One need not be “newly green” or well informed about the “fiscal implications” of nuclear power generation to know that the largest drawback to it is that there is NO way to safely, permanently dispose of its waste by-product. As Dr. Suess might say: No to nuclear power generation, here, there, anywhere.

Wake up Idaho! “This ain’t no disco! This ain’t no foolin’ around…” as the song goes.
This is a serious invasion of power companies, with both nuclear and coal plants planning to sell out-of-state. Magic Valley had to fight off California’s Sempra merchant coal plant last year, but the permit and water rights are for sale, and 3 other coal plant plans are proposed. This is the third merchant nuclear power plan. Idaho will do the dirty work, and your legislators invited these merchant plants, to sell out of state!
This is the 2005 Bush/Cheney/Otter/Republican Energy bill coming to fruition. We could adopt the laws of Oregon and California, that keep these disasterous power plants from building in their state. So why doesn’t Idaho protect itself? Why is Butch smiling? Please give Butch and your state reps a call, and ask they stop this invasion.
Two small clarifications though. I’ll miss Jeremy Maxand, but he and I both sounded the alarm when Gillespie’s Bruneau nuke power plans were revealed. The Guardian intro alluded that his absense was the reason for little opposition. To me, it is more because half the Idaho media is asleep at the wheel, and the other half is hoping to land a job as a spokesman for boys like Butch, so they only write polite articles,and only ask questions like “What would you like to do for Idaho?” , instead of any real investigative reporting.
And to be clear, the nuclear utilities collectively pay for Price-Anderson, to fill in the difference up to $10 Billion. So, even though that won’t cover the cost of a nuclear disaster, and it eventually gets shifted to consumers, taxpayers don’t officially pay for Price-Anderson.
But bottom line is that Dr Kirkpatrick is correct, and the true cost of nuclear power makes it a dead end road.
Since nuclear power simply uses steam to turn turbines, that generate electricity then, just like geothermal, to paraphrase Einstein -“Nuclear power is the most dangerous way to boil water.”

Living down wind of a Nuke plant is the least of our worries. At the rate the kids are shoveling crap into their guts the radiation might do us a favor. Just think about it, when I dip my Hershey kisses into the chocolate fondue fountain, I won’t even have to plug it in. Yes, this is sarcasm folks. Let the hate mail flow!!!

Here’s the truth and the bottom line. There is no shortage of electricity. There is a large surplus of people wanting to use more of it. That should be enough to convince you all to just say no nuclear or coal-fired electric plants, without having to consider the rather technical and complicated arguments about the safety of and pollution by those facilities, or the permanent storage of their waste.

Dr., you continue to make sensible points about this issue. The problem arises when you make comments like “lavatory Larry” and infer that Cecil Andrus is bought and paid for. That’s the point when your arguements go up in that nasty smoke we all don’t like at all.
I am no Larry Craig fan, but the comment about Andrus seriously damages your “bona fides”
I am certainly not a proponent of nuclear power, but I think to dismiss it, out of hand, based on your arguement is silly.
I don’t doubt for a second that the technology is there to “develop” wind and solar generation capabilities. The question is why hasn’t it been done? For the answer I beleive you just have to look over the top of the hill to our neighbors in Ellensburg Washington. There is a “blossom” of the “mega-blade” generators on the skyline in the Kittitas valley. And the people there are bitching like hell that they are “ugly, and ruin the view of our sacred Cascade mountains”
I see no reason why the same thing wouldn’t happen when we line the skyline of the foothills across our state with wind generators. After all, one of the biggest proponents of wind generation is the good senator from “back east”, right up until they were proposed where he “sails” and then he tossed them under the bus in a New York micro second.
What about the arguement that geothermal generation will further effect the water table in Southern Idaho and therefore, not a long term viable solution to our needs.
Personally, I completely support Rod’s point. Leave the dams alone, continue to develop hydro as our source of generation needs, and guess what? We don’t need to worry about nuclear power and all of it’s problems. Oh, and the last time I looked,that water powered turbine doesn’t generate any of that “yukky” stuff we are trying to get rid of.
I guess the bottom line is if Cecil says “it’s OK and good for the state”, then I will climb on board. Because I firmly believe he has the best interests of Idaho at heart. I ain’t so sure about your interests Dr.

Looking back in history.

Living in Washington, we elected Dixy Lee Ray as governor. Dixy’s background was on the energy commission.

