The newest pebble reactors are easy to build and manage and have extremely high out put considering their small size, perfect for islands set down wind from populations. Unfortunately the Three-mile Island and Chernople incident make populations feel uncomfortable with Nuclear. Therefore the increased regulations have made the cost of construction almost not worth it. The ROI of a nuclear power plant could take as long 150 years. This is so unfortunate seeing how great Nuclear power is and how clean it can be when handled correctly. For this reason in the past three decades no new permits have been granted and we continue to have a large percentage of our power coming from fossil fuels which is a problem for air quality and long term it has many issues such as acid rain.
Imagine having all nuclear power where you turn it on, monitor it and it just sits there and produces energy? We no longer lead the world in Nuclear Energy, now in the age of International Terrorism we are afraid that if we build Nuclear Power then they could become a target. This is not proper thinking in the day and age of radar guidance SAM sites, automatic sensors and back-up systems. We can defend Nuclear Power Plants from any type of attack. And generally the newer plants will be put in the middle of nowhere, thus lessoning the risks even more. Now then how many people will breath polluted air if we do not have a continued mix of these nuclear plants contributing to the grid. And is the grid safe any way, seeing as we already had one blackout, which was purely a failure.
Iran, N. Korea, Pakistan, India, Argentina, Armenia, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China Red, Taiwan, Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Hungary, France, South Korea, Lithuania, Mexico, Netherlands, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Ukraine, UK and USA all have nuclear power. France is at 68% derived from nuclear. Spain 60%, Sweden 65%, Ukraine 73%, UK 81%; Are we crazy? Why are we using so little nuclear? Because we do not have neighbors yelling at us next door that have to breath our pollution and also because we have little in the way of population compared to land mass. But Nuclear only makes sense. Countries have often thought of over producing to export to nearby countries and the USA has only 20% of it’s energy coming from Nuclear, it ought to be 80% and we ought to be producing enough to light up all of the modern countries of Central and North America. We should be producing and exporting our extra, this would mean energy would be cheaper and we would all have higher standards of living and better quality of life and why not? What if we produced 125% of demand? The nuclear option is a viable one. Think about.
“Lance Winslow” – If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs