#32 pete,
Do you know why the nuclear power plants became so expensive? I have no Idea about the plants that you speak of. I do know about Shoreham on the north shore of long island in the late 70s. The union carpenters framed and tore down the framing for the cooling towers 3 times!!! That was to keep union carpenters busy. I got this info from a carpenter that worked the job. France derives close to 80% of elctricity needs from nuke power.
Let’s focus on nuke plants, shall we? The main reason that nuclear plants never took off in this country wasn’t The China Syndrome or Three Mile Island, it was simple economics. It is prohibitively expensive to simply build, let alone maintain a nuclear power plant. In Indiana, both the Marble Hill and Bailey nuclear plants were abandoned before coming on line because the sheer cost overruns of building the plants nearly bankrupted the utilities building them. Obviously, buildinig 50 new plants quickly would make people wonder if they were built with the same attention to detail that, oh, the New Orleans levees or I-35 Bridge in Minneapolis were built.
Now, who would WORK at the plants? Given the conservative obsession/hysteria about nuclear terrorism, would you have to screen potential employees for their religious beliefs? What about the people who live near the plants? Just how much money would it take to keep such a plant secure? Would those costs not be passed along to the utilities’ customers?
Also keeping in mind that uranium is a finite resource, that would also factor into the cost of building the plants.
