3. Businesses are profit driven. If they can cut costs, they will, in order to maximise profits, so having your nuclear reactors operated by business, along business lines isn't necessarily more efficient nor safer. Free market economics don't work in the nuclear industry IMO.
Then make them government operated if it bothers you that much. my government isn't even concerned about saving money, let alone profit.
Airliners are profit driven businesses and yet airline accidents are extremely rare and air travel is statistically the safest form of travel.
4. Invariably Government and Big Business end up hand in glove where nuclear matters are concerned.
This is true as it is an extremely regulated industry.
extremely regulated. its not "hand in glove" though its more like a constant prostate exam with a large government thumb.
The result is that Government, because of it's vested interests in nuclear matters, doesn't enforce regulations and punish Big Business when it errs. The result is again maintenance budgets are cut, upgrades don't occur and reactors and generator systems are neglected. When things are discovered, cover ups all too often occur because Government and Big Business are sensitive about such matters.
That is utter poppycock. My experience with federal regulations in aviation has been extremely simple. I play ball or I face the consequences fine, jail, or shut down. If we were working together someone forgot to tell them. This experience has only been further reinforced as I get into accounting and other business.
There is also the problem of multiple federal agencies that won't play ball: NRC, EPA, DOE, FERC etc. not to mention the IRS and SEC you have a better chance of walking blindly into a pool filled with strippers and beer while it rains frogs than any of those agencies turning a blind eye to anything out of the norm at a nuclear plant and working "hand in glove". Not to mention the standard adversarial role that nuclear power would have with large sections of the public ensuring its always under a microscope. Generally saying the government would cover for nuclear plants is not at all based on reality and nothing more than a stereotype quickly shot down when one looks at the myriad of federal agencies in the US alone that are specifically AND ALREADY built and protecting against all the things you warn about as we speak.
You can't have it both ways as you are trying to paint any government involvement to ensure safety compliance is then spun into "the more involvement the less safety compliance! now they are in it together!"
As 2 is nigh on impossible, I don't think I'll be supporting Nuclear Energy soon.
I'm glad you realize that expectation is not only impossible, but for some reason you feel it can only apply to nuclear power. I presume you support air travel run by private airlines and regulated by federal authorities right? or trucking companies that are also businesses under federal regs, like most things in western nations?
This has been a fun thread because its like a litmus test to see everyone grind the old political bias and stereotype axe against a new target. Again I wish we had these same level of safety concern and need for guaranteed safety and long term human and environmental health with coal. this is far less about nuclear power and much more about general distrust of governments, business, and government business, along with a child like notion that anything less than 100 percent is unacceptable, when nothing is 100 percent guaranteed already. Why should this be any different than any other enterprise civil, government, or private?
I just find hypocritical that we have this massive, well beyond reasonable expectation of nuclear power and refuse to even consider it unless we are promised perfection, and yet in the meantime we continue to deplete and devastate whole environments with and ill health effects that will harm generations to come
right now with not only little expectation of perfection, but little expectation at all. i truly wish the word
coal had the same boogey man effect that the word
nuclear does. Coal is doing
right now everything bad we are told about nuclear.
The kicker is nuclear is here. It exists and has been used operationally for decades. So this whole debate should have a ton of evidence to fall back on, rather than political biased straw arguments. Take a nation like France for example. Where is all the unsafe operation? the rampant corruption I am told would lead to massive accidents? Where is the environmental devastation I have been hearing about? the safety short cuts that would inevitably happen? or is france just "lucky" and they keep pulling the trigger on empty chambers? is it possible France actually has a fine nuclear program that should be envied and even by existing it invalidates a lot of the knee jerk reactions about nuclear energy dangers?
A lot of this stuff is just rehashed 1970's arguments with a little big brother/big business paranoia sprinkled in.
There are currently 65 commercially operating nuclear power plants with 104 nuclear reactors in 31 states around the country. Thirty-six of the plants have two or more reactors. These plants have generated about 20% of U.S. electricity each year since 1990. The Palo Verde plant in Arizona has 3 reactors and the largest combined generating capacity of 3,942 Megawatts (MW) in 2010. Fort Calhoun in Nebraska has the smallest capacity with a single reactor at 478 Megawatts (MW) in 2010.
http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=207&t=3
Now how does increasing this to say 100 NPPs in 50 states suddenly change everything? is 99 NPPs in 49 states perfectyl fine but 1 more in 1 more state suddenly leads to government and business conspiracy? where is the threshold? and why havn't we seen more issues with the 65 NPPs already?
again we are talking about the pros and cons of nuclear power. Nuclear power in this case now have a well established history. Can we stop framing this debate like nuclear power plants are theoretical devices that if built, have the magical power to corrupt people and governments y their very nature?
