I just received a notice from California Edison that Tier 3, 4 and 5 rates
are increasing AGAIN in the first quarter of 2009. My electric bill is
typically $400 a month. I don't think very many people fall into Tier 1 or
2. Here's what really ****es me off: the electric utilities fail to take
advantage of clean nuclear power. They keep wasting our money on natural
gas, wind power, and all kinds of inefficient "green" ideas but they are
blind to nuclear power. If we had nuclear power we'd only be paying a
fraction of the price and it would be good for the environment!!

scorpster wrote:
I just received a notice from California Edison that Tier 3, 4 and 5
rates are increasing AGAIN in the first quarter of 2009. My electric
bill is typically $400 a month. I don't think very many people fall
into Tier 1 or 2. Here's what really ****es me off: the electric
utilities fail to take advantage of clean nuclear power. They keep
wasting our money on natural gas, wind power, and all kinds of
inefficient "green" ideas but they are blind to nuclear power. If we
had nuclear power we'd only be paying a fraction of the price and it
would be good for the environment!!
Hi,
You wouldn't mind building that clean nuke plant in your back yard, Eh?
Here it is for me locked in next 5 years at 7 cents/kwh natural gas
heating is subsidized when price goes up over set threshold. Tonight it
is -15C and the price of NG is 5.9cents/Gigajoule.
I am in Albeeta.

scorpster wrote:

I just received a notice from California Edison that Tier 3, 4 and 5 rates
are increasing AGAIN in the first quarter of 2009. My electric bill is
typically $400 a month. I don't think very many people fall into Tier 1 or
2. Here's what really ****es me off: the electric utilities fail to take
advantage of clean nuclear power. They keep wasting our money on natural
gas, wind power, and all kinds of inefficient "green" ideas but they are
blind to nuclear power. If we had nuclear power we'd only be paying a
fraction of the price and it would be good for the environment!!

Oh I don't think California "electric utilities fail to take advantage
of clean nuclear power." or that "If we had nuclear power we'd only be
paying a fraction of the price and it would be good for the
environment!!"

Think: "R A N C H O S E C O" and check out:

http://www.constructionweblinks.com/...0407/laww.html

Here are some excerpts:

Regarding the specific issue of "Rancho Seco":

"If the investor-owned utilities will not build new nuclear plants, the
other possibilities are municipally-owned utilities and independent
generators. The Sacramento Municipal Utility District, which shut down
its Rancho Seco nuclear plant in 1989 due to high costs and chronically
poor performance, is unlikely to want to go down that road again."

Regarding the general issue the nuclear power in
[fresh-water-starved-fault-riddled] California:

"Rivers in California . . . are increasingly impractical and unavailable
for nuclear power. . . . there is continued demand for fresh water from
agriculture, industry and residential development. In the southern
United States, recent droughts have resulted in nuclear reactors being
shut down due to low water levels and high water temperatures in rivers
and lakes. The bulk of California's rivers are fed by Sierra snowmelt,
which means that drought and global warming (combined with the other
demands for water), tend to make river water an unreliable long-term
source, particularly in the quantities needed by nuclear plants."

and

"The Pacific Ocean provides the water for California's two operating
nuclear power plants, Diablo Canyon (on the Central Coast) and San
Onofre (between Los Angeles and San Diego), and there is certainly
plenty of ocean water. One problem in siting new nuclear plants on the
coast becomes apparent upon looking at seismic hazard maps - the coastal
region of California also is largely an area of significant seismic
risk. Even the staunchest advocates of nuclear plants should hesitate to
locate a reactor in an earthquake-prone area.

"In short, siting a nuclear plant in California presents a dilemma - if
you site it where there is plenty of water, you are increasing your
earthquake risk."

scorpster wrote:

I just received a notice from California Edison that Tier 3, 4 and 5
rates are increasing AGAIN in the first quarter of 2009. My electric
bill is typically $400 a month.

That's a meaningless number unless you tell us how many KWHs you use.

I don't think very many people fall
into Tier 1 or 2. Here's what really ****es me off: the electric
utilities fail to take advantage of clean nuclear power. They keep
wasting our money on natural gas, wind power, and all kinds of
inefficient "green" ideas but they are blind to nuclear power. If we
had nuclear power we'd only be paying a fraction of the price and it
would be good for the environment!!

See the other response.


--
The e-mail address in our reply-to line is reversed in an attempt to
minimize spam. Our true address is of the form .

On 12/3/2008 8:25 PM scorpster spake thus:

I just received a notice from California Edison that Tier 3, 4 and 5 rates
are increasing AGAIN in the first quarter of 2009. My electric bill is
typically $400 a month. I don't think very many people fall into Tier 1 or
2. Here's what really ****es me off: the electric utilities fail to take
advantage of clean nuclear power. They keep wasting our money on natural
gas, wind power, and all kinds of inefficient "green" ideas but they are
blind to nuclear power. If we had nuclear power we'd only be paying a
fraction of the price and it would be good for the environment!!

As a former card-carrying anti-nuclear activist, I'm here to tell you
that "clean, cheap, reliable nuclear power" always is and still is total
bull****. (Don't know if you remember back that far, but they used to
talk about nuclear electricity rates "too cheap to meter". Hah.)

And people like me can take pretty much *zero* credit for stopping
nuclear power in its tracks, back in the 1980s; it was mostly the
terrible economics of the technology that did it in.

Regardless of the spin you hear from the nuke industry in the US,
countries all over the world are getting out of nuclear as fast as they
can. (Exceptions, of course, for North Korea, Iran, etc.)

Distributed and multi-source "green" power is and will be the way to go.
(Plus conservation and increased energy efficiency. Like Amory Lovins
used to say, paraphrased, "If you have a bathtub with no drain plug, you
can either try to build a bigger nuclear-powered source of water to keep
it filled, or you can get a damn drainplug and put it in.")


