A thought to ponder Anyone?

Of course not. I have made considerable effort to help it. (My book written solely for that purpose. All my grand children live there, etc.) Swivel's comments remind me of those who were telling the Vietnam protestors to "love it or leave it." Sometimes the people who love their country most criticize its mistakes. They are it best friends, not those who, with head in the sand, blindly support its misguilded leaders.

I am not suggestion any "conspiracy" by anyone, unless the natural trend of person trying to look out for their own financial interest by now getting assets out of the US (a common theme / idea among many with money) is a "conspiracy."

 

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Possibly not. Maybe he *adores* the "US arrogance and ignorance", to use his words.

I just keep coming away from his posts sensing a bit of glee with the thought of the United States economy going down the tube. I don't feel that he will be sad if this happens tomorrow. He will undoubtedly rush to SciForums and remind us of his sage advice.

I just don't see how anyone can think that China will gain all of the wonders of modernism, without suffering from any of the problems of modernism. Billy thinks that success will drive America into agricultural subsistence living, while China develops a middle-class that is still happy to work in the factory all day long. Since he is too smart to really believe that outcome, I have to assume he is being misguided by his hate.

How else can you skew the facts in a single direction the way he has throughout this thread? Is it possible to be wrong with the same bias one hundred percent of the time, and it be due to chance? I'm not buying it, or his defense. I would give his posts more serious consideration if he would at least admit this bias. The intellectual dishonesty required to maintain this ruse warns me off of the content of his posts.

Simple facts:

#1:
With 5% of the world's population, the United States outputs ~30% of the world's GDP. China, India, Brazil, and Russia account for ~22%. Combined. And they combine for 4,148,199,398 people (added from totals given at: http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/information/population/) Which is 4,148,199,398/6,581,398,395 = 63% of the World Population! Billy T's assertion that the United States may one day lag behind one of these countries states the obvious. With that disparity of numbers, we should celebrate the day, and it won't mean anything bad for the US. It will be hundreds of years later that productivity per capita closes the gap, which is the only number that truly matters. (Norway's lead here is due to low levels of immigration, and with smaller population totals, they do not figure into this argument) Once the global market becomes truly flat, the borders are irrelevant. Each person will be measured by their individual contribution. And if the tools in the United States, with the infrastructure, education, safety, etc, give each person such an enormous advantage, it may be 300-400 years before we see the living standards in any of these four countries equal that of the United States.

#2:
The education system in the United States is still the world's best. The top brains leave their native lands and come here to learn. And the majority of them end up staying here. And many of those that return home do so in the employ of a US-based company. I've seen the number for China's brain-drain at 75%.

#3:
The inequality in these countries is ghastly compared to the United States. The poorest are starving to death in China, India, Brazil, and Russia. Very few people starve to death in the United States. We have an obesity problem. The class warfare that strains the US political and economic system are nothing compared to what await these four countries in the next 50 years.

#4:
China especially looks to have dark days ahead. With female infanticide at all-time highs, there is a large population of males that will come to age and not be able to find a mate. This always leads to gangs, violence, and high crime rates. Watch out.

#5:
People see something wrong with losing manufacturing jobs, but this is a GOOD progression in an economic system. With unemployment around 5%, the United States is producing more goods with fewer people. The rest are in higher-paying service jobs. The excess capital means that we can pay other people to do our grunt work, while we harness our brain power. It will be difficult to catch up with this head-start, especially due to point #2.

#6:
The United States still has more natural resources as measured per capita than any other country.

#7:
We have a military that is superior to the rest of the world's military combined.

#8:
We have high immigration rates, which, despite the grumblings of the racists amongst us, is a key to our success. Economic wealth works like a pyramid scheme. The people rushing into the bottom keep pushing everyone else up. Many of the "poor" statistics that Billy T and his Jeremiad ilk bandy about are due to the statistical influence of the 13+ million illegal immigrants. They replenish the poorest sector of our society, but it is misleading. They do not *stay* poor. They move up the economic and social ladder with each generation, to be replaced by the next wave of immigrants. See: http://www.ailf.org/ipc/policy_reports_2003_SuccessOrStagnation.asp

If we can convince the American government to naturalize all current US residents, and open the borders to millions of more immigrants each year, the US economy will simply sky-rocket. I think that this is more likely to happen than any of the conspiracy-laden doom-and-gloom scenarios given by Billy T, using the stats he culls from the Anti-American (majority) of world economists.


