Big Coal and Nuke Power Plant Owners

[RobertEarl]

A nuke expert, Jimmy Carter, was the man most responsible for putting a lid on the nuke industry. Carter was a very wise man, indeed. He also tried to wean us off fossil fuels.

There are two sides now existing when it comes to nukes. There are the environmentalists and the nuke industry. Guess which one has the most money? Guess which one has very little money? Guess which one develops and pays for the 'science' that says radiation is good for you?

Guess which one is concerned most about people and not profits?

Now we get an idea from where and how nuke 'science' takes shape.
From the nuclear power groups. From the Big Money.

Some claim that environmentalist are conspiracy people. Here's a conspiracy for you: Who is it that has been fighting against limits on CO2 deposition in the atmosphere? The owners of coal plants.

Now, guess who also owns the nuke plants? Pretty much the same people who own the coal plants. The same people that have been fighting against limiting CO2 are the very same people who own most of the nukes.

Surprise, surprise. The same people who have been telling us that CO2 in the atmosphere is ok, are the same people who have been telling us radiation released from their nuke plants is ok.

Now..... which side are you going to trust? Jimmy Carter and the environmentalists, or big coal and nuke power plant owners?

[FBaggins]

1. Hardly an accurate statement in there.

But the spelling was pretty good. So you get partial credit.

Did your opinion on Carter change when you learned that he most certainly was not anti-nuclear?

[madokie]

2. Well let me see

It damn sure isn't going to be big coal or the nuke boys so that leaves President Carter and the environmentalist. If only Jimmy Carter was listened too rather than made fun of by the reaganites we'd not be in such a mess today.

[RobertEarl]

3. We lost so much losing Carter

Instead reaganites took over. Then the bushies saw reagan get away with lying so they figured they could too.

[madokie]

4. In my eyes the election of '80 was the first out right theft of the Presidency in modern times

if not ever. There was so much treachery going on in that election I can't see it as anything but a theft.

[Kolesar]

5. Nuclear was the oddball of the non-renewable power industry

It never had the money of the fossil fuel industry. Nukes got the approval of President Cheney and some policies were written to subsidize them. They had the enthusiastic backing of Senator Voinovich, but I don't remember a lot of legislators in their corner.

[RobertEarl]

8. DoE and Big Easy Money

The Dept. of Energy and defense departments love their nukes.

Then there are mining interests. And companies like Bechtel. GE. etc.

Big money. Big Easy Money. Buys a lot of influence.

[PamW]

6. Carter is NOT a "nuclear expert" by ANY definition

Carter may have been in Rickover's nuclear submarine force, and he may have run in to help clean-up the Canadian NRU reactor accident, but that doesn't make him a "nuclear expert".

Witness his retort during the debate with Gerald Ford in which Carter said nuclear power plants should be held under "heavy vacuum".

GADS what a DOLT!!! The best vacuum you can get is a negative one atmosphere. A nuclear power plant containment building can actually contain several atmospheres of positive pressure. So that "heavy vacuum" gets lost in the noise.

If there are only two side; then the scientists are on the industry's side, and it's NOT about money; it's about scientific truth which the environmentalists are found lacking in the extreme.

That people vs profits is just so much BS!! You don't profit by running your nuclear power plant in an unsafe manner any more than the airline industry profits by running their airliners unsafely.

Some nuclear power plants are owned by coal plant owners. However, the largest stock of nuclear power plants are owned by companies such as Exelon which is just basically in the nuclear power plant business.

If your final line is my choice; then I most certainly will NOT trust dolts like Carter who doesn't understand the simplest physics with regard to pressure and the atmosphere and how to keep a reactor bottled up and safe.

I certainly do NOT throw my lot in with people who are extremely poor scholars and didn't do their homework and just keep parroting the same old anti-nuclear pablum that the anti-nukes have been peddling to a gullible public for decades.

Do you ever wonder why 99.9% of the scientists, you know really bright, intelligent, independent thinking people; are in favor of nuclear power?

PamW

[RobertEarl]

7. Great idea Carter had

Basically it sounds like nuke plants should have all the emissions captured via a vacuum containment system. As in build a dome over the whole plant and suck up and filter the emissions? Sounds great. Imagine a dome over Fukushima..... they could control it somewhat.... if they only had a dome.

As for profits.... the nukers are taking the money and running. The leftover costs will be borne by the public. We call it privatizing the profits and socializing the costs.

Just look at what Japan is faced with: A bankrupt Tepco and a cleanup bill that will run in the trillions of dollars.

[PamW]

9. Wasn't Carter's idea

Actually, in US power plants, the reactor is surrounded by a containment building / dome and the pressure in the containment is slightly LESS than atmospheric. That way, if there are any leaks - the leak will be INWARDS.