--
Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the
powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.

- Paulo Freire

"scorpster" wrote in message
...
I just received a notice from California Edison that Tier 3, 4 and 5 rates
are increasing AGAIN in the first quarter of 2009. My electric bill is
typically $400 a month.

BFD, that is meaningless to all of us outside of CA. What is the rate per
kW hour? I'm paying 18¢.

On Dec 3, 10:25*pm, "scorpster" wrote:
I just received a notice from California Edison that Tier 3, 4 and 5 rates
are increasing AGAIN in the first quarter of 2009. *My electric bill is
typically $400 a month. *I don't think very many people fall into Tier 1 or
2. *Here's what really ****es me off: the electric utilities fail to take
advantage of clean nuclear power. *They keep wasting our money on natural
gas, wind power, and all kinds of inefficient "green" ideas but they are
blind to nuclear power. *If we had nuclear power we'd only be paying a
fraction of the price and it would be good for the environment!!

400 a month, grow up and quit crying, you obviously dont even try to
save energy.

On Thu, 4 Dec 2008 03:18:32 -0800 (PST), ransley
wrote:

On Dec 3, 10:25*pm, "scorpster" wrote:
I just received a notice from California Edison that Tier 3, 4 and 5 rates
are increasing AGAIN in the first quarter of 2009. *My electric bill is
typically $400 a month. *I don't think very many people fall into Tier 1 or
2. *Here's what really ****es me off: the electric utilities fail to take
advantage of clean nuclear power. *They keep wasting our money on natural
gas, wind power, and all kinds of inefficient "green" ideas but they are
blind to nuclear power. *If we had nuclear power we'd only be paying a
fraction of the price and it would be good for the environment!!

400 a month, grow up and quit crying, you obviously dont even try to
save energy.

How can you tell from what he wrote? He might be living in a 15
bedroom house with 20 toddlers & an electroplating business in the
basemen. .. . and keeping his usage below 100kwh a month.

As rants go it was pretty lame.

Jim

On Wed, 3 Dec 2008 20:25:38 -0800, "scorpster"
wrote Re California electric rates are
getting ridiculous:

I just received a notice from California Edison that Tier 3, 4 and 5 rates
are increasing AGAIN in the first quarter of 2009. My electric bill is
typically $400 a month.

Oil, gas & coal are getting pretty expensive.

Subsidized: Where the government takes money, by force, from the citizens.
To pay for something that the citizens don't want to think they are really
actually paying for.

I'm sure California could have lower energy prices, if they raised taxes to
pay the difference. Then, they could be just as socialist as Albeeta.

--
Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
www.lds.org
..


"Tony Hwang" wrote in message
news scorpster wrote:

Here it is for me locked in next 5 years at 7 cents/kwh natural gas
heating is subsidized when price goes up over set threshold. Tonight it
is -15C and the price of NG is 5.9cents/Gigajoule.
I am in Albeeta.

David Nebenzahl wrote:
On 12/3/2008 8:25 PM scorpster spake thus:

I just received a notice from California Edison that Tier 3, 4 and 5
rates are increasing AGAIN in the first quarter of 2009. My
electric bill is typically $400 a month. I don't think very many
people fall into Tier 1 or 2. Here's what really ****es me off: the
electric utilities fail to
take advantage of clean nuclear power. They keep wasting our money
on natural gas, wind power, and all kinds of inefficient "green"
ideas but they are blind to nuclear power. If we had nuclear power
we'd only be paying a fraction of the price and it would be good for
the environment!!

As a former card-carrying anti-nuclear activist, I'm here to tell you
that "clean, cheap, reliable nuclear power" always is and still is
total bull****. (Don't know if you remember back that far, but they
used to talk about nuclear electricity rates "too cheap to meter".
Hah.)
And people like me can take pretty much *zero* credit for stopping
nuclear power in its tracks, back in the 1980s; it was mostly the
terrible economics of the technology that did it in.


Nuclear power, on its own, is clean, cheap, and reliable. It's certainly
clean - the only thing it emits is heat. Building a nuclear power plant is
relatively cheap - it can cost on the same order as a coal-fired plant.

What makes the cost so bizarre is the anti-nuclear movement! Fifteen years
of litigation, design changes ten times the requirements of engineering best
practices, abundant political machinations, all contribute to the bill. Who
needs the grief?

On Thu, 4 Dec 2008 05:49:44 -0500, "Ed Pawlowski"
wrote:


"scorpster" wrote in message
.. .
I just received a notice from California Edison that Tier 3, 4 and 5 rates
are increasing AGAIN in the first quarter of 2009. My electric bill is
typically $400 a month.

BFD, that is meaningless to all of us outside of CA. What is the rate per
kW hour? I'm paying 18¢.



When I lived in California I spent very little time inside. Although
rates (per KWH) were very high, my bill was reasonable unless I used
the electric ceiling heat. I now used 5X that amount, but I'm in a
much larger house and rates are lower.

HeyBub wrote:

David Nebenzahl wrote:


On 12/3/2008 8:25 PM scorpster spake thus:



I just received a notice from California Edison that Tier 3, 4 and 5
rates are increasing AGAIN in the first quarter of 2009. My
electric bill is typically $400 a month. I don't think very many
people fall into Tier 1 or 2. Here's what really ****es me off: the
electric utilities fail to
take advantage of clean nuclear power. They keep wasting our money
on natural gas, wind power, and all kinds of inefficient "green"
ideas but they are blind to nuclear power. If we had nuclear power
we'd only be paying a fraction of the price and it would be good for
the environment!!


As a former card-carrying anti-nuclear activist, I'm here to tell you
that "clean, cheap, reliable nuclear power" always is and still is
total bull****. (Don't know if you remember back that far, but they
used to talk about nuclear electricity rates "too cheap to meter".
Hah.)
And people like me can take pretty much *zero* credit for stopping
nuclear power in its tracks, back in the 1980s; it was mostly the
terrible economics of the technology that did it in.




