Billions of gallons of water are used daily. Hot water from radioactive rods are poured back into streams and destroy the ecology and life. Cancer rates soar. (Greenpeace, 2006 Peter B Collins podcast). Eighty percent of the cost is born by the public while only 20% by the 'owners'. Corporate welfare. No insurance company will insure. (R.F. Kennedy Jr., Ring of Fire Radio broad/podcast 2/14/ 2010). So Joe Public gets to pay for that too. Why do we keep voting against our ability to be self-sufficent? Why do we keep voting to destroy ourselves. Common sense people! Hello. It's Radioactive! France and Britain are disposing their radioactive spent fuel rods where? Moreover, why do we have a President with no environmental vision/ education. Georgia is known for it's drought and we are going to use the fragile water supply we have there to power our appliances and computers when solar thermal is competitive with the cost of coal. Jobs? Give me a break! 8 billion dollars to hire 800 workers over how long? And then how many to run the plant. Why have centralized power when each of us can be our own power plant?
Research what has happened when the drought became so severe a number of years ago that the power plants had to be shut down.
Below is a link to Nuclear Power Belongs in a Museum. This was written by Hermann Scheer, author of the legislation enacted in Germany that has that country on track to have 20% of its power as solar by 2020.
Further, the technology used to enhance nuclear material for weapons and as targets, continues to proliferate. The President wants to stop the proliferation of nuclear power, by...enhancing nuclear power? THINK
Here is the link:
http://bit.ly/dwcBC7
Here is more about how we will have to choose between water and nuclear power:
Nuclear plants are subject to restrictions on the temperature of the discharged coolant, because hot water can kill fish or plants or otherwise disrupt the environment. Those restrictions, coupled with the drought, led to the one-day shutdown Aug. 16 of a TVA reactor at Browns Ferry in Alabama.
At Progress Energy Inc., which operates four reactors in the drought zone, officials warned in November that the drought could force it to shut down its Harris reactor near Raleigh, according to documents obtained by the AP. The water in Harris Lake stands at 218.5 feet — just 3 1/2 feet above the limit set in the plant's license.
During Europe's brutal 2006 heat wave, French, Spanish and German utilities were forced to shut down some of their nuclear plants and reduce power at others because of low water levels — some for as much as a week.
An Associated Press analysis of the nation's 104 nuclear reactors found that 24 are in areas experiencing the most severe levels of drought. All but two are built on the shores of lakes and rivers and rely on submerged intake pipes to draw billions of gallons of water for use in cooling and condensing steam after it has turned the plants' turbines.
Because of the year-long dry spell gripping the region, the water levels on those lakes and rivers are getting close to the minimums set by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Over the next several months, the water could drop below the intake pipes altogether. Or the shallow water could become too hot under the sun to use as coolant.
"If water levels get to a certain point, we'll have to power it down or go off line," said Robert Yanity, a spokesman for South Carolina Electric & Gas Co., which operates the Summer nuclear plant outside Columbia, S.C.
The water was low on the Tennessee River and had become warmer than usual under the hot sun. By the time it had been pumped through the Browns Ferry plant, it had become hotter still — too hot to release back into the river, according to the TVA. So the utility shut down a reactor.
Excerpts above taken from: http://www.usatoday.com/weather/drought/2008-01-24-drought-power_N.htm
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And also, Associated Press
http://www.heatisonline.org/contentserver/objecthandlers/index.cfm?ID=6809&Method=Full
Drought Map
http://www.drought.unl.edu/dm/monitor.html
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Search terms into google “water shrinkage lake mead drought”
Search terms into google “water shrinkage great lakes drought”
Shrinking Great Lakes http://detnews.com/specialreports/1999/lakes/lead/lead.htm
SAC BEE How low can it go? Drought puts Folsom boaters in limbo http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/1099205.html
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Thank you for your intellectually honest discourse