I happily admit that my bias is for the United States. I love democracy and capitalism, and am proud of the country that I have adopted, which has been the leader in demonstrating the fruits of these two systems. If you are a fan of meritocracy, you are a fan of America, wherever you were born. If you hate success, and feel that your life is unfair due to influences outside of your control, I hope that the hate you direct at my fellow countrymen brings you enough joy to see you through your day.

 

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The relationship between the federal funds rate and interest payments is complicated; the debt is held in a wide variety of financial instruments, with maturity times ranging from days to decades. It is true that, everything else being equal, a higher interest rate corresponds to higher interest payments. However, it's not really necessary to speculate here, as the interest payments are a matter of public record:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_U.S._public_debt

As you can see, since 1990 the debt has about doubled, but interest payments have only increased around 30%. Also notice that they are still lower than at any time since 1994. This is what I mean when I point out that the interest rates are still fairly low. Also, the GDP has about doubled since 1990, so the size of the debt as a proportion of income is about the same, and the interest payments, as a percentage of GDP, have *reduced* to 2/3 their 1990 value.

Your response to my comments on the Dow imply either a gross misreading or a failing memory. It's also bizarre that you insist that a falling dollar is the trumpet-call of America's doom and yet also say that it alleviates the trade deficit, boosts real stock performance and keeps household wealth surging ahead. Just how do you think central banks would divest from dollar reserves? They'll obviously want to invest with something with a higher returns, but what high-return instruments can you buy with a dollar? American stocks! Which, happily, happen to be showing strong growth because of a lower dollar.

I had assumed that the experts backing your claim that China has enough undiscovered oil reserves to outstrip Saudi Arabia would be experts in geology and oil exploration. Perhaps you have forgotten what we were talking about again.

The key word here is "developing," as in "China is a developing country." America has already dammed just about every river we ought to, and already has 10 times as many nuclear plants as China. China will have to build 70 more nuclear reactors on top of that 30 they're working on to catch up with the US. Also, your facts on US nuclear power are wrong:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/nuc_reactors/reactsum.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reactor

As you can see, America has more nuclear capacity than any other nation, and we opened a new plant in 1997. Moreover, you can increase nuclear capacity without building new reactors, but rather by upgrading existing ones. This is an especially preferable route for a country that already has more than 100 nuclear power stations. Although we did just approve construction of 3 new reactors in 2005. And of course, the US Navy has long operated even more nuclear reactors than America does for power, so we're not exactly short on expertise in this area.

 

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Not often I "scoop"* the New york Times, but just minutes ago, they posted on the web an article for tomorrow's (Sunday edition) called:
"Crisis Looms in Mortgages"
For full text see:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/11/b...267facea4636&ei=5089&partner=rssyahoo&emc=rss
where you can read:
".... Already, more than two dozen mortgage lenders have failed or closed their doors, and shares of big companies in the mortgage industry have declined significantly. Delinquencies on loans made to less creditworthy borrowers — known as subprime mortgages —recently reached 12.6 percent. Some banks have reported rising problems among borrowers that were deemed more creditworthy as well.

Traders and investors who watch this world say the major participants — Wall Street firms, credit rating agencies, lenders and investors — are holding their collective breath and hoping that the spring season for home sales will reinstate what had been a go-go market for mortgage securities. Many Wall Street firms saw their own stock prices decline over their exposure to the turmoil.

“I guess we are a bit surprised at how fast this has unraveled,” said Tom Zimmerman, head of asset-backed securities research at UBS."
-----------------------------
*Couple of days ago I pointed to the sub-prime problem. Noting it is at least 200 times greater than the LTCM problem than almost bought the US financial system down. Not being very PC, I often called these more than a trillion dollars at risk "Shylock loans." - Few would care if these Shylock companies went under, except for the fact that their trillion comes from the regular banking system.

It is like that old joke: "If you owe the bank 1000 dollars and can not pay, you are in big trouble, but if you owe a million dollars to the bank and can not pay, the bank is in trouble.

Quadraphones pointed out that even a trillion is not major part of GDP, (or something like that) but it is huge compared to the net cash reserves of the banks. (I think - Quadrphones can no doubt get the actual numbers.)