Nuclear power, on its own, is clean, cheap, and reliable. It's certainly
clean - the only thing it emits is heat. Building a nuclear power plant is
relatively cheap - it can cost on the same order as a coal-fired plant.

What makes the cost so bizarre is the anti-nuclear movement! Fifteen years
of litigation, design changes ten times the requirements of engineering best
practices, abundant political machinations, all contribute to the bill. Who
needs the grief?




Have they settled the fight over where to bury nuclear waste? How soon
we forget.

With all of the zillions and zillions of dollars in bail-out money they
should insulate homes. Hire
out-of-work trades to do basic energy audits, beginning with the homes
of least value on the tax
rolls. Hire others to blow in insulation, caulk, slap some fiberglass
down in the attics. Mebbe repair
some roofs. Goal: keep people employed, reduce energy consumption, help
low-income (low-income,
in my book, is someone with not enough money to pay the bills) folks
afford to live in their homes,
give property value a nudge upward.

Using energy at our present level is never going to be "green" - not
windmills, not nuclear, not
"clean" coal. THAT is an oxymoron. Y'all want to check out the sunset
on the coast through
a mass of windmills?

If GM is going south, the gov't should buy it, convert plants to mfg.
solar panels and give 'em
away. Lot of sunshine where I live. Could probably export electricity.

David Nebenzahl wrote:


anti babble deleted

Nuclear energy is "green", both safe and non polluting and given proper
reprocessing, largely renewable.

Nuclear is also the only source that is currently viable at the scale
necessary to eliminate coal and nat gas fueled generation, and further
to provide subsidized charging electricity for electric/hybrid vehicles
to further reduce oil consumption.

Nuclear is the only viable intermediate source that can allow a
significant shift away from fossil fuels *now* while the technologies
for other sources such as solar, wind, hydro and tidal develop further
to overcome the significant issues they currently have, largely the
utility scale energy storage capabilities required given the
intermittent generation of most of those sources.

Stormin Mormon wrote:

Subsidized: Where the government takes money, by force, from the citizens.
To pay for something that the citizens don't want to think they are really
actually paying for.

I'm sure California could have lower energy prices, if they raised taxes to
pay the difference. Then, they could be just as socialist as Albeeta.



How is giving my money to big banks NOT Socialist? And why do Socialist
countries have a much
higher standard of living than we do?

On Wed, 03 Dec 2008 20:25:38 -0800, scorpster wrote:


...{Snip} If we
had nuclear power we'd only be paying a fraction of the price and it
would be good for the environment!!

I seem to recall that back in the Carter or Regan era there was an
attempt to build a fission plant in some mid-western state and the Lawyer
costs on both sides ran way more than the cost of actually building the
electrical plant. CBS's 60 minutes did a massive hatchet job on the
building plans for that power plant.

Teachers in grade school and middle school were teaching the evils of
fission power for generation of electrical power at this time. One
teacher tried to organize a class room writing exercises asking the power
plant not be build. (IIRC, I think this occurred in Madison, Wisconsin
but the plant was in another state, maybe Illinois)

Any discussion on the nuclear fission (boiling water by splitting heavy
atoms) *must* include cost of lawyers, cost anti-nuke media counter-
attacks by "Press-Spokespersons," and cost of lobbyist at the Federal,
State, and local levels. very $$$$$

You think your cost of electricity is high now? Just wait until the
lawyer's invoice from at least 1/3 of the lawyers in the San Francisco
Bay area comes in.

Just my opinion.

On Dec 4, 8:45*am, Norminn wrote:
Stormin Mormon wrote:
Subsidized: Where the government takes money, by force, from the citizens.
To pay for something that the citizens don't want to think they are really
actually paying for.

I'm sure California could have lower energy prices, if they raised taxes to
pay the difference. Then, they could be just as socialist as Albeeta.

How is giving my money to big banks NOT Socialist? *And why do Socialist
countries have a much
higher standard of living than we do?

By who's measure? And if you think they are so damn great, why don't
you move your butt there and shut up?

On Dec 4, 8:24*am, "HeyBub" wrote:
David Nebenzahl wrote:
On 12/3/2008 8:25 PM scorpster spake thus:

I just received a notice from California Edison that Tier 3, 4 and 5
rates are increasing AGAIN in the first quarter of 2009. *My
electric bill is typically $400 a month. *I don't think very many
people fall into Tier 1 or 2. *Here's what really ****es me off: the
electric utilities fail to
take advantage of clean nuclear power. *They keep wasting our money
on natural gas, wind power, and all kinds of inefficient "green"
ideas but they are blind to nuclear power. *If we had nuclear power
we'd only be paying a fraction of the price and it would be good for
the environment!!

As a former card-carrying anti-nuclear activist, I'm here to tell you
that "clean, cheap, reliable nuclear power" always is and still is
total bull****. (Don't know if you remember back that far, but they
used to talk about nuclear electricity rates "too cheap to meter".
Hah.)
And people like me can take pretty much *zero* credit for stopping
nuclear power in its tracks, back in the 1980s; it was mostly the
terrible economics of the technology that did it in.

Nuclear power, on its own, is clean, cheap, and reliable. It's certainly
clean - the only thing it emits is heat. Building a nuclear power plant is
relatively cheap - it can cost on the same order as a coal-fired plant.

What makes the cost so bizarre is the anti-nuclear movement! Fifteen years
of litigation, design changes ten times the requirements of engineering best
practices, abundant political machinations, all contribute to the bill. Who
needs the grief?- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I agree on most respects but the one cost that has been and continues
to be ignored is how to dispose of the contaminated waste. This cost
is growing and may well be the biggest expense we will yet pay for
nuclear power. Until this issue is resolved, there should be NO
FURTHER development of nuclear power plants. And before you get on
your high horse about me being anti-nuclear, I am not. I simply
believe that we have to solve the disposal problems before we increase
the problems beyond the point of no return.

