Re: mercury...any fission experts on here?


Message posted by Andre' M. Dall'au on October 30, 2000 at 15:13:48 EST:

TVA and Watts Bar try real hard at excellence but still have the baggage you mentioned. The Plant manager at Watts bar is a good friend of mine, and they have been trying for years to get the place going. the politics of power production is enormous. The cost of building just one is the total worth of ANY large utility, so no power company, no matter how large, is going to tie up it's entire net worth for ten years. it takes that long (historically) to get a liscense to operate from the NRC, and that's when you can incorporate the cost of building the plant into the rate base. Right now it doesn't matter that that the public may or may not new nuclear plants, the bottom line is no utility is going to risk it's business future on something that a local government could block on a contested whim. The controls needed to safely operate nuclear power have priced it into extinction. There are excellent and safe designs on the drawing boards that have incorporated every lesson learned from SL-1 to Cherenobyl, but the economics of business have turned against nuclear power. It's a shame that we are left with only the lesser choises, but like the Space Program, when we let the people who speak out of fear and ignorance take the lead, the progress is seldom forward.


In Reply to: mercury...any fission experts on here? posted by Steve Amerson on October 30, 2000 at 13:47:40 EST:

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