LLAW’s All Things Nuclear #620, Saturday, (05/04/2024)
LLAW’s All Things Nuclear #620, Saturday, (05/04/2024)
“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”
In this April 29, 2015 photo, a home sits within view of the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant cooling towers Unit 1, left, and Unit 2 near Spring City, Tenn. VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
LLAW’s NUCLEAR ISSUES & COMMENTS, Saturday, (05/04/2024)
I have posted the 1st portion of this long article (the rest is well worth reading and I’ve posted the link to the full story below) here tonight to demonstrate the complications involved in trying to remediate and expand the very concept of nuclear power in the United States and elsewhere and how nearly impossible the effort will be to build and fuel these pie-in-the-sky efforts by overriding, ignoring, and avoiding Russian control of ‘everything nuclear’ via the supremacy of their own government owned and operated corporation called Rosatom. The sheer costs of these pipe dreams could bankrupt our federal government when added to the already out of control Department of Defense budget.
I have to wonder if we would not be wiser, and certainly humanity would be safer, if we invested in a grand and realistic program to help finance renewables and to seriously look into the idea of developing and generating massive use of electrical energy from already existing steam from geo-thermal resources from volcanic calderas (and other sources) such as Yellowstone, where logic tells us to begin. Many genuine experts in the technical, geological, engineering, and utility power industry believe such a grass-roots effort is possible both technically and financially and could solve — faster than expanding a single new full-scale nuclear power plan — virtually every serious difficulty we have in our need for more power including the CO2 global warming and climate change problem, and never build nor use another nuclear power plant again, much less build new ones. ~llaw
The link to this entire article from HuffPost is also provided here and also in the TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS, Saturday, (05/04/2024) below for your convenience:
POLITICSCLIMATE CHANGEENERGYCLEAN ENERGY
A Century-Old Company The Government Owns Wants To Solve A Big Energy Problem
If Congress lets it.
May 4, 2024, 08:30 AM EDT
|Updated 3 hours ago
132 COMMENTS
The Biden administration wants the United States to triple the global supply of nuclear power, with American-designed reactors running on fuel enriched in the West. The goal: Usurp Russia’s near monopoly on atomic energy exports, and keep China from gaining control of yet another green energy industry.
But there’s one big problem: The U.S. isn’t even building any more reactors at home.
After nearly 15 years of billion-dollar cost overruns and delays, the utility giant Southern Company just hooked the second of two new reactors at a power plant in Georgia up to the grid this week — the only two atomic energy units built from scratch in the U.S. in decades. Developers are shopping around all kinds of novel designs for new-age nuclear plants. Yet few utilities can afford — or persuade investors to put up the cash for — projects that can take a decade or more to complete.
Luckily for President Joe Biden, the federal government owns a massive power utility specifically designed to deploy large-scale infrastructure that remains out of reach for the market’s invisible hand. But building new megaprojects means borrowing money — and Congress hasn’t bothered to adjust the utility’s credit limit for inflation in 45 years.
Established almost exactly 91 years ago to electrify rural parts of the American South too poor to attract profiteering utilities, the Tennessee Valley Authority today generates and sells power to 153 local distributors that serve 10 million people in Tennessee and the surrounding region. The TVA’s seven reactors, spread out between three nuclear power plants, churned out 43% of its electricity in the past few months.
The TVA functions like any other independent power company. But the New Deal-era state corporation’s board of directors is appointed by the White House and its shares are owned by the federal government. That makes the TVA the closest thing the U.S. has to the kind of government-controlled entity that other countries have tasked with completing their own years-long nuclear megaprojects.
France, Japan, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, Poland and Ukraine all use government ownership to build and operate nuclear energy plants. The Kremlin-owned Rosatom has only widened Russia’s lead over the U.S. in reactor and uranium fuel exports in recent years, while successfully deploying new technologies at home. China’s state utilities have built reactors at home faster than any other country, and the country now looks poised to begin exporting its reactor designs in direct competition with the U.S.
Putting the TVA at the cutting edge of the U.S. government’s nuclear revival strategy is not a new idea. But it’s gaining momentum. The utility is already working on two next-generation projects to build some of the country’s first small modular reactors. Now even the regulator who oversaw construction of the nation’s only all-new reactors in Georgia is encouraging the TVA to take up the challenge of constructing more. (Copy the available link to read the full article.)
