Wednesday, April 6, 2011 9:02 AM EDT
Following the Japanese nuclear plant catastrophe, there has been a plethora of U. S. newspaper editorials cautioning citizens not to turn against nuclear power because, the editorials claim, it is the only clean energy source available.
Among these was an editorial in a neighboring newspaper, The Lynchburg News & Advance.
The largest employers in the Lynchburg area, Areva and Babcock & Wilcox, are nuclear industries. Losing these companies, I am sure, would impact the Lynchburg economy as did the loss of Dan River Inc. in Danville.
A fact not mentioned about nuclear energy by those advocating its use is there has been a growing volume of comments about the capital cost of nuclear electric plants becoming prohibitively expensive.
For example, Duke Energy in neighboring North Carolina announced in January its purchase of Progressive Energy, a Florida company, subject to regulatory approval, resulting in what was stated to be the largest electric company in the United States and the third largest nationwide in nuclear generation capacity. The new company had a market value of $36 billion. (St. Petersburg Times, January 11, 2011)
Duke wants to build two nuclear reactors in Cherokee County, S.C., and Progressive wants to build two in Levy County, Fla,, and two in North Carolina.
The projected cost of the Florida project has already passed $20 billion and the South Carolina project is currently projected at $11 billion.
So the total $36 billion market value of the company would not be enough money to cover the projected cost of the three new nuclear installations.
Imagine the electricity rate to consumers for a plant that cost in excess of $11 billion or $20 billion!
Already there have been references to "the wallets of captive ratepayers" as a source for financing new nuclear plants (Congressional Record, Vol 149, Part II, page 14178).
In France and China the electric plants are government-owned and China currently has under construction more that 25 new nuclear plants, according to the World Nuclear Association.
The important words are "under construction." Most other nuclear plants mentioned in public sources seem to be in the planning stage and can take some years in actual construction.
Duke Energy is projecting a 2021 completion date for the Cherokee County plant that is in the planning stage, having already spent over $100 million in planning activities.
The argument in favor of nuclear-generated electricity is that it is clean, non-polluting.
What about the spent fuel rods at the Japanese plants in the storage ponds from which the water was lost and which were reported to be spewing radiation into the environment?
And what about those pesky radiation-spewing accidents/natural disasters at the nuclear plants the public is assured will never happen when the plants are under construction, yet regularly seem to happen anyway?
Remember the United States has no permanent disposal method nor site for the spent fuel rods now in storage at the various U. S. nuclear plants.
Some developments in coal as an energy source are interesting. The Polk plant unit 6 at Tampa, Fla., is considered a demonstration site for an integrated gasification combined-cycle electrical plant using coal and biomass as fuel.
The IGCC electric plant does not burn the coal. Rather it uses a thermo-chemical process to produce the gas stage from the coal. The resulting gas is stated to be virtually free of fuel-bound nitrogen.
Pollutants, such as sulfur (98 percent removed), particulates and trace minerals, are removed in IGCC processing and sold as by-products for other industrial uses. IGCC results in a small stream of carbon dioxide, which can be captured.
The slag is sold for use in building roads or manufacturing wallboard and the plant is "zero process water discharge."
A second such unit, producing twice the electricity, has been considered, at a projected capital cost of $2 billion. (Sources: U. S. Department of Energy and Tampa Electric)
"Natural gas is the fastest growing fuel for generating electricity. More than 90 percent of the power plants to be built in the next 20 years will likely be fueled by natural gas. Natural gas is also likely to be a primary fuel for distributed power generators -mini-power plants that would be sited close to where the electricity is needed." (Quoted from Internet site of U. S. Department of Energy.)
I do not feel obligated to support uranium mining in Virginia regardless of the findings of the National Academy of Science study and I do not see why anyone else should so feel either.
I am not willing to turn Pittsylvania County and other counties of Virginia into a uranium waste site just so the Coles family and a Canadian company can reap millions from selling uranium to China.
Hildred C. Shelton
Danville
Read more:
http://www.wpcva.com/articles/2011/04/09/chatham/opinion/opinion13.txt#blogcomments