"Pete C." wrote in
ster.com:


David Nebenzahl wrote:


anti babble deleted

Nuclear energy is "green", both safe and non polluting and given proper
reprocessing, largely renewable.

Nuclear is also the only source that is currently viable at the scale
necessary to eliminate coal and nat gas fueled generation, and further
to provide subsidized charging electricity for electric/hybrid vehicles
to further reduce oil consumption.

Nuclear is the only viable intermediate source that can allow a
significant shift away from fossil fuels *now* while the technologies
for other sources such as solar, wind, hydro and tidal develop further
to overcome the significant issues they currently have, largely the
utility scale energy storage capabilities required given the
intermittent generation of most of those sources.


plus you have to remember that the greenies are against dams,
so that kills hydropower,and they are against windmills because they kill
birds.
They also are against the power lines necessary to distribute the electric
power from remote windfarms.(or any other power generating source...)

Their concept is that you DO WITHOUT;Reduce your lifestyle.

Meanwhile Russia,Iran,Venezuela,other countries all are proceeding with new
nuclear powerplants.

Nebenzahl is just a Luddite.

MORE nuclear power,NOW!

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
kua.net

BobR wrote:

On Dec 4, 8:45 am, Norminn wrote:


Stormin Mormon wrote:


Subsidized: Where the government takes money, by force, from the citizens.
To pay for something that the citizens don't want to think they are really
actually paying for.


I'm sure California could have lower energy prices, if they raised taxes to
pay the difference. Then, they could be just as socialist as Albeeta.


How is giving my money to big banks NOT Socialist? And why do Socialist
countries have a much
higher standard of living than we do?



By who's measure? And if you think they are so damn great, why don't
you move your butt there and shut up?


I like to express myself and I like living where I'm free to do so. I
should have phrased the statement
about Socialist countries more carefully......... a lot of
them.......Scandinavian countries?....do much better
than we do. Our healthcare is not only grossly expensive, it is hugely
wasteful. Our public education
system is horrible. What weighs on both, and on the economy, is greed
and irresponsibility. Last
time I filled the gas tank of my car, the price of gasoline was $4/gal
and everyone was howling for
the gov't. to do something. PEOPLE need to get off their fat arses and
solve the problems; take
responsibility for their debt/spending, and for their fuel consumption.
Take responsibility for their
brats who need $1,000 in crap every Christmas so's they will stop acting
like little monsters who
want what they want when they want it.......the blue hair for school,
the trip to rave clubs every
weekend, the sorry excuses for vandalism and misbehaving in school.
"Children learn what they
live".The idiots who spent 10 years obsessing about Bill Clinton's sex
life have gotten what they
deserve. The religious zealots who vote on the basis of one narrow
issue have voted us to disaster.
Lots of folks think in terms of sports figures being "role models" for
their children......how about
the dope in the White House who can't even speak in complete sentences?

On Dec 3, 10:25*pm, "scorpster" wrote:
I just received a notice from California Edison that Tier 3, 4 and 5 rates
are increasing AGAIN in the first quarter of 2009. *My electric bill is
typically $400 a month. *I don't think very many people fall into Tier 1 or
2. *Here's what really ****es me off: the electric utilities fail to take
advantage of clean nuclear power. *They keep wasting our money on natural
gas, wind power, and all kinds of inefficient "green" ideas but they are
blind to nuclear power. *If we had nuclear power we'd only be paying a
fraction of the price and it would be good for the environment!!

You think they are high now, just wait till every hippie in CA is
driving a Chevy Volt. The problem with most environmentalists is that
they will protest for electric cars or ethanol, etc. then realize
later that the laws of thermodynamics are still in effect. The
gasoline-burned energy that pushes your car 60 miles, is the same
amount of electric energy needed to push your car 60 miles on a
charge.

Yes if electric cars become the norm, then nuclear will have to be
increased. I live around Chicago where we have the highest
concentration of nuclear plants anywhere in the US, they are perfectly
safe, and the newer plants are even safer.

on 12/3/2008 11:25 PM scorpster said the following:
I just received a notice from California Edison that Tier 3, 4 and 5
rates are increasing AGAIN in the first quarter of 2009. My electric
bill is typically $400 a month. I don't think very many people fall
into Tier 1 or 2. Here's what really ****es me off: the electric
utilities fail to take advantage of clean nuclear power. They keep
wasting our money on natural gas, wind power, and all kinds of
inefficient "green" ideas but they are blind to nuclear power. If we
had nuclear power we'd only be paying a fraction of the price and it
would be good for the environment!!

Do you want to see what a 'green' company can do to conserve energy?
In Google Earth or Google Map's Satellite view, enter the coordinates
37.422000, - 122.084000 in the location box and zoom in.
Maybe all your studios, millionaires, and celebrities can follow suit.

--

Bill
In Hamptonburgh, NY
In the original Orange County. Est. 1683
To email, remove the double zeroes after @

On Thu, 4 Dec 2008 08:24:25 -0600, "HeyBub"
wrote Re California electric rates are getting ridiculous:

Nuclear power, on its own, is clean, cheap, and reliable. It's certainly
clean - the only thing it emits is heat. Building a nuclear power plant is
relatively cheap - it can cost on the same order as a coal-fired plant.

What makes the cost so bizarre is the anti-nuclear movement! Fifteen years
of litigation, design changes ten times the requirements of engineering best
practices, abundant political machinations, all contribute to the bill. Who
needs the grief?


Well said.