This did cause the infamous problem when workers at Browns Ferry were sealing new penetrations in the containment, and checked for leaks with a candle flame. Because the leakage was inward, the flame was drawn inwards where it ignited insulation and caused the infamous fire.

Carter's "idea" was that vacuum was a solution for the overpressure of an accident. The problem is if the accident had pressures more than one atmosphere, you can't have a pressure of less than minus one atmosphere (gauge).

Carter didn't understand that.

Except for noble gases; nuclear power plants are essentially emission free. The noble gases you can't do anything about.

PamW

[FBaggins]

10. You forget one of Carter's other ideas...

... lots more coal to replace foreign oil, and less natural gas (in his defence, because he bought into the story that we were about to run out of it).

[RobertEarl]

11. wow

Where do you get all that 30 year old information about Carter?
Someone feeding you links?

Anyway, you probably just don't remember very well.

Carter said: nuclear power plants should be held under "heavy vacuum".

That's a great idea. Plants should have the emissions sucked out of the buildings. Even noble gasses.

""Actually, in US power plants, the reactor is surrounded by a containment building / dome and the pressure in the containment is slightly LESS than atmospheric.""

Sounds like Carter was on the right track. It just cost too much, so he got beat back and gets called, on DU no less, a "Dolt."

[FBaggins]

12. What a crock

You're really not in a position to accuse anyone else of having a poor memory of President Carter after the nonsense you attributed to him earlier.

[PamW]

14. I have a good memory for stupid quotes...

Come on; didn't you ever hear someone say something really, really, stupid and therefore you remember it?

That's the way I felt when I was watching the Presidential debates back in 1976. Here's the transcript ( easy enough to Google ):

http://www.historyguy.com/politics/presidential_debate_no1_1976.html

I would certainly not cut out atomic power altogether. We can't afford to give up that opportunity until later. But to the extent that we continue to use atomic power, I would be responsible as President to make sure that the safety precautions were initiated and maintained. For instance, some that have been forgotten: We need to have the reactor core below ground level, the entire power plant that uses atomic power tightly sealed, and a heavy vacuum maintained.

The only thing a "heavy vacuum" buys you is one atmosphere maximum more pressure containment. However, you can get the same result just by making the containment building a little stronger.

Let's say you want to protect against an accident with a 5 atmosphere overpressure. You can do that by creating a vacuum in the containment, and when you get that 5 atmosphere overpressure, the containment pressure is going to go up to 4 atmospheres. So you need to build the containment to withstand 4 atmospheres of overpressure.

However, if you make the containment 25% stronger, so that it can withstand 5 atmospheres instead of 4 atmospheres; you can skip having to maintain a vacuum inside.

You falsely give Carter the credit for the slight underpressure that all containment buildings have. That was done in nuclear power plants since the late '50s. The fact that Carter didn't know that was done, is to his detriment.

Where did you come up with the "idea" that it cost too much? WRONG Cost isn't the issue. The point is that a vacuum doesn't buy you much, in fact it doesn't buy you anything if you make the containment stronger. However, it does limit access of workers, and THAT could be a safety issue. If something is amiss, you want to be able to send a worker in to check it out. You don't want that worker excluded because the worker can't live in a vacuum. If what that idiot Carter suggested were done, nuclear power would be LESS SAFE.

PamW

[Throckmorton]

18. Not universally true,

"Actually, in US power plants, the reactor is surrounded by a containment building / dome and the pressure in the containment is slightly LESS than atmospheric."

Some plants have sub-atmospheric containments, some do not.

Millstone Unit 2 is not a sub-atmospheric design, Millstone Unit 3 is.

One is a Combustion Engineer/Bechtel Design. One is a Westinghouse/Stone & Webster design.

[RobertEarl]

13. In my area are three big electricity suppliers

TVA, Duke Power and Progress Energy supply electricity to millions of people.

They have both coal and nuke plants. They both have worked and spent millions to deny climate change due to their coal plant emissions. They love their coal plants.

They love their nukes too.

[PamW]

15. TVA of course..

TVA, Duke Power and Progress Energy supply electricity to millions of people.
====================

TVA of course is Government-owned. That's the US Government that is the owner of TVA:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Valley_Authority

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally owned corporation in the United States created by congressional charter in May 1933...

PamW

[RobertEarl]

16. Yep. TVA is government owned

And it wasn't until just last year, after NC and several other states took TVA to court, did TVA finally agree to begin limiting their coal-fired emissions.

Doesn't that piss you off? I mean here is a government owned corporation doing things that violate the clean air act! And contributing to global warming!

We have known coal emissions were bad. We've known for years that CO2 was going to warm the climate. Yet only recently has our own government been FORCED to do the right thing.

So when someone says that the nukers and the coalers hate each other, they are dead wrong. Nukers and coalers are in the same boat and they have been lying to us all along about coal. And lying all along about nukes.

Is it a conspiracy, or what? I report, you decide.