Point is most of the money you and others deposited in the bank is not there now, but has been loaned out. - The banks can not cover a trillion on the books if it comes in at 35cents on the dollar as it has been from the Shylocks that have already failed. They too will fail. - Extending the old joke (not very funny now) If a trillion is owed to the banks, and not paid, the banking system is in big trouble.

 

It's been obvious for some time that Billy T employs argumentative reasoning rather than scientific reasoning. That is, he starts with the conclusion he wants to support, marshalls any facts that would support that conclusion, and tries to discredit any facts that would undermine it. He'll latch onto any possible weakness in the American economy and exaggerate it into a doomsday scenario. And of couse, all economies have problems all the time, so he's never going to run out of material (or ever notice the salient fact that what makes America great is not a lack of problems but a superior ability to overcome them). What's incomprehensible to me is not so much the bias against America (it's pretty clearly a product of cognitive dissonance stemming from his moving to Brazil to retire) but the bias in favor of China.

Where did you come from originally?

 

duplicate of 104 but can not delete this - having connection problems also

 

Tomorrow’s New York Times concludes (Sunday edition article - see post 104) with four paragraphs, which I reproduce below, but don‘t worry, keep your head in the sand, because the NYT is a Jeremiah member of the “hate American conspiracy.”

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“…There are delayed triggers in many of these investment vehicles and that is delaying the recognition of losses,” Charles Peabody, founder of Portales Partners, an independent research boutique in New York, said. “I do think the unwind is just starting. The moment of truth is not yet here.”

On March 2, reacting to the distress in the mortgage market, a throng of regulators, including the Federal Reserve Board, asked lenders to tighten their policies on lending to those with questionable credit. Late last week, WMC Mortgage, General Electric’s subprime mortgage arm, said it would no longer make loans with no down payments.

Meanwhile, investors wait to see whether the spring home selling season will shore up the mortgage market. If home prices do not appreciate or if they fall, defaults will rise, and pension funds and others that embraced the mortgage securities market will have to record losses. And they will likely retreat from the market, analysts said, affecting consumers and the overall economy.

A paper published last month by Mr. Rosner and Joseph R. Mason, an associate professor of finance at Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business, assessed the potential problems associated with disruptions in the mortgage securities market. They wrote: “Decreased funding for residential mortgage-backed securities could set off a downward spiral in credit availability that can deprive individuals of home ownership and substantially hurt the U.S. economy.” …”

 

That is basically an accurate comment on my current mode of operation. I am trying to awaken people to the dangers I began to see five years ago. My "conclusion" as you put it has only been strengthened by the trends of these last few years, but it was not something that I liked or was “biased” to reach.

I naively thought I might be able to change the trend I saw, wrote my book for this reason, and became active here to try to open others eyes, so Yes, when I note something that support that five year old, but sad conclusion I post it. I guess I should stop. My newest conclusion is that the black cloud I see coming can not be stopped by my feeble efforts. I certainly hope I am wrong, but I am now giving up on the main effort.

I will probably continue to show how stupid is the effort to get alcohol for Iowa’s corn. That this highly subsidized drive is really just a way to divert Americans from doing something about their ever increasing need for oil. If the current administration were actually trying to reduce oil consumption, it would be pushing all sort of efficiency improvements, making large cars carry at least 100% tax, etc. (Things that could actually reduce oil consumption.)

 

US oil consumption is not rising all that quickly. It basically scales with population, and so grows at about 1%. Again, this is well behind the growth of GDP. It's developing countries like China and India that have to contend with big growth in oil consumption, as in those cases it scales with GDP growth (since GDP growth is fueled by building energy-hungry factories and the resulting middle class then goes out and purchases cars). More here:

http://www.iags.org/china.htm

"China's need for energy is projected to increase by 150 percent by 2020. to sustain its growth China requires increasing amounts of oil. Its oil consumption grows by 7.5% per year, seven times faster than the U.S.'
Growth in Chinese oil consumption has accelerated mainly because of a large-scale transition away from bicycles and mass transit toward private automobiles, more affordable since China's admission to the World Trade Organization. Consequently, by year 2010 China is expected to have 90 times more cars than in 1990. With automobile numbers growing at 19% a year, projections show that China could surpass the total number of cars in the U.S. by 2030. Another contributor to the sharp increase in automobile sales is the very low price of gasoline in China. Chinese gasoline prices now rank among the lowest in the world for oil-importing countries, and are a third of retail prices in Europe and Japan, where steep taxes are imposed to discourage gasoline use. "

 

I completely agree with all of this. My only point was that alcohol from corn is being promoted and subsidized at great expense to the tax payers, both directly and indirectly in higher food costs, reduced grain exports (worse balance of payments, falling dollar, etc.) as if it was going to lower US oil needs. - I think precisely to keep oil consumption from being lowered by measure that other nation in Europe have used, mainly more mass transit, less suburban sprawl, and smaller, more efficient cars. Those measures could actually lower US dependancy on imported oil.