BobR wrote:
What makes the cost so bizarre is the anti-nuclear movement! Fifteen
years of litigation, design changes ten times the requirements of
engineering best practices, abundant political machinations, all
contribute to the bill. Who needs the grief?- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I agree on most respects but the one cost that has been and continues
to be ignored is how to dispose of the contaminated waste. This cost
is growing and may well be the biggest expense we will yet pay for
nuclear power. Until this issue is resolved, there should be NO
FURTHER development of nuclear power plants. And before you get on
your high horse about me being anti-nuclear, I am not. I simply
believe that we have to solve the disposal problems before we increase
the problems beyond the point of no return.

This is straw-man argument.

No decision has been made on the disposal of nuclear waste because a
decision is not yet necessary!

There are several seemingly-excellent disposal techniques: Imbedding the
waste in molten glass and sinking the ingots in the Marinaras Trench,
shooting the waste into the sun, pumping the stuff into abandonded salt
mines, yak-yak-yak. There is almost no end to possible fixes.

Until we HAVE to make a decision, it is best to DELAY the decision on the
chance a better solution will present itself.

Suppose, for example, the glass-ingot method were put into play. Then, ten
years from now, somebody discovers you can turn radioactive material into
burgers and feed the world. Can you imagine the effort and treasure
necessary to retrieve all those ingots from five miles under water? If, on
the other hand, we had shot the waste into the sun, we'd NEVER be able to
get it back (unless we went at night).

Jim Yanik wrote:
"Pete C." wrote in
ster.com:


David Nebenzahl wrote:


anti babble deleted

Nuclear energy is "green", both safe and non polluting and given
proper reprocessing, largely renewable.

Nuclear is also the only source that is currently viable at the scale
necessary to eliminate coal and nat gas fueled generation, and
further to provide subsidized charging electricity for
electric/hybrid vehicles to further reduce oil consumption.

Nuclear is the only viable intermediate source that can allow a
significant shift away from fossil fuels *now* while the technologies
for other sources such as solar, wind, hydro and tidal develop
further to overcome the significant issues they currently have,
largely the utility scale energy storage capabilities required given
the intermittent generation of most of those sources.


plus you have to remember that the greenies are against dams,
so that kills hydropower,and they are against windmills because they
kill birds.
They also are against the power lines necessary to distribute the
electric power from remote windfarms.(or any other power generating
source...)


Of all the forms of power generation, hydroelectric is the most hazardous.
Dams seldom fail, but when they do, they fail catastrophically!

Every time someone starts ranting about extreme conservation, getting back
to a simpler time, the integrity of the "noble savage" lifestyle, and being
"at one" with nature, I have but one word:

Dentistry.

Ed Pawlowski wrote:

"scorpster" wrote in message
...
I just received a notice from California Edison that Tier 3, 4 and 5 rates
are increasing AGAIN in the first quarter of 2009. My electric bill is
typically $400 a month.

BFD, that is meaningless to all of us outside of CA. What is the rate per
kW hour? I'm paying 18¢.

I'm paying about 13¢ here in TX.

Norminn wrote:

Stormin Mormon wrote:

Subsidized: Where the government takes money, by force, from the citizens.
To pay for something that the citizens don't want to think they are really
actually paying for.

I'm sure California could have lower energy prices, if they raised taxes to
pay the difference. Then, they could be just as socialist as Albeeta.



How is giving my money to big banks NOT Socialist? And why do Socialist
countries have a much
higher standard of living than we do?

Care to give an example of such a socialist country with a higher
standard of living than that in the US?

On 12/4/2008 6:24 AM HeyBub spake thus:

David Nebenzahl wrote:

On 12/3/2008 8:25 PM scorpster spake thus:

I just received a notice from California Edison that Tier 3, 4
and 5 rates are increasing AGAIN in the first quarter of 2009. My
electric bill is typically $400 a month. I don't think very many
people fall into Tier 1 or 2. Here's what really ****es me off:
the electric utilities fail to take advantage of clean nuclear
power. They keep wasting our money on natural gas, wind power,
and all kinds of inefficient "green" ideas but they are blind to
nuclear power. If we had nuclear power we'd only be paying a
fraction of the price and it would be good for the environment!!

As a former card-carrying anti-nuclear activist, I'm here to tell you
that "clean, cheap, reliable nuclear power" always is and still is
total bull****. (Don't know if you remember back that far, but they
used to talk about nuclear electricity rates "too cheap to meter".
Hah.)
And people like me can take pretty much *zero* credit for stopping
nuclear power in its tracks, back in the 1980s; it was mostly the
terrible economics of the technology that did it in.

Nuclear power, on its own, is clean, cheap, and reliable. It's certainly
clean - the only thing it emits is heat. Building a nuclear power plant is
relatively cheap - it can cost on the same order as a coal-fired plant.

What makes the cost so bizarre is the anti-nuclear movement! Fifteen years
of litigation, design changes ten times the requirements of engineering best
practices, abundant political machinations, all contribute to the bill. Who
needs the grief?

You must have missed what I wrote. You give the antinuclear movement far
too much credit for the moratorium on building nukes in this country
(U.S.). Look at the economics. Keep in mind that we (the anti-nukes)
were fighting the NRC just as hard as we were fighting the utilities:
the feds hardly changed their policies one inch as a result of all our
agitation, so you can't lay the problem at the doorstep of "excessive
regulation". The NRC has always been somewhat of a lapdog that obeys its
real masters, the electric utilities and nuclear power plant
construction firms (GE, Bechtel, Combustion Engineering, etc.).

All of which completely ignores the 900-lb. gorilla here, which is the
ongoing problem of radioactive waste disposal which is still not even
close to being solved, let alone even temporarily. This should be enough
to permanently nail that particular coffin closed and bury it.

Like we used to say: who needs fission reactors on earth, when we have a
perfectly good, inexhaustible *fusion* reactor out there in space?


--
Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the
powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.

