Why has a Nuclear Power plant not been built in almost 30 years?

Question

Especially since it is the safest, most efficient, cheapest, and cleanest technology available? No one has ever died from a Nuclear Power Plant.......hundreds are killed each year mining for polluting coal mines.

http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=16809

No how many people died on 3 mile island.......NONE. Most people think Nuclear is dangerous because they are ignorant to the facts.

Actually Chernobyl killed 56 people. But you thought...thousands. And this was due to a bankrupt country that did not care about safety. US has had .....NO deaths. But hundreds every year mining coal or drilling for oil.

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

Over 50,000 people die a year in car accidents....there is an adherant risk in everything. But no one is banning cars.

The waste goes will go to Yucca Mountain. Very safe. Even transporting nuclear waste is as close to fool proof statistically as anything your mind can understand.

http://www.yuccamountain.org/new.htm

TheChin.....Your absolutely incorrect. Here are some facts for you to enjoy.

http://www.uic.com.au/nip08.htm

Answer 1

The answer(s) are complex but it boils (pardon the puns) down to fear of radiation. The public has no sense of proportion when it comes to radiation (not detectable by the senses, scientific stuff, can cause cancer, etc). Of course everyone has much more radioactivity coming from them (potassium-40's gamma rays) than they will absorb from nuclear power.

There are two types of waste being produced in nuclear power plants: low-level short half-life and the longer lived stuff. The short half-life waste has about a 30 year (maximum) half-life. In 30 years half of it will be gone. So in 210 years, we will have less that 1% remaining. Most of the waste is this sort and most of it really is shorter lived.

The second type is found in the fuel rods. The nuclides in it are very long lived, thousands of years, and dominated by Plutonium and Americium. A terrorist could not 1) just use the plutonium to make a bomb -- it takes lots of careful chemistry to sort that out without being killed from the dose rate, or 2) just drive up to the storage facility to get it. Nuclear plants have enormous and well-trained security forces. Hey, where do you think veterans are finding employment?

The long-term waste can be handled in a few ways: the best is to purify the plutonium and use it in the reactors again. The next best is to just embed it in glass and bury it underground. Both are doable.

Nuclear power plants do not create the greenhouse gases that burning fossil fuel does. It does not kill tremendous amounts of migrating birds like windmills do (and the wind does not blow that strongly often enough - go to see a windfarm sometime). It does not release sulfur, arsenic, and radon like geothermal plants (and few places are good for geothermal). It does not have the enormous impact on the shoreline like a tidal powered station. It does not have the high cost and toxic byproducts like solar electric.

Those of you who want hydrogen, how are you going to get it? You need electricity to split the water. Electrcity has to come from somewhere.

Fortunately, a few new plants are being sited around the US. I hope some of the younger folks are preparing for a career in nuclear power. The average age of the workforce is now around 50. We will especially need those who can safeguard the environment from radiation and chemistry pollution.

Answer 2

Big Business!

Energy is controlled by big business.

The last thing a carbon energy producer wants to see is cheap nuclear power.

Thus spend however much it costs to keep the costs of nuclear power up.

Last week 1,200 people died from black lung disease and tuberculosis in this country. Just how many died from TMI? Answer = 0! Still want to consume coal?

Why do we not like nuclear power, simple, we believe idiots that say it is dangerous.

What is dangerous is spewing tens of thousands of tons of carbon dioxide, monoxide, sulphur etc into the atmosphere.

Polluting ground water with run off from our roads and streets as a result of oil consumption.

Let's not get all crazy about solar power either. Cost more energy in fossil fuel to create the panels, than they are worth. Science needs to catch up with us on that area.

Nuclear power is the safest, most cost effective, environmentally friendly form of energy we can consume, and it seems to be last on our list. Go figure. As for the radioactive waste generated, simple, do what the French do and bury it in glass containers in the ground. Then circulate water over the stable mass and heat your homes. Worst case, condense it and shoot it into space. Target the Sun.

Answer 3

The advances in nuclear power generation have taken quantum (excuse the pun) leaps in recent years. Nuclear power plants being built with tdays technologyu and design look, act, operate and maintain nothing like the behemoths of 3 mile island fame. We should be generating ALL of our electricity between nuclear, wind and solar, put the stuff( it was readioactive when it was dug up from the ground and put into the reactor) BACK into the ground... Why do you think the core of this planet is molten anyway? It is in part because the center of this planet is a huge nucllear meltdown that you owe your very existence to because it creates the magnetic field that shelters us from COSMIC & SOLAR RADIATION... How ironic.

Answer 4

I think there's a simple answer. The waste created last for tens of thousands of years and there is STILL no viable storage method. No state will take the nuclear waste. States will not allow the waste to pass through their territory. Nuclear power plants generate a lot of waste. Nuclear power plants generate material that can be diverted into weapons. Nuclear power plants are NOT clean.

Answer 5

Waste. All the The Nuke plants in the U.S. are storing toxic waste on their own facilities because there is nowhere to ship it. This makes each plant an unacceptable security risk because of terrorists. Al Qaeda doesn't need to buy a Nuke from Pakistan if they can get a Rider truck near one of these storage pools.

Additionally, nuke plants are continuously being shut down for poor safety practices and lack of regulation. It's such a dangerous operation that the safety and inspection apparatus around becomes a huge drain on taxes and governement. Nuke power isn't cheap, we as tax payers subsidize it heavily. All those income tax dollars you have to send away? Corporate subsidies.

Answer 6

No one died in Chernobyl? Maybe no one died on Three Mile Island, but it was only incidental. There so easily could have been many, many fatalities. I think wind power is probably a bit safer than nuclear, but I do agree that we need to stop mining for coal.

Answer 7

There has not been a Nuclear Power plant built in a long time because we do not, at this point in time, have a correct and safeproof way to dispose of the radioactive waste the Nuclear Power creates.

Answer 8

because the economical analysts overestimated the grid capacity 30 years ago and more plants were built than needed which due to simple economics, they produced massive losses to companies, oil prices also went down, in fact untill 2001, building a nuclear power plant in "US"(not other countries due to lower regulatory costs) was not economical, keep in mind the plants remaining from 30 years ago are profit machines now because the initial capital cost has been paid hence, the they are the most profitable form of energy produciton currently in US.

Answer 9

Hi
This all comes from governments policies and the fact of being able to get oil from the sea in large amounts.
Neuclear PSs cost alot to construct for the amout of power they actually produce, they also produce radio active waste that has to be put somewhere, usually underground.
To decomission a plant takes more money to build one, check out Sizewell A station in UK this will take years and years to make safe and dismantle.
Yes its clean and yes its sustainable but I think we need to look hard at renewables as well.
Hope this helps.

Answer 10

Er, Chernobyl has thus far claimed 56 lives. Though, as thousands have been exposed to various amounts of radiation, that number might rise. Of course, if a guy dies of cancer in 20 years, can it reliably be atributed to Chernobyl?

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

We're building a new reactor in Finland, biggest yet, I'm told. Ready in 2009.

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