There was a program called whoops. Bonds were produced for each nuclear site. The folks in the first one, received their dividends back and the other 5 lost there savings and the plants were moth balled.

I would think that Washington being very close to Idaho , could of produced all needs of the Northwest and all needs of california.

Larry Craig just rewrote the energy bill leaving possiblity for nuclear in the wording.

If any readers remember Hanford Washington, they just had a leak yesterday.

I grew up in Spokane Washington in the 50’s and I suffer from a thyroid problem today from the winds of Hanford.

It amazes me, we are talking nuclear in 2007.

Obviously the power generated by nukes is for export purposes only. Out of state electricity consumers will legally pirate our water in the form of nuclear energy.
Folks, there is enough electrical energy, we have to learn how to stop wasting so much. Building nukes to solve the energy crisis is like giving Detroit a mandate to build more cars and trucks with monster V8 engines because we need more power.
Beware of people like Cyclops, comparing what they do in Europe as a solution. Cyclops and his type want us to be like France. In France everything is subsidized by the government. If you support a socialistic economy you should support nuclear power. If you think agriculture subsidies are communistic you’re going to love nuclear power.

I believe Germany has banned all new nuke plants as a solution to future power needs. Are they considered Europeans?

Dog, you’ve set up an impossible situation: If it’s a “merchant” (free-market) plant it’s bad and if it’s a government owned/subsidized plant, it’s also bad. I guess merchant wind, solar and geothermal plants are OK though.

Aside from the two proposed nuke plants (which may be a decade away) we have a few windmills and a low-temperature geothermal plant in the works. California companies, meanwhile, are adding thousands of megawatts, mainly natural gas. My point: unless we get on the ball and develop some power plants, the reality is that California merchant plants will be selling US power. We already import half our power from out-of-state anyway. Given this trend, the possibility of Idaho selling power to California is just a persecution fantasy.

Also, I see Idaho merchant farmers using our water to grow crops for California, dealing with the waste in Idaho. There’s also a merchant computer chip maker that generates waste in Idaho, as well as a merchant international construction firm and a merchant supermarket chain and a merchant office supply company and a merchant agribusiness company, and tens of thousands of smaller merchants. Rickards slings around term “merchant” like some sort of insult. Is he not a merchant physician?

By the way, I don’t think any of these “merchant” companies like Micron could possibly supply their energy needs with solar or wind. Both sources spend most of their time waiting for the wind to blow or the sun to shine – only a miniority of time are they actually generating electricity.

Nuclear “waste” is really spent fuel that can be processed into more fuel and the “waste” eliminated. As for security, the Idaho plants would be a few miles from a major Air Force installation. Seems secure enough to me!

Hi Cyclops,
Sorry I offended you with my bluntness…
I did not dismiss nuclear “out of hand” Cyclops. I have been working on these issues for 19 years now, and have an open challenge to debate DOE scientists, anytime and anywhere. I am quoting their documents correctly, and the DOE has even backed out of conservative radio shows, when they found out I would be present to correct their claims.

So let’s talk terrorism! Terrorists have been caught with maps of nuclear power plants. While American nuclear plants are “safer” than Chernobyl, a terrorist strike would create the same huge type of disaster in Idaho, and beyond. That is the bottom line dead end road of nuclear power. The gamble is too large. Even from a National Security perspective, you don’t want to cluster your energy supply, as a target for your enemy.

EDITOR NOTE–Rickards quoted a Washington Post story in March 2005 which cited a classified report by nuclear experts assembled by the National Academy of Sciences. The report challenged the decision by federal regulators to allow commercial nuclear facilities to store large quantities of radioactive spent fuel in pools of water.

The report concluded the government does not fully understand the risks that a terrorist attack could pose to the pools and ought to expedite the removal of the fuel to dry storage casks that are more resilient to attack. The Bush administration has long defended the safety of the pools, and the nuclear industry has warned that moving large amounts of fuel to dry storage would be unnecessary and very expensive.

As usual, nary a word about conservation. The argument always seems to be reduced to either:

1) we embrace nuclear power, or
2) we live in a cave and dig in the dirt with a stick.

It’s tedious.

There are a gazillion simple modifications to our behaviors that can be made that will save energy (electricity and combustible fuels) not to mention small changes in “consumer products” and packaging (think of how much plastic and cardboard is used to encase a $.99 comb, how much more fuel it requires to transport the freakin’ packaging that goes into the garbage!) The first step should be to reduce demand, not simply continue to feed the beast. I don’t see why being sensible and frugal should be seen as an assault on our “quality of life”. We can’t build our way out of inefficiency.

