New Jersey Utility is Mulling Over a 4th New Jersey Nuclear Plant.

[NNadir]

Here in New Jersey half of our energy is produced by dangerous fossil fuels that generate dangerous fossil fuel wastes for which no permanent repository is planned.

The other half, the clean half, is generated by nuclear power.

New Jersey, as is often noted by other posters in this space, has one of the most generous renewable energy programs in the United States, but these programs are mostly notable for not having done anything at all to eliminate the use of dangerous fossil fuels in this State.

As the entire New Jersey coastline will be decimated by the effects of the indiscriminate dumping of dangerous fossil fuel wastes into our atmosphere, it is important that we in this state act quickly and effectively to minimize the use of dangerous fossil fuels.

With this in mind, I am thrilled to learn that a new nuclear power plant is being evaluated in this state:

Fourth nuke plant mulled
Friday, April 20, 2007
By JOHN BARNA
Staff Writer

A fourth nuclear reactor is under discussion for the Artificial Island Nuclear Generating Station the nation's second largest such complex.

The prospect was raised earlier this week at a Public Service Enterprise Group shareholder's meeting in Newark...

..."It's exploratory," PSEG Nuclear spokesman Chic Cannon said Thursday. "It's keeping options open for the future."

"They mentioned they are in exploratory talks with another company to build another reactor," said Neil Sheehan, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in King of Prussia, Pa.

The Artificial Island Nuclear Generating Station "would be priority choice" to host another reactor, Cannon said.

That's the home of the Salem I and II nuclear plants opened in 1977 and 1981 respectively and Hope Creek, which opened in 1986.

Sheehan said the existing Artificial Island Nuclear Generating Station would be a logical location for a fourth plant transmission lines and other infrastructure are already in place...

...Company spokesman Paul Rosengren said the Salem and Hope Creek site was originally intended to have four nuclear units.

"But we only built three..."

http://www.nj.com/news/sunbeam/index.ssf?/base/news-2/1177053605164540.xml&coll=9

Currently nuclear electricity provides 50% of the electricity in New Jersey. With relicensing of Oyster Creek, we can hope to come closer to a goal of being climate change gas free in our electrical power system. This is very good news.

I'm very happy.

[havocmom]

1. Be sure and keep those spend rods in New Jersey

We really don't want that garbage sent to us out here in the west. If it is as safe as they try and convince us in the kill zones of proposed dump sites, fine and dandy. Keep it where ya used it. Bury in your own back yards and stop sending it all out west. People live here too.

[NNadir]

2. But you have no problem dumping garbage in the air, I bet.

For the record, spent nuclear fuel has been stored in this state for more than 30 years without a single loss of life.

In fact, this statement is generally true of the entire United States, where the number of people injured, never mind killed, by spent nuclear fuel has remained zero for decades.

This is not true of the garbage you dump in the atmosphere, which kills not only where you live, but everywhere on the planet when you burn coal. In fact quite a bit of the toxic metals released by coal burning people to our West settles in New Jersey, where it contaminates all of our water and soil.

For the record, I would support a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in my state, mostly because I am concerned about my planet and because I actually understand nuclear chemistry.

What is the plan in the West to dispose of dangerous fossil fuel waste? Simply because you use selective attention and don't care how many people die from dangerous fossil fuel waste, doesn't mean you are being wise about it.

[havocmom]

3. All for solar and wind myself

Got lots of that around and it doesn't seem to seep poisons into the water table.

[NNadir]

4. Big deal. Everyone is for solar and wind. Meanwhile they dump more fossil fuel

waste in the atmosphere while waiting for their fantasy Godot.

There have been lots of people reciting platitudes about solar and wind for decades.

Guess what? It's denial at this point. It's a big game of pretend and, by the way, it is a game that kills people.

Do you have any idea what the world capacity for producing solar cells is in a given year? Do you have even the faintest comprehension how that capacity would compare to the new gas plants under construction around the world? The new coal plants?

Have you looked into what's going on in "nuclear phase out" Germany?

There has not been one exajoule of energy produced on this planet in a single year by solar and wind, not one.

World demand for energy is 470 exajoules.

Maybe you think that climate change is some kind of a game, maybe because you live on a high plateau somewhere. Your pedestrian fantasies and platitudes about solar and wind have no bearing whatsoever on the concerns of the billions of people, many of them poor, who live in low lying areas and what is happening to them now.

