{"id":4203,"date":"2013-06-21T08:00:48","date_gmt":"2013-06-21T12:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=4203"},"modified":"2013-06-21T04:51:50","modified_gmt":"2013-06-21T08:51:50","slug":"southern-company-only-building-nukes-because-theyre-not-paying-we-are-robert-f-kennedy-jr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/06\/southern-company-only-building-nukes-because-theyre-not-paying-we-are-robert-f-kennedy-jr.html","title":{"rendered":"Southern Company only building nukes because they’re not paying, we are –Robert F. Kennedy Jr."},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nKennedy said he’d be for nukes if they were safe or economical, but they are neither, while solar and wind are both.\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nAfter calling\r\n\r\nthe pro-nuke movie Pandora’s Promise<\/a> a hoax,\r\nhe addressed “safe” by pointing out the movie’s\r\nclaimed former anti-nuke leaders were\r\nnever leaders while major nuclear utility executives\r\nare indeed now anti-nuke leaders.\r\n(For example, I met\r\n\r\nformer TVA Chairman S. David Freeman<\/a>\r\nin DC where he was testifying against nukes.)\r\nThen Kennedy tore into\r\n\r\nSouthern Company’s three-legged nuclear boondoggle<\/a>\r\nand pointed out solar and wind are winning even against massive distortions\r\nin the economic playing field caused by public service commissions\r\nletting regulated utilities make the rest of us pay for their profits\r\non uneconomic nukes.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nAndrew Revkin posted on Youtube 19 June 2013,\r\n\r\nRobert F. Kennedy Jr. & Director of Pandora’s Promise Spar Over Nuclear Power<\/a>,\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nThe last nuclear power plant constructed in the world was in Finland.\r\nIt cost about $11 billion a gigawatt.\r\nNow I’m involved with construction right now of one of the largest\r\npower plants that’s in north America which is in the Mojave Desert,\r\nand it’s\r\n\r\na solar thermal plant<\/a>, and it’s costing about $3 billion a\r\ngigawatt….\r\n

\r\nThere’s no individual and there’s no merchant utility that will build\r\na nuclear power plant, because they’re so expensive.\r\nYou can’t make money on it.\r\nThe only ones who will build them are regulated utilities like\r\nthe Southern Company in Georgia… because\r\nthey make money by spending money.\r\nThey get reimbursed for their capital costs plus 12 or 15% per year.\r\nSo they’ll construct it\r\nonce they get approval from the public utility commission.\r\nThen they want to spend as much money on their capital costs\r\nbecause they’re not paying for it.\r\nYou and I are paying for it.\r\n

\r\nI don’t think Bill Gates, or I saw Paul Allen was one of the\r\nfunders of this film, that they’re going to spend their own money\r\nbuilding one of these [nuclear] plants….\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nYou could make energy by burning prime rib,\r\nbut why would you take the most expensive way to do it.\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nAnd by last fall, the cost per gigawatt of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels\r\n\r\nwas already under $3 billion per gigawatt<\/a>\r\nso distributed solar PV makes just as much sense as massive desert\r\nthermal solar, and both make far more economic sense than nuclear.\r\nPlus costs of solar PV keep going down, pushing solar deployments\r\nup like compound interest, while nukes always take years to build\r\nand\r\n\r\nalways cost more than budgeted<\/a>.\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nSouthern Company is the king of nuke cost overruns, going\r\n\r\n26 times overbudget per unit on Vogtle 1 and 2<\/a>\r\nand already\r\n\r\n19 months late and about a billion dollarsoverbudget on Vogtle 3 and 4<\/a>.\r\nThen there are the safety issues: a failed nuke can be Chernobyl\r\nor Fukushima and many nukes\r\n\r\nleak radioactive tritium into groundwater<\/a>\r\nand vent radiation into the air, while a failed solar plant is\r\na bunch of glass.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n\"Robert<\/a>\r\nI got into the [solar] industry\r\nto show that there was an alternative and that the alternative\r\nwas economically viable.\r\nAnd not only that, on\r\na level playing field,\r\nif we weren’t giving them the subsidies to the incumbents,\r\nour technologies would beat them and soundly.\r\nThey simply couldn’t compete.\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nHe called the movie’s claims that solar and wind don’t work\r\none of the movie’s many big lies\r\nbecause even without a level playing field we already built more\r\nsolar and wind power in this country last year “than we did all\r\nof the incumbents combined”.\r\nPlus\r\nyou’ve got to fuel fossil or nuclear plants, not to mention\r\nthe toxic waste issues,\r\nwhile once you build solar or wind “it’s free energy forever”.\r\nKennedy also pointed out the electric grid in the U.S. could be rebuilt to deliver solar and wind power as needed for less than has already been spent on breeder reactors that are no longer in use.\r\nThe filmmaker made no attempt to rebut any of Kennedy’s points about existing solar and wind technologies that already beat nukes, coal, and natural gas, instead going on about pie-in-the-sky modular reactors.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThis all illustrates why\r\n\r\nthe Georgia Public Service Commission<\/a>\r\nneeds to stop letting Georgia Power and Southern Company suck radioactive\r\nprofits at the public teat and make them\r\n\r\nget on with replacing coal with solar<\/a>\r\ninstead of\r\n\r\nletting old coal plant sites sit unused for more than a decade<\/a>.\r\nOh, and GA PSC needs to halt the Plant Vogtle nuke boondoggle,\r\nwhich is even worse than\r\n\r\nSouthern Company’s Kemper Coal plant in Mississippi<\/a>\r\nas a huge transfer of wealth from the people of the state to a monopoly.\r\n

\r\n\r\n\"GA<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nA monopoly that is supposed to be regulated as a public service.\r\nBy the Public Service Commission whose Commissioners\r\n\r\naccept massive campaign contributions from employees and law firms\r\nof the utilities they regulate<\/a>.\r\nIt’s time for GA PSC to bat away the haze of coal smoke and the radioactive\r\ntaint that surrounds them\r\nand go to bat against corruption and for the people of Georgia.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

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