I will never even consider the possibility of accepting nuclear power generation without a serious discussion of conservation and efficiency FIRST.

And as for measuring the security of any facility by its proximity to a military base, thats’ a good one. How far is NYC or the Pentagon from a military installation? Or what about that other little incident, what was that….. oh yeah, Pearl Harbor. Seems like there were a few military bases in the area, did that guaranty safety?

Nukes? Nukes? We don’t need no stinkin’ nukes.

Thanks for the post, Jo.

And yes, Guardian, Jeremy moved on, but “rolled”? Groan.

EDITOR NOTE–Jeremy would not be offended. Only with great admiration did the inside joke creep in.

Hi Nuke Supporter,
RE: “Rickards slings around term “merchant” like some sort of insult. Is he not a merchant physician?”
Indeed,I usually support free enterprise, but I am issuing a warning to my neighbors about this merchant invasion, not an “insult” toward free enterprise.
You weren’t born after the deregulation ripoffs and brownouts, were you? Idaho is one of the few states wise enough to keep regulation of electricity. If we allow power plants to pollute our state, why should we have to outbid richer states, that won’t allow these polluters?
I take the same approach on wind power. If we let them on our landscape, why not insist we get a fixed low rate, and first dibs?
Is it not obvious that it would be ignorant to allow Sempra coal plants, and Warren Buffet nuke plants, to cluster in Idaho, and sell all their power to heat Hollywood hot tubs?
I talked with a rancher, and his Enexco contact last year. This international wind power company studied his land for 4 years. His wind was Class 4, and peaked in the high use winter months. His wind also peaked in the summer high use, from noon to 5 PM. They offered Idaho Power a fixed 20 year rate of 3.5 cents per kilowatt. After a few years of watching Id Power drag it’s feet through court, disobeying the law requiring they buy wind, the company walked away in frustration. We could have slapped Idaho Power straight, but we don’t see that kind of leadership, from our politicians, that openly take donations from coal and nuclear businessmen.
We still have a chance to stop this merchant power invasion. Please call your politicians people. They are supposed to work for you, not Warren Buffet…Peter

One fact that the Big Power industry does not want to tell you is that energy conservation will put power on the grid faster and cheaper than any type of power generator ever invented. Idaho power is investing in conservation now by making grant money available to new industrial construction and some retrofits for lighting equipment. Through capital investment in buildings built by the private sector they are essentially building power plants that they will not have to maintain. Idaho Power is no goody two shoes company. They aim to please their investors. Freeing up cheaper industrial rate power gives them more available juice to hang meters on houses at the highest retail rate.
They give lip service to home energy conservation to make us feel good. They would rather sell us as much as we want to burn at the highest rate.

The original article is a bunch of nonsense. As a Californian, I’d welcome the building of additional nuclear plants here, so the power wouldn’t have to be shipped 500-1000 miles, with the associated line losses.

To even mention “The China Syndrome” seriously in a discussion of nuclear power reveals the writer’s ignorance on the subject. Even in a worst-case scenario like Chernobyl, this fictitious phenomenon never happened, yet it has been used for nearly three decades to block the construction of new plants in the U.S.

The Chernobyl meltdown need never have happened, either, if operators had followed established safety rules. Under the direction of a rogue manager, they overrode safety limits to cause the disaster. Fortunately, nuclear plants designed and built in the last 20 years, or so, have most manual control taken away from the operators, preventing such events from ever happening again.

In view of the current hysteria about carbon dioxide, it makes sense to build more nuclear generating capacity. Uranium is ubiquitous in the Earth’s crust. Some estimates put our extraction of uranium to-date at less than 2% of what may be easily available through surface mining. Much of the so-called “spent fuel” can be reprocessed and concentrated, since only 5% of the energy in the rods has been used. It’s tantamount to a crime to warehouse these fuel rods in water pools around the country, since they continue to decay without producing a single kilowatt-hour of energy.

Finally, the idiotic policies of the Federal government since Clinton/Gore and the government of California regarding nuclear power need to be reversed. The French are the beneficiaries of U.S. nuclear research and power plant development. It’s about time we enjoyed some of those benefits, too. Furthermore, there is the promise of advanced reactor technologies that would consume 100% of the radioactive material in the fuel, leaving inert residue, but we can’t get there as long as the greenies are actively suppressing research and development.