[Marxism] Re: Nuclear Power

[dwalters@xxxxxxxxxxxx]

I don't work in the nuke industry, I work in a gas-fired power plant. As part of
PG&E in California, the Diablo Canyon folks were part of our local,plus we had
bidding rights to work there in the Operating Depts if we qualified.

So my interest in nukes, while born in part working in a conventional power
plant and the industry as a whole, is simply general interest in engery
production and our response to new developments.

The biggest and flakiest issue is money. The numbers are so jumbled it's hard to
make heads or tails out of the actual cost of power, and we're just talking
money, not enviromental or social costs. It is conveivable that they can get
costs down, including fuel, to <.2 cents a KWH but I doubt it. What the costs
exclude, of course, is the cost per KWH to pay back the huge capital costs of
building the sucker in the first place.

There are two types of power production facilities in the US from a market
perspective (this is very general as there are lots of nuances): regulated
utilities (such as Con-Edison in NY and PG&E in California) and the merchant
plants, such as Calpine (which on Monday went bankrupt), Duke and Mirant (my
company). These are the so-called, but generally aptly names "Pirate
generators".

In the magazine, it seems from glancing at the companies putting in permits,
that all the new plants being proposed as from the regulated utility side of
the business, not the merchant end. I suspect this is because unlike utilities,
merchants, who are in it for the quick buck, or, rather, the garanteed buck
these days, can't pass along the costs of a 3 billion dollar plant to the
consumers, but regulated monopolies can. What this means is that from a market,
or strickly capitalist point of view, nukes can't pay for themselves, they have
to subsidized, or at least the cost to build them does...so the idea that they
may be able to operate at <.2 cents a KWH, they'd have to charge at least 5 to
10 times that much, just to pay off the investment costs.

Califorians, generally, pay the highest state-side rates in the US: between 11
and 14 cents a KWH. So, we know our rates would go up if they built one of
these new nukes around.

I don't expect us on this list to really have all the answers. Trying to analyse
all this here would be labor of sysiphus. But if people can post links to sites
that have labored to analyse all this, please do so.

The fact is that historically the main reason for opposing nukes was chance of a
meltdown. That 'chance' has now been so far reduced, that is hardly a
consideration anymore. What to do with radioactive waste is a far bigger
problem. It is a problem we have to solve, simply ignoring it will not make it
go away...we have to make it go away, if we can (which I doubt). Of course any
mitigatio of this problem makes it easier to argue for building more nuclear
power plants.

David





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