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kristopher

(29,798 posts)
Thu May 28, 2015, 03:21 PM May 2015

What if we all adopted the nuclear industry's interpretation of a 'planned' project?

What if we all adopted the nuclear industry's interpretation of a 'planned' project?
MATTHEW WRIGHT 27 MAY

You’d have to wonder how nuclear energy receives such a wave of fandom from some quarters, particularly in the business and conservative press.

If you search the definitive list of reactors on Wikipedia, you’ll find that reactors are being decommissioned globally at a rate of knots, and many more are set to be decommissioned in the not too distant future. This includes the entire fleet in Germany and a significant portion but unspecified number of reactors in Japan.

If you looked further, you’d find that you could count the total number of reactors built in 2014 and 2015 on just one hand. In that period there was activity predominately in China -- with its centralised state control avoiding the scrutiny the technology gets everywhere, outside a lone reactor in Argentina being the exception -- but you could hardly get excited as that project was started when first of the Generation Ys were still in nappies in 1981.

So you’ve got a few plants getting built at a much slower pace than planned in China, and a bunch of plants ‘planned’ all over the place. But as is the case with almost all nuclear plans in the last 25 years, they’ve gone nowhere. They are plans (if a dream is a plan), but are not likely to be plants.

So why do we hear about these so called plans over and over?

The answer is the stockmarket...

http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2015/5/27/renewable-energy/what-if-we-all-adopted-nuclear-industrys-interpretation-planned
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What if we all adopted the nuclear industry's interpretation of a 'planned' project? (Original Post) kristopher May 2015 OP
Reminds me of an old joke bananas May 2015 #1
Safe and cheap nuclear energy was a scam from the start madokie May 2015 #2
Better than if we all adopted the anti-nuke's interpretation of "truth" FBaggins May 2015 #3

bananas

(27,509 posts)
1. Reminds me of an old joke
Thu May 28, 2015, 05:53 PM
May 2015

"I'm working on my second million dollars."
"You're a millionaire?"
"No, the first million dollars never worked out."

madokie

(51,076 posts)
2. Safe and cheap nuclear energy was a scam from the start
Thu May 28, 2015, 07:41 PM
May 2015

sold to us like a pig in a poke. The reason was to cover for the government to build the bomb that at one point we had thousands of. Nuclear energy is neither, a safe nor a sane way to boil water to make steam to spin a turbine if ever there was one

FBaggins

(26,697 posts)
3. Better than if we all adopted the anti-nuke's interpretation of "truth"
Fri May 29, 2015, 03:09 PM
May 2015
you could count the total number of reactors built in 2014 and 2015 on just one hand.

Some of the fringe anti-nukes that I've run in to in recent months are firm believers in little green men... so perhaps the author has a different understanding of how many fingers belong on each hand?

By my count, the "definitive list of reactors" (laughable that Wikipedia is the definitive source for anything) lists 17 reactors that were completed in 2014/2015 or are scheduled for completion before the end of this year. Also, despite being "definitive", the list either entirely missed, or missed the completion date for, seven other reactors (two each in N. Korea and India, and three in China).

There are several dozen (65 on the list) reactors actively under construction worldwide right now (not "planned&quot with more than a dozen expected to complete in each of the next three years. The impression that the author attempts to leave the reader with is directly contradicted by reality.

He doesn't appear to write on the subject very often, so it's hard to tell whether it's dishonesty, wishful thinking, or just ignorantly accepting the lies of others... but there isn't a 4th possibility that appears likely.
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