“I think we need to do everything possible.”
- Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.)
Arthur Delaney contributed reporting from Washington.
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 6 categories, including a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives, as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links in each category about the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are three Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in tonight’s Post.)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS, Saturday, (05/04/2024)
All Things Nuclear
NEW
Modern Marvels: UNBELIEVABLE Origins of Nuclear Warfare *2 Hour Marathon* - YouTube
YouTube
... all platforms. The network's all ... things we wonder about and that impact our lives. ... Modern Marvels: UNBELIEVABLE Origins of Nuclear Warfare *2 Hour ...
Q&A: What's the Deal with Bill Gates's Wyoming Nuclear Plant? - Inside Climate News
Inside Climate News
But in fact, a nuclear plant, everything else being the same, typically employs more people than a coal-fired plant. So there are several advantages ...
New Era for Nuclear Power - Living on Earth
Living on Earth
CURWOOD: What about all the atomic weapons that people would like to see decommissioned? To what extent might that help the fuel situation for nuclear ...
Nuclear Power
NEWS
A Century-Old Company The Government Owns Wants To Solve A Big Energy Problem - HuffPost
HuffPost
The Biden administration wants the United States to triple the global supply of nuclear power, with American-designed reactors running on fuel ...
World Nuclear Association
South Korea is among the world's most prominent nuclear energy countries, and exports its technology widely. Today 26 reactors provide about ...
AI investment boom extends to nuclear power generation and uranium - Nikkei Asia
Nikkei Asia
This reflects investor expectations that nuclear power-related companies will benefit from an explosive increase in electricity demand resulting from ...
Nuclear Power Emergencies
NEWS
Ukraine conducts disaster response drills near Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant - Yahoo Life UK
Yahoo Life UK
Ukraine conducts disaster response drills near Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. An anti-radiation drills for case of an emergency situation at Zaporizhzhia ...
The US fears China's military use of its floating nuclear power plants | УНН
unn.ua
УНН War ✎ China is pushing ahead with plans to build floating nuclear reactors that could power military installations in the disputed South ...
Nuclear War
NEWS
George F. Will: Voters, please think about the menace of nuclear annihilation | Columnists
Union Leader
Reading “Nuclear War: A Scenario” by reporter and historian Annie Jacobsen will take you much longer than the 30 or so minutes — 1,800 seconds — that ...
Nuclear War Fears Drive New Market for Bomb Shelters - Business Insider
Business Insider
Joshua Jordan, an engineer in Texas, builds emergency bunkers for wealthy clients who are nervous about a nuclear disaster.
How Macron wants to 'Europeanize' nuclear deterrence - Le Monde
Le Monde
The French president is looking to extend France's nuclear deterrent capability in light of Donald Tump's possible return to the White House and ...
Nuclear War Threats
NEW
AI and Nukes: An unimaginable threat | WION Fineprint - YouTube
YouTube
The ultimate threat: Artificial Intelligence and the nuclear conundrum ... China Threatens Nuclear Attack ... Annie Jacobsen on Nuclear War - a Second by ...
World may be on brink of 'hybrid World War 3' - and could lead to 'radioactive Europe' report warns
The Mirror
... nuclear threat" in Russia's hands after its withdrawal from nuclear deterrence treaties. Those nuclear threats may continue to grow as the ...
Why the UK says Ukraine can now target Russia with British weapons
Washington Examiner
... war on Ukraine has already demolished the entire European security architecture. The U.K. and France recognize that just as Russian nuclear threats ...
Yellowstone Caldera
NEWS
Complicated calculations reveal when Yellowstone is heating up - Billings Gazette
Billings Gazette
Yellowstone caldera and resurgent domes are outlined in black. Thermal areas in the inset images are annotated with geothermal radiant emittance ...
Mag. 2.4 quake - 6 km S of Volcano, Hawaii, on Friday, May 3, 2024, at 07:57 am (Honolulu time)
Volcano Discovery
List and interactive map of current and past earthquakes near Yellowstone volcano. Earthquakes 2016 · Earthquakes 2016 · Top 20 quakes in 2016
Mag. 3.9 earthquake - North Pacific Ocean, 70 km southeast of Shikotan, Sakhalin , Russia ...
Volcano Discovery
... caldera and erupts every few years. ... Do you know which is the biggest volcano in the world? Yellowstone quakes · Yellowstone quakes · Latest ...