I might also add that China's policy on pricing gasoline is insane and even worse on diesel. China unofficially exports a lot of diesel. - You can even buy diesel at retail and export it whole sale at a profit and small operators do.

 

In post 98 I said:
"...It takes more than 10 years in US to get the site of a new power plant approved and US has not even tried to get a site for a new nuke in more than 30 years!..."

and at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_Bar_Nuclear_Generating_Station
they says:
"...Watts Bar 1 was the last civilian reactor to come on-line in the United States. ...This plant has one Westinghouse pressurized water reactor, one of two whose construction commenced in 1973. Unit 1 was completed in 1996. Unit 2 was about 80% complete when its construction was stopped in 1988."..."

You said “on line” in 1997 and I can believe it was a year after construction was done to get all the operating permits.
Last time I looked, it was now 2007, so this last one placed on line does not contradict my statement that no new SITES have been approved in "more than 30 years" but perhaps your “approve construction of 3 new reactors in 2005” does. (I know nothing about these three.) When were their sites approved? Siteing is more of a problem (“Not in my back yard”) than anything else (except the bad economics caused mainly by needless “green peace delays.”) I expect that unit 2 with construction also started in 1973 will eventually come on line.

I thank you for the information - it clearly shows that the time scale (in this case, 34 years from ground breaking to on-line status, plus typically at least 10 years for the site to get approved is much too long to be of any help to the US trying to recover from a run on the dollar, which will collapse global economies in a few weeks at most.

I am not trying to show that the US is in deep trouble anymore - swore off on that in my last post - as I obviously failed. I just want to set the record straight - my statement was not in error, at least you have not shown it to be.

PS I believe most of the Navy's nuclear reactors (more numerous than power plant ones you say) are in subs, starting with the Polaris subs I believe. They are designed to be compact and are not very suitable technology for a power station. The US should have been building many more two decades ago - now it is too late, given the at least 40 year time scales of the full processes in the US. China is a couple of decades ahead in the technology it is testing. I am not sure the US even knows how to build the newer versions, but France could help. -they get nearly 90% for their electric from nukes and earn Euros from Germany with export of electric power.

 

I would have to agree that corn-based American ethanol production is not particularly economical. The current federal initiatives and subsidies are a hand-out to the corn lobby, and America should import more ethanol, particularly from Brazil (us and Europe should import more agricultural products of all kinds, but that's another story). It's definitely a field in which Brazil has a lot of natural potential, combined with a good policy to capitalize on it. The ethanol policy there has been good for Brazil, and good for the world energy market as a whole (both by reducing oil demand and advancing the field of ethanol production).

That said, I'm reasonably satisfied with the course America is pursuing. There are two factors that come to bear on ethanol policy. The first is pressure from interest groups, in this case the corn lobby. Obviously, their priority is to raise the price of corn, or at least get subsidies. So they clearly favor ethanol import tariffs and various handouts to them to produce ethanol. But they're not actually powerful enough to drive these policies on their own. It's the combination of the second factor, which is general public sentiment, that tips the scales. As I've mentioned before, to the general public, energy policy is as much about reliance on foreign sources of energy than on environmental or even economic considerations. You can't really sell the idea of switching from foreign oil to foreign ethanol, despite the fact that it's cleaner and probably will even save us money. So, any workable policy is going to require an energy-independence angle. In this case, that mean buying the support of the agricultural lobby, specifically corn.

Once you've done that, however, you've acquired the political capital to pursue some effective changes. In particular, Bush can now afford to meet with Lula and talk turkey on cutting ethanol tariffs. This was, to me, the most interesting aspect of Bush's recent tour of Latin America. Can you imagine the flak he'd take if he proposed cutting import tariffs without first wooing the domestic producers? Lou Dobbs would have had him for breakfast. As ethanol usage spreads (subsidized or not), the general public will be more and more in favor of actions to cut ethanol prices, and so a lifting of tariffs will be inevitable. In the meantime, the the investments made in ethanol production and utilization (subsidized or not) will hopefully result in an economical domestic system -- probably using sugar beets instead of corn and presumably supplemented by significant imports, although hopefully a smaller percentage than the present.

