Talk:Nuclear power

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Nuclear power page.

Homer Simpson's Quote on Nuclear Power[edit]

Does this quote belong here?

"And Lord, we are especially thankful for nuclear power, the cleanest, safest energy source there is. Except for solar, which is just a pipe dream." ~ Homer Simpson

Laura Bush quote[edit]

...and how about the quote on Laura Bush's page? Ottawahitech (talk) 18:44, 7 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Unsourced[edit]

  • At present, atomic power presents an exceptionally costly and inconvenient means of obtaining energy which can be extracted more economically from conventional fuels....The economics of atomic power are not attractive at present, nor are they likely to be for a long time in the future. This is expensive power, not cheap power as the public as been led to believe.
  • For 50 years, nuclear power has been a solution in search of a problem.
  • It is not too much to expect that our children will enjoy in their homes [nuclear generated] electrical energy too cheap to meter.
  • The energy produced by breaking down the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformations of these atoms is talking moonshine.
  • The energy potentially available to us is for all practical purposes unlimited; but access to it is blocked. It is blocked, above all, by anti-technology sentiment, environmental paranoia, and interference in natural markets. Beyond these obstacles, there is little that science and technology cannot eventually overcome. We further believe that pollution and destruction of the environment is not an essential by product of technology; on the contrary, more science and better technology are needed to keep the environment clean.
  • The last people you'd want deciding what to do with nuclear waste are politicians.
  • And Lord, we are especially thankful for nuclear power, the cleanest, safest energy source there is. Except for solar, which is just a pipe dream.

Removing some material from main page to here, so that others can discuss it.[edit]

  1. Kristin Shrader-Frechette (biologist) is notable, so I wikilinked her name. Leaving a quotable part of her quote, I removed the rest.

* Unlike renewable-energy technologies, by law (the Price-Anderson Act) US reactor operators are not liable for 98 percent of major, government-calculated, nuclear-accident damages. Worldwide, most reactor operators have no liability for accidents. Why? Many reactor programs (including those in the United States) began because governments sought nuclear-weapons-grade materials or technologies and, to get them, agreed to the industry demand for avoiding most liability. The public, not industry, thus bears most nuclear risks and costs, even those caused by negligence or illegal activities. Yet, government studies say there is a one-in-five chance that at least one of the 104 US reactors will have a core-melt accident in its lifetime -- and that such an accident could kill 140,000 people and permanently contaminate an area the size of Pennsylvania. Renewables like wind and solar, however, enjoy no legally mandated avoidance of liability.

  • During the last 50 years, according to MRG Consultants, the United States has provided 33 times more subsidies ($165 billion) to commercial nuclear than to wind and solar combined ($5 billion), if one counts only direct subsidies and three indirect subsidies (for construction incentives, liability, and tax credits). Counting all direct and indirect subsidies, US commercial-fission subsidies have been 200 times greater ($20 billion annually or $1 trillion over 50 years) than those for wind and solar combined, according to the late MIT Nobelist Henry Kendall.
  • The Union of Concerned Scientists says commercial-nuclear subsidies, over 50 years, have been so large -- in proportion to energy-production values -- that often it would have cost taxpayers less to simply buy electricity on the open market and give it away. As physicist Amory Lovins notes, fission died of an acute attack of market forces. Subsidizing it is like defibrillating a corpse; it will jump but remain dead. The International Energy Agency agrees: High costs have destroyed fission, and by 2030 or sooner, it will supply only 9 percent -- not its current 14 percent -- of global electricity.
  1. Linda Gunter is neither an expert on nuclear energy nor a notable person. Nor are her opinions here quotable, IMO. Source for both is The Record-Breaking Failures of Nuclear Power, Linda Gunter, Counter Punch (24 September 2021)

*The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)... After taking a whopping 42 years to build and finally bring on line its Watts Bar Unit 2 nuclear power reactor in Tennessee, TVA just broke its own record for longest nuclear plant construction time... this time, the company failed to deliver a completed nuclear plant. Watts Bar 2 achieved criticality in May 2016, then promptly came off line due to a transformer fire three months later. It finally achieved full operational status on October 19, 2016... Now, almost five years later, TVA has announced it has abandoned its unfinished two-reactor Bellefonte nuclear plant in Alabama, a breathtaking 47 years after construction began... because, as the Chattanooga Times Free Press reported, the company “did not see the need for such a large and expensive capacity generation source.” No kidding!...TVA was more than happy to accept overtures from a purchaser for Bellefonte — the Haney real estate company— whose director, Frank Haney, gained his own notoriety by lavishing $1 million on former President Trump and courting Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, possibly, suggested media reports, to curry regulatory favors for his new nuclear toy. But when TVA announced last month that it had withdrawn its construction permit for Bellefonte, Haney got... $22.9 million plus interest.