For the record, we have a huge renewable subsidy program here in New Jersey, one of the most generous in this country. It is ineffective and does almost nothing at all. All the solar power in New Jersey cannot prevent the climate change output of 10,000 SUV's in spite of oodles of money and enthusiasm and happy talk.

We need nuclear power in this state. Nuclear power saves lives, our lives.

Now let's talk about the holy West and its wonderful energy program:

Here is a state-by-state analysis of the amount of dangerous fossil fuel waste dumped indiscriminately into the atmosphere:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggrpt/excel/tbl_statetotal.xls

Not one Western State has announced a program of phasing out fossil fuels for power generation, and not one Western State could do it as easily as New Jersey can. With 3 or 4 more nuclear plants we could easily eliminate the dumping of dangerous fossil fuel wastes from power plants in this state, much as they have done in Vermont, and even export clean electricity to states that have not been smart enough to build new nuclear power plants.

I note that in just about every State in the Union, indiscriminate fossil fuel waste dumping is near or at historic highs. The main reason that this is the case is the morally and intellectually absurd antinuclear position that thinks that only nuclear energy has risks. The risks of nuclear energy are known, worldwide, to be lower than any other scalable exajoule form of energy.

[havocmom]

6. Take the nukes and KEEP them on yer east coast

Somehow, the west keeps getting the garbage from you 'clean' nukes.

There are wind turbines and solar equipment going up all over the place where I live.

Was just reading last week about the guys in New Zealand making solar panel equipment from titanium instead of silicon - gonna be cheaper.

There are people around here using all sorts of solar applications and this in NOT a hotbed of liberal vision.

Why keep insisting on nuke when they STILL can't make containment safe? It is just another problem, not the end-all solution.

You selling stock, or what?

[NNadir]

9. Take your carbon dioxide and keep it out west.

If you find someone injured by failed containment at a nuclear station in this country get back to me. You CAN'T produce a case, since THERE IS NO CASE.

When you have shut your filthy fossil fuel plants, I will know since I <em>follow</em> the dumping of dangerous fossil fuel wastes using numbers, not that you are interested in numbers.

Obviously your "gonna be cheaper" crap - the last 50 years of it - hasn't prevented you from indiscriminately dumping your crap into the atmosphere.

You have no containment for your dangerous fossil fuel waste and you don't care either. You dump it, and you dump it and you dump it and then you come at me for reporting that we have kept every last gram of our spent nuclear fuel right here in New Jersey for 30 years.

Personally, I think that all of these renewable games are effectively supported by the fossil fuel companies, who are the real winners in the "renewables will save us" game. Not one. Not one. Not one fossil fuel plant has ever been shut by solar power. Zero.

In the meantime, since nuclear power plants do not dump dangerous waste in the atmosphere indiscriminately, they have, since 1980, prevented the increase in concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by 3 ppm, eliminating entirely an amount of dangerous fossil fuel waste equivalent to the amount released by the entire United States in a single year from all sources.

LET ME KNOW WHEN YOU PLAN TO STOP DUMPING FILTH IN MY ATMOSPHERE!!!!!!

[havocmom]

13. UM, lots more coal buring plants east of me.

I see the trains full of coal heading that way.

[NNadir]

15. But the coal plants aren't east of me. Their filth rains on my children.

I'm sure you're not interested in any way in that fact.

All you could say about was New Jersey was "keep your own waste," but you don't keep yours. As it happens even if you burn natural gas for electricity, you are dumping dangerous fossil fuel wastes into the atmosphere.

You choose arbitrarily to define the only waste problem worthy of consideration as being so called "nuclear waste," although thus far it has proved harmless, and you choose arbitrarily to ignore coal waste.

Here's a surprise for you. While you happily muse that the coal trains move east, coal waste (and natural gas waste) pumped out to your east finds it's way all the way around the planet. It kills everywhere, and as climate change proceeds, will kill more broadly. You may feel smug about this matter, but their is no escaping dangerous coal waste. It's a gas. It's dumped without restriction in quantities measuring billions of tons per year.

[Systematic Chaos]

5. I've been hearing about the "salvation" of solar and wind for most of my 38 years

I've also been waiting for it to do something, anything, to reduce the CO2 emissions that now threaten to flood out tens of thousand of miles of land because of rising ocean levels, and which, along with particulates and other deadly gases, are turning children all over the globe into wheezing athsmatics.