 

Well, they were approved in 2005. Two of them are in Alaska (which takes care of the NIMBY aspect) and the other one is at Idaho National Laboratory. The Alaska designs use new low-maintenance, high-safety designs, with the core buried in an underground shaft (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba_4S). The point is not so much that this represents a significant addition to American electricity producton capacity, but rather that it shows how attitudes towards investing in nuclear power have shifted in the last 5 years or so.

Most, probably, but there are a significant number of large-scale reactors powering aircraft carriers. The point is that there's a lot of ongoing research into reactor design and operation (which is equally important). So we're well-positioned to make whatever investments in nuclear power that we decide are appropriate. There are countries who generate larger portions of their power from nuclear, and that have been building more reactors in recent years, but America has the largest, most advanced nuclear industry in the world. The real issue that holds up further expansion is waste management; if there were a satisfactory way to dispose of nuclear waste, the coal power plants would now be a relic of history. The citing and development of nuclear waste facilities result in decades-long legal battles by various state governments and interest groups. That's how it goes in a democracy.

 

20 years ahead in this technology? Please qualify this statement. There is no way that China is 20 years ahead in ANY technology. 5 years, I could believe, but 20 years is several revolutionary processes away.

According to the latest Newsweek, China fires up a new coal power-plant every 10 days that could power San Diego. Estimates are that they will construct 2,200 new coal plants by 2030. !!!

Honestly, I can't wrap my brain around the decision by environmentalists to be America-Haters. They backed the Soviet Union while they raped their environment in horrific ways, and now they back China, which abuses its citizens and rapes the environment worse than anything in America's history. Their hatred of success and merit is stronger than their love for the Earth, which is dangerous for all of us.

The United States is proof that you can be efficient, produce a ton of capital, and improve the environment at the same time. Environmentalists need to become a part of this process, instead of railing against consumerism in the vain hope that they can convince everyone else to stop wanting to improve their lot.

 

Now that I have given up on trying to get you and others concerned about the great danger to US economically I foresee (In part because I have given it my best shot and in part as I now think it impossibly too late to avoid dollar collapse) we are becoming borringly in agreement, but I will add a few comments in bold inside your post.

 

Not in the field of nuclear technology. The technology generations are about 15 years long - in part because of safety requirements and in part because in the US the cycle from design to on-line power is at least 40 years long. In some other countries progress is more rapid (China and France to name two) I have not really follwed this field much, but think both China an South Africa have pebble bed reactors in construction (I belive the latest generation and at least two generation in advance of any thing the US has even on the drawing boards) I also have read that China is building a fast breeder or two.

Please feel free to dispute - I have not searched and may be wrong and even my memory is old information - I would appreciate an updating of it. I.e. tell me who is developing the pebble beds, etc. (Last time I looked, the pebble bed technology seemed to be the obvious and safest way to make nuclear power.)

 

Is your claim that the United States is 20 years behind in nuclear technology? As in, it would take 20 years to catch up? Because national technology doesn't work this way anymore. You can hire the leading experts from another country and be caught up immediately. You can reverse-engineer and be caught up immediately. You can peruse the trade-specific journals and be caught up immediately.

The hard part is the initial research. Catching up is simple. This is why India, Japan, the East Asian Tigers, China, et al seem to be "surpassing" the United States economy. They are doing the quick "catching up" with technologies like Just-In-Time delivery, Supply Chains, Digital Warehousing, Networking, etc...

Look at how arduous it was for the Manhattan Project to create the first nukes, and how quickly several other countries followed suit. Or what happened after the Wright brothers demonstrated powered flight. Or how many transcontinental railroads crossed the US (and Russia) after the federal government blundered through the first one. Look at how quickly the US caught up with Russia in the Space Race.

It would take the United States 6 months to adopt all of the advances made in nuclear power, even if they are behind. Such is the nature of the global exchange of information, talent, and technology. All it takes is ready capital and able human agents, which this country has both of in spades.