- Paulo Freire

David Nebenzahl wrote:
On 12/3/2008 8:25 PM scorpster spake thus:

I just received a notice from California Edison that Tier 3, 4 and 5
rates are increasing AGAIN in the first quarter of 2009. My electric
bill is typically $400 a month. I don't think very many people fall
into Tier 1 or 2. Here's what really ****es me off: the electric
utilities fail to take advantage of clean nuclear power. They keep
wasting our money on natural gas, wind power, and all kinds of
inefficient "green" ideas but they are blind to nuclear power. If we
had nuclear power we'd only be paying a fraction of the price and it
would be good for the environment!!

As a former card-carrying anti-nuclear activist, I'm here to tell you
that "clean, cheap, reliable nuclear power" always is and still is total
bull****. (Don't know if you remember back that far, but they used to
talk about nuclear electricity rates "too cheap to meter". Hah.)

And people like me can take pretty much *zero* credit for stopping
nuclear power in its tracks, back in the 1980s; it was mostly the
terrible economics of the technology that did it in.

Regardless of the spin you hear from the nuke industry in the US,
countries all over the world are getting out of nuclear as fast as they
can. (Exceptions, of course, for North Korea, Iran, etc.)
....
Regardless of the spin from folks like you, the facts are that the
operating reactors in the US _are_ reliable, cost-competitive and as or
more environmentally friendly than equivalent generation of comparative
MWe onto the grid (which, of course, is the ultimate need).

You conveniently left out EdF (France) and the Indians and Chinese, S
Korea, as well as the current list of license applications for new US
plants in your list of "except for's". EdF is, in fact, making serious
inquiries into entering the US market.

_IF_ (the proverbial "big if") the C-sequestration and
hybrid/electric-car folks have any intention whatsoever of doing
anything useful, they will simply have to accept that for the
foreseeable future conventional nuclear is the only alternative
generation technology available in anything even remotely approaching a
short term time frame that has the capacity and reliability required to
make a significant difference in the generation mix.

--

"Pete C." wrote in message
ster.com...

Norminn wrote:

Stormin Mormon wrote:

Subsidized: Where the government takes money, by force, from the
citizens.
To pay for something that the citizens don't want to think they are
really
actually paying for.

I'm sure California could have lower energy prices, if they raised taxes
to
pay the difference. Then, they could be just as socialist as Albeeta.



How is giving my money to big banks NOT Socialist? And why do Socialist
countries have a much
higher standard of living than we do?

Care to give an example of such a socialist country with a higher
standard of living than that in the US?

Sweden. And just a point, the US doesn't even make the top ten list of
countries with the highest standard of living, although Canada, Finland,
Norway, and Sweden all do.

Phil Again wrote:
On Wed, 03 Dec 2008 20:25:38 -0800, scorpster wrote:


...{Snip} If we
had nuclear power we'd only be paying a fraction of the price and it
would be good for the environment!!

I seem to recall that back in the Carter or Regan era there was an
attempt to build a fission plant in some mid-western state and the Lawyer
costs on both sides ran way more than the cost of actually building the
electrical plant. CBS's 60 minutes did a massive hatchet job on the
building plans for that power plant.

Teachers in grade school and middle school were teaching the evils of
fission power for generation of electrical power at this time. One
teacher tried to organize a class room writing exercises asking the power
plant not be build. (IIRC, I think this occurred in Madison, Wisconsin
but the plant was in another state, maybe Illinois)

Any discussion on the nuclear fission (boiling water by splitting heavy
atoms) *must* include cost of lawyers, cost anti-nuke media counter-
attacks by "Press-Spokespersons," and cost of lobbyist at the Federal,
State, and local levels. very $$$$$

You think your cost of electricity is high now? Just wait until the
lawyer's invoice from at least 1/3 of the lawyers in the San Francisco
Bay area comes in.

Just my opinion.

Greenies throw up any smoke screen they can think of. I remember a big
objection here was heat from reactor would raise water temperature and
hurt the fishies. Now, a few decades later, the same people are crying
about pollution from the big coal generator we have, which would have
never been needed if we got the nuke plant ;(

David Nebenzahl wrote:
....
You must have missed what I wrote. You give the antinuclear movement far
too much credit for the moratorium on building nukes in this country
(U.S.). Look at the economics. Keep in mind that we (the anti-nukes)
were fighting the NRC just as hard as we were fighting the utilities:
the feds hardly changed their policies one inch as a result of all our
agitation, so you can't lay the problem at the doorstep of "excessive
regulation". The NRC has always been somewhat of a lapdog that obeys its
real masters, the electric utilities and nuclear power plant
construction firms (GE, Bechtel, Combustion Engineering, etc.).

All of which completely ignores the 900-lb. gorilla here, which is the
ongoing problem of radioactive waste disposal which is still not even
close to being solved, let alone even temporarily. This should be enough
to permanently nail that particular coffin closed and bury it.

Like we used to say: who needs fission reactors on earth, when we have a
perfectly good, inexhaustible *fusion* reactor out there in space?

Yes and no on the "anti" movement. What it did do in conjunction w/ the
ill-informed popular press and an even more sadly informed former
president was to change the political climate. The actual final straw
was, of course, the TMI incident which was totally mischaracterized in
every report outside the technical community itself.

The economics were only so bad in that time frame owing to the ability
of the obstructionists to stretch out the licensing and construction
process to such extremes as they did(1) and the excessively high
interest rates of the time so that the financing until the unit could
become a revenue-generator became intolerable. That was a combination
of effects part of which can certainly be attributed to the movement.

The waste issue is not resolved for political reasons far more than for
technical ones. The former president of whom we just spake edict'ed no
reprocessing licensing to go forward in the US and began the storage
option instead fiasco which led to the current Yucca Mountain debacle
which the Senator from NV has used as a populist campaign crutch for
almost 30 years now.