  • In reality, the story of nuclear power development in the US over the last 50 years is beyond pitiful and would not pass muster under any “normal” business plan. How the nuclear industry gets away with it remains baffling... President Obama... was no friend to the anti-nuclear movement.... he called for the inclusion of $55 billion for nuclear loan guarantees in his $3.8 trillion 2011 budget... Obama talked of “building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country.” Kool-Aid thoroughly drunk, then. All of this should send an obvious message to the deaf ears of Ben Cardin (D-MD), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Cory Booker (D-NJ), the leading pro-nuclear evangelists in the U.S. Senate. Cardin’s power production credit bill actually has the gall to describe nuclear power as “zero-emission”, a lie that even Cardin’s own staffer was forced to concede in a recent meeting attended by Paul Gunter who called him out on it... Like the three not-so-wise monkeys, those Senators and their colleagues will acknowledge no negatives about nuclear power, even as the industry’s appalling litany of financial fiascoes and failures stares them in the face. They will forge right ahead, thus dooming to its own failure the very progress on climate change they claim to champion.
  1. Mahaffey is not notable and the below sourced to his book is not "quotable."

    * Take a step back and contemplate the sampling of nuclear wreckage that has been laid out before you in the ten chapters of this too-brief narrative. You can see patterns developed in this matrix of events. There are hot spots, imprints, and repetitions. The markings are all over the developed world, left there by one very large experimental program that was trying to improve the lot of mankind, and not to destroy or degrade it. The boldness of this long-term program can raise an eyebrow or two, but from an engineering standpoint it was new, exciting, unexplored territory. In all, it killed fewer people than the coal industry, it caused less unhealthy pollution than the asbestos industry, and it cannot be blamed for global warming.

  1. The following are not "quotes" but a lengthy elaborate argument published in 2009. Again, complex debates about nuclear power are unsuited to the mission of Wikiquote.
  • Thus, there are three broad reasons to be concerned about an unconstrained spread of nuclear power to new nations that have not previously managed the technology
    First, for nuclear energy programs to be developed and managed safely and securely, it is important that states have domestic “good governance” characteristics that will encourage proper nuclear operations and management. These characteristics include low degrees of corruption (to avoid officials selling materials and technology for their own personal gain as occurred with the A.Q. Khan smuggling network in Pakistan), high degrees of political stability (defined by the World Bank as“likelihood that the government will be destabilized or overthrown by unconstitutional or violent means, including politically-motivated violence and terrorism”), high governmental effectiveness scores (a World Bank aggregate measure of “the quality of the civil service and the degree of its independence from political pressures [and] the quality of policy formulation and implementation”), and a strong degree of regulatory competence. Fortunately, we have a great deal of information measuring these domestic good governance factors across the globe. Unfortunately, the data highlight the grave security challenges that would be created if there were rampant proliferation of nuclear energy production facilities to each and every state that has expressed interest to the IAEA in acquiring nuclear power.
  • Second, all NNWS under the NPT must accept IAEA safeguards inspections on their nuclear power facilities in order to reduce the danger that governments might cheat on their commitments not to use the technology to acquire nuclear weapons; therefore, it is illuminating to examine the historical record of nnws violating their NPT commitments. Here there is one very important finding about how domestic political characteristics influence the behavior of NPT members: each known or strongly suspected case of a government starting a secret nuclear weapons program, while it was a member of the NPT and thus violating its Article II NPT commitment, was undertaken by a non-democratic government. (The confirmed or suspected historical cases of NPT member states starting nuclear weapons programs in violation of their Treaty commitments include North and South Korea, Libya, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Taiwan, Iran, and Syria, all of which were non-democratic at the time in question.)
  • Third, states that face significant terrorist threats from within face particular challenges in ensuring that there is no successful terrorist attack on a nuclear facility or no terrorist theft of fissile material to make a nuclear weapon or dirty bomb.
  1. Off-topic. Quote is about nuclear weapons, not nuclear power.

    * We are not bent on conquest or on threatening others. But we do have a nuclear umbrella that can protect others, above all the states to which we are allied or in which we have a great national interest. (Richard Nixon, on-the-record interview with C. L. Sulzberger (March 8, 1971); reported in The New York Times (March 10, 1971), p. 14.)

  1. Considering that Nuclear weapon is listed in the see also, there is no need for Nuclear war to be there also. There are some interesting quotes in this article, and removing some tedious pov-pushing has not made it one-sided. HouseOfChange (talk) 16:03, 26 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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