three Mile Island Alert
Op/Ed 3/22/2010
The good news for energy reliability is that wind and solar are stealing the show. Just
last week, the North American Electrical Reliability Corporation testified to the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) that over the next 10 years 260,000
megawatts of new nameplate electrical capacity will be added. A whopping 96% of
that will come from wind and solar. The NRC was told they might have to back down
some of their nuclear plants during off-peak loads because of new wind-powered
generation.
The claim by former NRC Commissioner Forrest J. Remick that nuclear power is "the
most cost-effective way to boost capacity while meeting climate change goals" is
hardly the truth. (Allentown Morning Call, Your View, 3/22/2010) The so-called
nuclear renaissance is already on "life support" with taxpayer loans. Some proposed
new plants are being canceled by utilities as costs double and even triple. Ratepayers
in Florida are already paying for new nuclear plants that haven't even begun
construction let alone generate a watt.
In San Antonio Texas, the city-owned utility filed a $32 billion lawsuit against their
nuclear construction partners alleging they had concealed rising cost information and
thereby threatened the city's credit rating. In South Carolina, the Public Service
Commission ruled that the cost of proposed new nuclear plants does not have to be
disclosed. How can anyone determine its cost effectiveness with a secret nuclear price
tag? Meanwhile nuclear plant owners are suing the US over their current nuclear
waste burden.
On the question of operating capacity, even if the new wind and solar generators were
to operate at 20% capacity, that's still double the output of the 26 proposed nuclear
plants touted by Professor Remick. There's no perpetual waste bill, no security force,
no government subsidized catastrophic insurance, and no need for evacuation plans
with these renewables.
The US is already ahead of schedule for the Department of Energy's 2030 energy
plan to have 20% of our electricity supplied by wind. Just last year 9,900 megawatts
of new wind power came online. That increase in a single year represents 4 times the
capacity provided by nuclear power uprates over a 15 year period. Best of all, it
relieves us of the financial entanglement of 2 new nuclear plants. It should soon be
obvious that Public Utilities and Wall Street favor these renewables and have all but
closed the door on nuclear.
Scott D. Portzline
Harrisburg PA
Security Consultant to Three Mile Island Alert
Ding, dong, the cause is dead.
Nuclear power has no clothes.
Those who support the myth of nuclear as faux environmentalists distract the world from what it should be focusing on. Like fuel cells, nuclear's only practical application is where no wire or smokestack is possible - submarines and spacecraft. And that's it, not cars or buildings.
And the practicality of nuclear and fuel cells for those limited applications only exist for now, a very limited time, until battery, capacitor and other storage technologies leapfrog themselves and drop in price as all good things do.
We don't have to suffer for art or energy.
See below.
Op/Ed by Scott D. Portzline, Security Consultant to Three Mile Island Alert
Op/Ed 3/22/2010
The good news for energy reliability is that wind and solar are stealing the show. Just
last week, the North American Electrical Reliability Corporation testified to the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) that over the next 10 years 260,000
megawatts of new nameplate electrical capacity will be added. A whopping 96% of
that will come from wind and solar. The NRC was told they might have to back down
some of their nuclear plants during off-peak loads because of new wind-powered
generation.
The claim by former NRC Commissioner Forrest J. Remick that nuclear power is "the
most cost-effective way to boost capacity while meeting climate change goals" is
hardly the truth. (Allentown Morning Call, Your View, 3/22/2010) The so-called
nuclear renaissance is already on "life support" with taxpayer loans. Some proposed
new plants are being canceled by utilities as costs double and even triple. Ratepayers
in Florida are already paying for new nuclear plants that haven't even begun
construction let alone generate a watt.
In San Antonio Texas, the city-owned utility filed a $32 billion lawsuit against their
nuclear construction partners alleging they had concealed rising cost information and
thereby threatened the city's credit rating. In South Carolina, the Public Service
Commission ruled that the cost of proposed new nuclear plants does not have to be
disclosed. How can anyone determine its cost effectiveness with a secret nuclear price
tag? Meanwhile nuclear plant owners are suing the US over their current nuclear
waste burden.
On the question of operating capacity, even if the new wind and solar generators were
to operate at 20% capacity, that's still double the output of the 26 proposed nuclear
plants touted by Professor Remick. There's no perpetual waste bill, no security force,
no government subsidized catastrophic insurance, and no need for evacuation plans
with these renewables.
The US is already ahead of schedule for the Department of Energy's 2030 energy
plan to have 20% of our electricity supplied by wind. Just last year 9,900 megawatts
of new wind power came online. That increase in a single year represents 4 times the
capacity provided by nuclear power uprates over a 15 year period. Best of all, it
relieves us of the financial entanglement of 2 new nuclear plants. It should soon be
obvious that Public Utilities and Wall Street favor these renewables and have all but
closed the door on nuclear.
Scott D. Portzline
Harrisburg PA
Security Consultant to Three Mile Island Alert