As for the merit of your claim, it seems to be more propaganda. A quick call to my brother-in-law, who works for the nuclear arm of the Tennessee Valley Authority, and he emailed me some links. I hate to argue ad verecundiam, but he seems to think that Westinghouse Electric is the world leader in Nuclear technology. This might be because of his bias, and the fact that plans have recently been approved, but here you go:

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/01-27-2006/0004269395&EDATE=

Further searching gives you the homesite for the reactor (with all of the bias that comes from a manufacturer):

http://www.ap1000.westinghousenuclear.com/

They claim 36 months for the entire construction phase, so this is something we could turn to very, very quickly. (You said "Design to power is 40 years"!!! This is just insane talk. This design was finalized in 2003 and the contract was approved in 2005!!!!! Stop making stuff up in this thread, please. The reason we haven't built nuclear technology is because of ignorant environmentalists who approve of belching poisons in the sky rather than going with the much cleaner nuclear power. And 3-mile-island was NOT a meltdown, so that argument is fallacious as well)

This is all reactor tech, as for PBMR, It sounds like South Africa has a slight edge in this technology, and much of the technology in Japan's efforts are actually United States contributions! :

http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2006/3306safrica_pbmr.html

And since China is putting into place an idea which has been around for 50+ years, I think it is hyperbole to assert that they came up with the technology, or that they have made any real contribution. They are putting this into place because of the extraordinary demands that their economic transformation has foisted upon them. These extraordinary demands require some major financial investments that give them leeway not *needed* here. It is a supply/demand issue, not an advancement/backwardness issue.


_______________________________________________________________

Edit: http://mit.edu/canes/research/nfc/fueldesign.html The leading university research setting for Nuclear Power in the United States is MIT. Guess who they are working with? Westinghouse. My brother-in-law is certainly biased, but sometimes you can be biased and still be correct.

Personally, due to my work in the Yachting industry, my bias would put Siemens ahead of all others in the field of electricity delivery systems research. And they are German-based with a large presence in the United States. And all of this technology is available to whoever can afford it, so I really don't understand your "generations behind" and 40-year-lag statements.

 

I sure hope they are changing, but still have my doubts. IMHO, the "green" activists still can make such long delays tht nuclear power (almost entirely capital cost only) is not economically competitive with coal. The irony is that coal power releases more radio-activity than nuclear power to the air per KwH of generation.

But to return to our discussion of "no new sites approved in 30 years" (I may be wrong as have not followed recent developments ,but do not yet consider you have shown this is false.):

Go one link beyond yours to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galena_Nuclear_Power_Plant
And read:
“…a PROPOSED nuclear power plant to be constructed in the Yukon River village of Galena …
On December 14, 2004, the Galena City Council accepted a proposal from Toshiba TO TEST THEIR NEW Toshiba 4S (Super Safe, Small and Simple) “nuclear battery” reactor design, which would require only minimal staffing. If the reactor is successfully licensed, Toshiba will install it free of charge by 2012. It is expected to provide electricity for 5–13 cents/kWh, which factors in only operating costs. On paper, it has been determined that the reactor could run for 30 years without refueling. …”

Billy T comments:
Galena is a tiny little Alaskan city, without any road access or even power lines.- everything needed is airlifted in! - 96% of the village’s energy use is wood and some kerosene - 4% electric from small generators.

I strongly doubt that the Galena city council is the last word in the approval process for putting an untried new nuclear reactor technology into Alaska, even if there is no NIMBY problem* with these native Americans. I.e. I do not consider this an “approved reactor site.”
--------------------------------
*From what I read, no specific site (except “on the Yukon river” has even been selected - only thing agreed is that the local tribal council would like to accept Toshiba’s offer to give them a new type of reactor AT NO CHARGE, as source of central station electric power.

Many years ago, when gasoline was about 50cents/ gallon, I lead an economic /technology study of alternatives for powering some of the US Coast guard’s remote unmanned island light houses. It was easy to greatly improve on the economics as oil for the diesel generators was delivered to near the island by Coast guard cutter that could accommodate a helicopter, which then transported it in 55gallon drums and 2 or 3 men to the island - I forget the cost per gallon that appears in the final report (my copy still in some box somewhere) but the Coast Guard did not want the cost of the cutter included as that could be called training so rather than being 10s of thousands of dollars /per gallon, it was only a few hundred dollars a gallon. At the coast guard Norfolk VA station, I installed a prototype of a wind power battery system we recommended. (We only emulated the batteries with a dynamically switch set of resistors that made the wind generator see essentially a constant voltage current sink)

Thus, I understand very well why these natives would agree to anything that cost them nothing and reduces the cost of helicopter delivering their kerosene!