(1) The problems are far too complex to delve into in depth in this
type of a forum, but the NRC bears a fair responsibility as well in its
insatiable demands for every possible new gizmo or rule to be retrofit
to every existing plant that kept design criteria in a constant state of
flux. And, of course, as I noted upthread, there were mistakes made by
the utilities and architect-engineer firms that exacerbated the problems
by not being as careful as should have been in crossing every i and
dotting ever t. Then, of course, the protestors used every one of these
details, no matter how trivial, as a club to the fullest extent they
could manage.

--

dpb wrote:
David Nebenzahl wrote:
...
Like we used to say: who needs fission reactors on earth, when we have
a perfectly good, inexhaustible *fusion* reactor out there in space?
....
Because it isn't reliably tied to the grid.

--

willshak wrote:
on 12/3/2008 11:25 PM scorpster said the following:
I just received a notice from California Edison that Tier 3, 4 and 5
rates are increasing AGAIN in the first quarter of 2009. My electric
bill is typically $400 a month. I don't think very many people fall
into Tier 1 or 2. Here's what really ****es me off: the electric
utilities fail to take advantage of clean nuclear power. They keep
wasting our money on natural gas, wind power, and all kinds of
inefficient "green" ideas but they are blind to nuclear power. If we
had nuclear power we'd only be paying a fraction of the price and it
would be good for the environment!!

Do you want to see what a 'green' company can do to conserve energy?
In Google Earth or Google Map's Satellite view, enter the coordinates
37.422000, - 122.084000 in the location box and zoom in.
Maybe all your studios, millionaires, and celebrities can follow suit.

I'm disappointed. Expected a night view of North Korea

On Dec 4, 11:27*am, "HeyBub" wrote:
BobR wrote:
What makes the cost so bizarre is the anti-nuclear movement! Fifteen
years of litigation, design changes ten times the requirements of
engineering best practices, abundant political machinations, all
contribute to the bill. Who needs the grief?- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I agree on most respects but the one cost that has been and continues
to be ignored is how to dispose of the contaminated waste. *This cost
is growing and may well be the biggest expense we will yet pay for
nuclear power. *Until this issue is resolved, there should be NO
FURTHER development of nuclear power plants. *And before you get on
your high horse about me being anti-nuclear, I am not. *I simply
believe that we have to solve the disposal problems before we increase
the problems beyond the point of no return.

This is straw-man argument.

No decision has been made on the disposal of nuclear waste because a
decision is not yet necessary!

There are several seemingly-excellent disposal techniques: Imbedding the
waste in molten glass and sinking the ingots in the Marinaras Trench,
shooting the waste into the sun, pumping the stuff into abandonded salt
mines, yak-yak-yak. There is almost no end to possible fixes.

Until we HAVE to make a decision, it is best to DELAY the decision on the
chance a better solution will present itself.

Suppose, for example, the glass-ingot method were put into play. Then, ten
years from *now, somebody discovers you can turn radioactive material into
burgers and feed the world. Can you imagine the effort and treasure
necessary to retrieve all those ingots from five miles under water? If, on
the other hand, we had shot the waste into the sun, we'd NEVER be able to
get it back (unless we went at night).- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I believe there are safe ways to dispose of it but until a valid plan
is in place to do so, we have no damn business creating yet more
waste. Right now, there is nothing but stockpiling the stuff in
holding areas that are an ever increasing hazard to everyone. Find a
solution, prove it, implement it and then lets talk about building new
facilities. Until then, NO!

On Dec 4, 10:10*am, Norminn wrote:
BobR wrote:
On Dec 4, 8:45 am, Norminn wrote:

Stormin Mormon wrote:

Subsidized: Where the government takes money, by force, from the citizens.
To pay for something that the citizens don't want to think they are really
actually paying for.

I'm sure California could have lower energy prices, if they raised taxes to
pay the difference. Then, they could be just as socialist as Albeeta.

How is giving my money to big banks NOT Socialist? *And why do Socialist
countries have a much
higher standard of living than we do?

By who's measure? *And if you think they are so damn great, why don't
you move your butt there and shut up?

I like to express myself and I like living where I'm free to do so. *I
should have phrased the statement
about Socialist countries more carefully......... a lot of
them.......Scandinavian countries?....do much better
than we do. *Our healthcare is not only grossly expensive, it is hugely
wasteful. *Our public education
system is horrible. *What weighs on both, and on the economy, is greed
and irresponsibility. *Last
time I filled the gas tank of my car, the price of gasoline was $4/gal
and everyone was howling for
the gov't. to do something. *PEOPLE need to get off their fat arses and
solve the problems; take
responsibility for their debt/spending, and for their fuel consumption. *
Take responsibility for their
brats who need $1,000 in crap every Christmas so's they will stop acting
like little monsters who
want what they want when they want it.......the blue hair for school,
the trip to rave clubs every
weekend, the sorry excuses for vandalism and misbehaving in school. *
"Children learn what they
live".The idiots who spent 10 years obsessing about Bill Clinton's sex
life have gotten what they
deserve. *The religious zealots who vote on the basis of one narrow
issue have voted us to disaster.
Lots of folks think in terms of sports figures being "role models" for
their children......how about
the dope in the White House who can't even speak in complete sentences?- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I think maybe you should re-examine some of those Scandinavian
countries that you seem to think so highly of. Many of them don't
have to deal with the same issues of huge numbers of illegal
immigrants that are currently straining our system. In addition, you
will find that some of those very countries are experiencing their own
problems with health care costs. From what I have read, many of those
socialist countries are having substantial problems with both
availability, quality, and costs.