So, where is the shit? Oh, right. A couple megawatts here, a couple there. That's going to accumulate just like magic into a solution? The information that China is averaging about one new coal-fired, pollutant spewing plant every week has been posted here. The satellite photos showing countless thousands of square miles of land completely obscured by sulfurous haze have been posted here. All kinds of sound science has been posted here showing that the slow trickle of renewable energy being added, a drop here, a drop there, is not enough to change the course we are on. And now -- to borrow a lovely Fux Nooze catch phrase -- some people are in these forums clapping and cheering that we're going to turn a large percentage of our food production land over to crops to feed our vehicles, in spite of the fact that the Mexican population is about to start rioting en masse due to the astronomical increases in food prices due to our inability to supply them with enough extra corn.

It's a good thing there weren't any poisons "in our water table" already due to fossil fuels, or else those nasty-wasty nuclear proponents might have something that looks like a valid point. And we wouldn't want to wake from our collective sleep of utter denial to something like that. It would make our brains hurt or something. :eyes:

[Dead_Parrot]

7. It does, actually.

The US's largest silicon smelter (in Alloy, WV) uses a shitload of coal, dumping tons of mercury, arsenic, selenium (and lots of CO2, of course) into the air and the surrounding environment: Try eating some genuine West Virginian sushi and let us know how you feel.

Or did you think all those PV panels grew on a tree somewhere?

[havocmom]

8. That's why the guys in New Zealand are so cool- no silicon for their panels

MUCH greener.

[Dogmudgeon]

10. This is about "Coolness" -- ?

I thought we were discussing dealing with a number of serious challenges and threats to human life, not some social innovation that The Fonz would endorse.

Non-silicon solar PV panels? With Titanium? That would be nice to see. Last year, the miracle solar ingredient was magnesium oxide, which is better known as Milk of Magnesia. No, I'm NOT joking; I wish that I were.

To hell with the Kool Kidz Klub. I'm worried about my health and my long-term survival. And not just mine, but everyone's. I'm tired of the lies of a small, loud, preening bunch of well-heeled tastemakers telling us that our best energy technology doesn't meet their standards for social acceptability.

Solar panels are currently dirty to manufacture. We need one million wind generators at minimum just to generate our electricity, and each of those would require a 250-foot-high concrete-and-rebar pylon and a generator with the bulk of five trucks, and generate skull-crushing infrasonic acoustic noise. We don't even have any established designs for tidal power generation. And biofuel is quickly turning into just another corporate boondoggle and has begun to affect the ability of the poor in Mexico to eat.

Fonzie is NOT going to save us.

--p!

[Systematic Chaos]

12. Three random thoughts:

1) AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!

2) Thank you for repeating the situation in Mexico. Between the depletion of Cantrell (sp?) and the hyperinflating cost of corn for tortillas, the rate of illegal immigration is nothing compared to what it might be in another 5 years, wall or no.

3) Time to fire up Mavis Beacon and give Dvorak a spin. I can hit spurts near 90 wpm with qwerty but it's uncomfortable and I plain hate it. :)

[Dead_Parrot]

11. We'll see.

Dye-based PV has been kicking around since 1991, and result so far is that everyone's building coal and gas plants, so I'm not holding my breath. Solar's track record in miracle advances that look great on press releases before vanishing into the archives is less than impressive, but maybe it's 333rd time lucky...

[ramapo]

14. What if?

Like NNadir I am heartened to know that a new nuke is under consideration for NJ. This from a former anti-nuker. I do wish that things had turned out differently but it appears that nuclear is the only realistic source of energy that can replace coal. Coal is killing us, simple as that.

Retrofitting our infrastructure for solar is not going to happen anytime soon and as another poster noted, solar has a pretty filthy beginning.

Unfortunately, it will be many years (probably many, many) before a plant could be constructed. There will be much outcry. It may turn out to be only a replacement for the much maligned Salem plant, which many want shutdown, although nobody mentions what would replace its generating capacity.

Now imagine what the world may have been like had coal not replaced nuclear as the fuel of choice....

Thousands of square miles of land would not have been strip-mined. The environmental carnage wrought by extracting energy from tar sands might never had been. Perhaps the electric car would've been viable as a short-haul transportation option. Perhaps all trains would've run on electricity. No, I won't claim that it would've been too cheap to meter. Bottom line is we could've prevented an awful lot of CO2, plus all the other crap, from winding up in our atmosphere.

Yes the thought of a catastrophic accident at a plant is horrific and there are the problems and expenses of decommissioning the plants and handling the waste. But these two problems seem almost trivial compared to the problems that we now face due to coal.