Re: [asa] nuclear power

Put it on my land.

There are two sites in the US. One is the one in Nevada, the alternate is
in western Minnesota. But the principle of "NIMBY" pushed the site
location to Nevada.

The issue is having a chunk of (granite?) that is stable and large enough.
Chunks that were 30 miles deep, 100 miles long, 50 miles wide , and not
fractured- that is roughly what they were looking for. You can then drill a
mineshaft into that that is large enough. Then if something did leak it
would not leach out for millions of years.

The Minnesota site is under my farm and the local economy sure does need
the jobs. But politics and backlash, politics and backlash. Very short
sighted.

This week they killed the BigStone II clean coal plant. Of course we
knew that was going to happen because of the new policies.

Wind farms need backing capacity. Where does that come from?

Speaking of NIMBY the Star Tribune did a large piece this week on the
backlash against wind and solar. People don't want to live next to it, and
they don't want transmission lines either.
I've heard that Germany has a law setting a rate of 50 cents per KwH which
is why farmers there invest in solar and wind. That would help a lot in
the US.
US futures contracts varied from 2.3 cents to 2.9 cents so far this year.
Electric power is too cheap. If power was near 50 cents then the backlash
would dissipate and landowners would be more likely to invest.

-Dave C

On Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 6:05 PM, Randy Isaac <randyisaac@comcast.net> wrote:

> We recently discussed nuclear power on this site. I just saw this from my
> alma mater:
>
> http://engineering.illinois.edu/news/2009/08/10/midwest-experts-agree-recommendations-nuclear-waste-storage
>
> I asked Ian Hutchinson to comment on it. His reaction was:
>
> "We can keep the fuel at reactor sites, and we don't need to dispose of it
> immediately; indeed we should not, because it is not clear what we will want
> to do with it long term. But IMHO it would be better to centralize the
> managed (dry cask) storage to one or two national sites. This is certainly
> much better for reactors that are closed down. Then the sites can really be
> returned to green field. At present they can't."
>
> Randy
>

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Received on Sat Sep 12 12:22:52 2009