Utah and US Energy Policy, Part 2, Electricity

(scroll down for Part 1, Part 3 will come later)

Another big thing happening lately is the school trust land being possibly sold to Carbon County to possibly lease to a company to possibly build a nuclear power plant in Green River.

That puts us squarely in the middle of both sides of the energy equation: electricity and transportation. 

In the United States, we have not built a nuclear power plant in 30+ years. China, benefitting from the convenience of being a one party state with unlimited powers, has basically snapped their fingers and built 30 or 40 nuclear power plants recently. France runs largely on nuclear. 

HEAL Utah has been in a couple times talking to us, trying to stop the spread of nuclear energy. They are a nationwide thing run by a nuclear scientist who got his PhD from Berkeley and has drawn up a Carbon Free & Nuclear Free roadmap to the yellow brick road. It has been interesting. 

The cons of nuclear energy are

1- Storage of radioactive waste, just a 100,000 year half life wait away

2- Possible meltdown, a la Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and lots of supposed covered up stuff that almost went as bad. Think Homer Simpson saying "its nuk-u-lar"

3- Nuclear proliferation- ie, if the world goes this way, nuclear weapon technology will spread along with it. A la Iran and their "for peaceful purposes."

4- Gigantic capital costs up front, impossible red tape and suits, need for taxpayers to 100% liability protect the involved parties or no one will do it

There isn't really much argument about 1 and 2. We can just throw our mindset over them- and say "we can safely do it now" or "they can never be sure of such huge risks!" Who knows? As to nuclear proliferation, I think the cat is pretty much out of the bag. From what I understand, it isn't really a big scientific secret- it is simply a matter of a large enough amount of money being put into a multiyear project and anybody can figure out the engineering of it and do it. As to item 4, the whole question is should we pay for it, remove the red tape, and do it?

The pros of nuclear power are 

1- It is carbon free basically, meaning it does not contribute to global warming, unlike coal and oil/gas

2- It is infinitely renewable, unlike coal and oil/gas

3- It is proven to be able to generate a lot of electricity

Coal is the biggest source of electricity today. Nuclear is 2nd. After that are renewables- which have been wonderful political things: wind, solar, geothermal, apple pie, etc., for about 4 decades now. 

The cons of renewables (non-nuclear renewables) are

1- They account for 6% of the puzzle today. Even with tax incentives for companies to go that way, and federal funding, and warm fuzzies from society, and everything else, they aren't going to top 15% of the picture anytime soon. 

2- Wind in particular is limited in how much it can do. T Boone Pickens wants $35 billion to build a whole network on an almost constant wind corridor from Canada to Texas and another from California to Texas. I don't think it can generate very much under the best circumstances. 

3- Wind and solar are useless when it isn't windy or sunny. They have to be backed up by conventional sources. The Western United States, I have heard, has the best (wind + sun) climate on Earth to put these together. What have we done?  

The pros of renewables (non-nuclear are)

1- They are endless, unlike oil/gas and coal

2- They don't involve sending evil Middle Eastern crazies hundreds of billions of dollars every year

3- They do not emit carbon, basically, and don't contribute to global warming