And so it starts again…NIMBYism and nukes

I grew up around Boston and went to school / lived in there during the 70′s.  During that time, as the late 60′s radicalism started to abate, one thing kept appearing in the news:

Seabrook

For those outside of the New England area, that is the nuclear power station that was built in Seabrook, NH.  Given the projections of the time, it was needed as the New England area was importing most of its electrical power from outside the area.  While Plymouth Station also was nuclear, my memories are of the protests of the Clamshell Alliance (a hodge-podge, often raggedy clad, mixture of early environmentalists and hippies) ready at the drop of a hat to go protest the building of the two reactors at Seabrook.  Or, stand in front of a judge with reams of paper to slow the process down.

Fast forward 30 years, and once again, I see the rounding up of the same mentality, this time, down Texas way:

Texas anti-nuclear activists are rallying their forces to challenge the so-called nuclear renaissance that could see the state become home to the country’s first new nuclear power plant project in nearly 30 years.

On Friday a coalition of groups said it will intervene in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s review of NRG Energy’s application to build two new reactors in Matagorda County, next to the existing South Texas Project nuclear plant.

The commission filed notice this week that a 60-day public comment period is now open for groups to intervene in the review for the joint construction and operation permit.

Austin-based officials with the Sierra Club, Public Citizen and the Sustainable Energy and Economic Development Coalition said they don’t yet know if they will intervene in the review separately or under one name. But they don’t plan on sitting on their hands.

"We need to draw a line in the sand here in Texas and create a new nuclear resistance movement to say no to the nuclear regurgitation," said Karen Hadden, director of SEED.

Sure.  The problem is, I don’t see a whole lot of ability, country wide, to increase the supply of electricity easily and quickly and at no cost to the environment.  One only has to look back at California a few years ago and remember how crippling the the blackouts were to the economy and to life in general.  Lots of people, deprived of their air conditioners and other modern conveniences were not impressed (or in Maine, for that matter).

Yes, I know that the Enron market manipulators played their roles in that fiasco – and I am glad that those that were found guilty are paying the price.  However, in watching things around the country, and locally, I see often see self-righteous environmentalists decrying "how could you even THINK of something like this"?  Yet, what do they offer in return?

Er, not much…..

The quickest way to alleviate the system problem, other than a changing of the weather pattern, was the addition of natural gas turbine generators. Yet, those were lambasted by the environmentalists as being polluters – not only noisy but emitted a lot of pollutants – read CO2.

All we hear, however, is the usual platitudes of conservation (of which we can do, but effective only to a point), and use of renewable resources.  Hydrogen, they say!  Solar, they say!  Wind is free!

Yet, with all that, the energy density of those proposals, never mind the economics, just aren’t there yet. And to have a growing economy, more energy has to be found and made available.  I will be truthful – I have no mind to regress back to even the early 19th century – and I am certainly not enamored of what want – a return back to the "simple life" of the romanticized "noble savage" age.  To those to whom that notion tickles your fancy, be my guest; just don’t expect me to join you.  Or legislate me to either.

And I detect, with no small amount of irony that while some say wind, other say not here.  The largest hypocrisy is in MA where the Cape Wind project to be located in Nantucket sound is being shot down by none other than Senators Teddy Kennedy and John Kerry (it’s all about the view, it’s all about safety in the shipping lanes, it’s all about fishing, it’s all about them not wanting to navigate their sailing yachts among the windmills).

Even here in the Lakes Region of NH, our Select Board Chair, Alice Boucher, shot down a suggestion by Doug to locate a couple of windmills atop the local mountain ridge that is in the Town on aesthetic reasons to generate clean energy (personally, I like the idea of pristine white windmills turning in the breeze).

Anyways, let’s not forget about why nuclear is getting a push – it really absolutely can solve one of the environmentalists bugaboos (worthy of an Oscar, dontcha know):

NRG spokesman David Knox said building new nuclear plants like the one his company is planning will be major steps toward battling global warming.

"Nuclear is clean, safe and secure and will be critical to help meet rising electrical demand without contributing to global climate change," Knox said.

And it is safe.  While Three Mile Island will never be forgotten, even with human bungling, containment system worked.  Yes, in Russia, not so much (and there, we can blame bad design, shoddy workmanship, and just plain stupidity and carelessness).  However, compare that to just this year with all of the deaths in coal mines here in the US and abroad (especially China, which has had a horrific death rate in their mines).   

Just look if the anti-nuke folks in Texas would look at this! 

 

The environmental groups are challenging the project on several fronts in addition to the long-standing complaints about the dangers of storing nuclear waste indefinitely and the role it may play in nuclear weapons proliferation.

You know, one of the most laughable parts of this is the scenario of us having to protect future generations from our waste storage AS IF FUTURE GENERATIONS WILL BE ABSOLUTE MORONS!  I just keep raising my eyebrows everytime I see an article of how we might signal to our successors (as if civilization completely disappeared and things went back to the Stone age) "please, don’t go there, you’ll get hurt".  I find both precepts rather silly, to be honest. 

This too: 

The groups point to the industry’s last round of construction in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when projects regularly ran over budget and schedule, as proof new projects will also be costly.

Er, remember back 30 years….it was not the construction costs that made things prohibitive (remember, Seabrook was supposed to have TWO reactors – the second one was shelved due to cost overruns).

Rather, the Clamshell Alliance used one legal gambit after another to lengthen the production schedule and drove up the cost.  And that was reproduced over and over again across the country.  And as a slap against Hollywood (who only claims to mirror society – what dribble!),  the move "China Syndrome" didn’t help.  Even back then, liberals knew the power of information warfare.

Neil Carman, director of the clean air program for the Sierra Club in Texas, said the state’s environmental community hasn’t addressed nuclear energy for many years. In Texas organizers spent a lot of time and effort in the past two years fighting TXU’s plans to build nearly a dozen new coal-fired power plants.

Law of Unintended Consequences – you argue against one thing and you got another.  Looking backward, and against the backdrop of CO2-induced global warming, which will be better?

Or do you want us all sitting by the dim light of whale oil, keeping warm by releasing the CO2 of lots of wood stoves?  Remember, it gets chilly up here in the Northland….Remember, the folks in CA weren’t all that keen about living the simple life.

Frankly, like the present Iraq war, I see this as just one more opportunity for the aging hippies to come out to relive their glory days once again?  I’ll laugh like a fool if their electrical wheelchairs that will allow them protest in the first place grind to a halt with nowhere to recharge! 

Life can be simplified by saying that there are always tradeoffs.  When you make something a scare commodity, everyone will get dinged.  This will be especially true if that commodity is electricity.  That is especially true of your ideology is one that does not allow for tradeoffs.  Even as a real political conservative, nothing will ever be as I want. 

The adult thing to do is to weigh alternatives.  For me, it seems that a mix of energy producing technologies will be needed.  Before you brand me a right wing nutcase on this issue (and yes, that monniker may stick on other issues, fer sure!), know that I live in a passive solar hour.  I had an active solar house when I lived in MA.  And I just got a quote for a TAP (Thermosiphoning Air Panel for solar space heating – I LOVED them back in my old house!).  I am excited about the PV breakthroughs that may be just around the corner that will provide energy at or even below existing prices by wrapping my house in the new materials. 

Good things will come….but we’ve been waiting a long time for them too and I’m not ready to hold my breath.

Remember, I do like the electrons that allow me to do this!