 

I agree with most of your post, but will answer your question and make a few comments (that perhaps even you brother in law does not know, if he is young.):

No the nuclear industry is quite integrated (what happened to Babcock & Wilson - they were once big players but you did not mention them?) and if it were not for the stupid "greens" who have greatly harmed the US environment by blocking nuclear power -see comment in my last post for more) US could be going from RFP to on line power in less than 5 years, with current generation of reactors.

My "40 years" is from the US's history with the greens using every legal and many illegal demonstrations to block nuclear power. As I said in last post, nuclear power is almost entirely capital cost and "time is money" so the greens have won in the US and made nuclear power economically unattractive compared to coal. Perhaps now they can be beaten and after a few defeats it may be easier to get a new site approved. Until that day comes, the existing sites can be up-graded and expanded, but old reactors that need to be torn down will not leave the site - probably just not operated any more.

I think there is a simple, very economic, completely safe, solution to the waste problem and a year or so ago described it in several posts here. I am very pro-nuclear power, but not the way the US does it. I want it “French style.”

Let me illustrate what I mean with the Three mile island plant (although what I will tell about missing water pumps when it first came on line has nothing to do with the accident that happened there later.) In France their "AEC" is mainly concerned with efficiency, capital cost, and especially safety, not much with operational economics. They have a small set of very well tested designs and all have identical control room lay-outs.

In the US, the CEOs of the buying power company make up the orders and to some extent the designs, especially the control room lay-outs that visitors can see, typically from a balcony thru glass windows. When 3-mile began to have problems, experts were flown in and hours were lost as the control room was unique design they did not understand - there was much confusion as to what the various gages and indicators were telling for nearly a day because of this and some steps were taken in the first 24 hours which actually made the problem much worse. If the experts had been familiar with the control room, location of the gauges, what they were telling there would probably have been zero radiation escape, no "hydrogen bubble" fears, etc. I do not remember all the details anymore, and may have part of this wrong, but surely you understand the advantage of the French system with standardized control rooms everywhere.

3-mile came on line on the 31st of December (I forget the year) despite several of the secondary cooling safety pumps were not yet installed. - The US's PSC rules only allow the company to include a new power plant in the annually set "rate base," upon which the company's returns are allowed, once it is on line. - The simple change to allowing it in the rate base during the years of construction might have kept nuclear power competitive with coal. It was the economic desire to not let the end of another year pass without getting 3-mile on line and thus included in the rate base, not safety considerations, that happen at 3-mile (as is common in US but never in France where the state, not company CEOs decide nuclear power things.)

I am old enough to remember the early days, when the plan was to charge residences a fixed monthly rate for nuclear power as it would be "too cheap to meter" - I.e. the capital cost of the meter in each house would be a major expense that could be avoided by a fixed rate pricing policy. I vaguely recall that the fixed monthly rate would scale with the fuse size. (Homes wired for more current would pay more.)

Summary: My "40 years", is just stating a historical fact - something you have frequently done when replying to me. It is not inherently a discription of the future - something I was trying to get you to understand about the US economy. I hope for the day when the US will scrap the current "The CEOs make nuclear power plant decisions," the greens will be exposed for the ignorant frauds they are, and the damage they have done to the environment is better understood.

 

Great post, Billy.

Your 40 years is of historical significance only. Many "greens" are now pro-nuclear, and you'll see in this statement from the Department of Energy (http://www.energy.gov/news/4854.htm), that it is hailed as "clean energy".

Your argument would be like saying that it took 7,800 years for mankind to build the first airplane. So it should have taken 7,800 years to build the next one. Obviously, the world is not the same place post-Wright that it was for the 7,800+ years pre-Wright. Well, the world is not the same place now that it was 30 years ago when "nuclear" had bomb connotations. Countries like France have helped to show what a wonderful track-record nuclear plants can have.


These are the new, certified reactors for U.S. delivery: http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/analysis/nucenviss2.html

The NEI is the best resource available for this type of news (heavily pro-nuclear bias): http://www.nei.org/index.asp?catnum=2&catid=205