BobR wrote:
On Dec 4, 11:27 am, "HeyBub" wrote:
BobR wrote:
What makes the cost so bizarre is the anti-nuclear movement!
Fifteen years of litigation, design changes ten times the
requirements of engineering best practices, abundant political
machinations, all contribute to the bill. Who needs the grief?-
Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I agree on most respects but the one cost that has been and
continues to be ignored is how to dispose of the contaminated
waste. This cost is growing and may well be the biggest expense we
will yet pay for nuclear power. Until this issue is resolved, there
should be NO FURTHER development of nuclear power plants. And
before you get on your high horse about me being anti-nuclear, I am
not. I simply believe that we have to solve the disposal problems
before we increase the problems beyond the point of no return.

This is straw-man argument.

No decision has been made on the disposal of nuclear waste because a
decision is not yet necessary!

There are several seemingly-excellent disposal techniques: Imbedding
the waste in molten glass and sinking the ingots in the Marinaras
Trench, shooting the waste into the sun, pumping the stuff into
abandonded salt mines, yak-yak-yak. There is almost no end to
possible fixes.

Until we HAVE to make a decision, it is best to DELAY the decision
on the chance a better solution will present itself.

Suppose, for example, the glass-ingot method were put into play.
Then, ten years from now, somebody discovers you can turn
radioactive material into burgers and feed the world. Can you
imagine the effort and treasure necessary to retrieve all those
ingots from five miles under water? If, on the other hand, we had
shot the waste into the sun, we'd NEVER be able to get it back
(unless we went at night).- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I believe there are safe ways to dispose of it but until a valid plan
is in place to do so, we have no damn business creating yet more
waste. Right now, there is nothing but stockpiling the stuff in
holding areas that are an ever increasing hazard to everyone. Find a
solution, prove it, implement it and then lets talk about building new
facilities. Until then, NO!

We HAVE a plan!

The plan is to NOT dispose of the stuff until we HAVE to dispose of the
stuff. At the moment we can no longer safely store the waste, we'll pick
from competing alternatives. Until then, it is prudent and responsible to
wait for any alternative methods that haven't yet made it to the party.

NOT disposing of nuclear waste is far preferable to disposing of it the
wrong way.

David Nebenzahl wrote:

You must have missed what I wrote. You give the antinuclear movement
far too much credit for the moratorium on building nukes in this
country (U.S.). Look at the economics. Keep in mind that we (the
anti-nukes) were fighting the NRC just as hard as we were fighting
the utilities: the feds hardly changed their policies one inch as a
result of all our agitation, so you can't lay the problem at the
doorstep of "excessive regulation". The NRC has always been somewhat
of a lapdog that obeys its real masters, the electric utilities and
nuclear power plant construction firms (GE, Bechtel, Combustion
Engineering, etc.).

## Agree about the NRC, but it's the COURTS that drive up the cost.


All of which completely ignores the 900-lb. gorilla here, which is the
ongoing problem of radioactive waste disposal which is still not even
close to being solved, let alone even temporarily. This should be
enough to permanently nail that particular coffin closed and bury it.

## There is no "ongoing problem of radioactive waste disposal." Never was.


Like we used to say: who needs fission reactors on earth, when we
have a perfectly good, inexhaustible *fusion* reactor out there in
space?

Because the same people (generally) who oppose nuclear power also oppose
oil, coal, slavery, and all other forms of energy utilization.

Buncha Luddites, you ask me.

Frank wrote:
Phil Again wrote:
On Wed, 03 Dec 2008 20:25:38 -0800, scorpster wrote:


...{Snip} If we
had nuclear power we'd only be paying a fraction of the price and it
would be good for the environment!!

I seem to recall that back in the Carter or Regan era there was an
attempt to build a fission plant in some mid-western state and the
Lawyer costs on both sides ran way more than the cost of actually
building the electrical plant. CBS's 60 minutes did a massive
hatchet job on the building plans for that power plant.

Teachers in grade school and middle school were teaching the evils of
fission power for generation of electrical power at this time. One
teacher tried to organize a class room writing exercises asking the
power plant not be build. (IIRC, I think this occurred in Madison,
Wisconsin but the plant was in another state, maybe Illinois)

Any discussion on the nuclear fission (boiling water by splitting
heavy atoms) *must* include cost of lawyers, cost anti-nuke media
counter- attacks by "Press-Spokespersons," and cost of lobbyist at
the Federal, State, and local levels. very $$$$$

You think your cost of electricity is high now? Just wait until the
lawyer's invoice from at least 1/3 of the lawyers in the San
Francisco Bay area comes in.

Just my opinion.

Greenies throw up any smoke screen they can think of. I remember a
big objection here was heat from reactor would raise water
temperature and hurt the fishies. Now, a few decades later, the same
people are crying about pollution from the big coal generator we
have, which would have never been needed if we got the nuke plant ;(

They raised the same objection about a NG-powered generating plant here. The
heated water (which travels about a mile through a canal to the bay) would
kill every living marine animal from Galveston to Mexico!

Turns out, the animals are not stupid! Those that don't like warm water go
elsewhere. Those that DO like warm water (i.e., shrimp) migrate to the
discharge canal. Those that like the things that like warm water (i.e.,
redfish) follow the shrimp and the fishermen follow them. Somedays it's
shoulder-to-shoulder along the banks of the canal!

clipped


Greenies throw up any smoke screen they can think of. I remember a
big objection here was heat from reactor would raise water temperature
and hurt the fishies. Now, a few decades later, the same people are
crying about pollution from the big coal generator we have, which
would have never been needed if we got the nuke plant ;(

I'm not a "greenie", I'm just a person who would like to conserve
supplies of food, water and fuel for future generations. The "fishies"
are badly depleted in many places ... cod in Atlantic, grouper and
others in Florida, from overfishing. Dams in the northwest have harmed
fisheries, as has drought ..... downstream is much of California and the
desert S.W. Ethanol was great until it disturbed food markets, and it
consumes huge amounts of water, which is a big problem for SE and Florida.

Someone said we should just keep the nuclear waste until we develop
technology to make it safe..........nukes take fuel, too.