Michael's MN cousin was kind enough to send me many links on the subsidies issue and nuclear energy (NE) in general (many thanks) and I'm still lost. The most readable for the science challenged (me) was an article by Jon Gertner from the July, 06 NYT Magazine.
His general conclusion was that while NE is not a good source of energy, it may be a necessary one with the rising energy needs of countries like China and India, our own energy voraciousness and greenhouse gas emissions...one piece of the energy supply pie needed to replace fossil fuels.
While I was glad to read a NYT journalist was slouching toward NE, the article left me only more confused about the subsidies. Gertner mentions that many reactors bring in revenue in excess of $1M a day. That sounds really low to me. I'm not sure even a heavily subsidized reactor could ever generate a profit like that. Maybe he meant to say "profit" instead of "revenue." That could be because just a sentence or two later he refers the Entergy's 10 plants generating about $250M a year in profits. If these monsters were costing $6-9B to complete in 1985 and have a 40 year life expectancy, I don't know how the numbers could ever work.
On the other hand, if 103 US plants provide 20% of our electricity using the dinosaurs, maybe the next generation reactors will yield a better result. Or, and at the risk of sounding like FDR, electricity in this era may really be something that government should fund. I'm not there yet but could probably be convinced.
I'm not too concerned about the issues of waste or terrorist attacks. We'll figure something out for the former and while the Gertner article tried to strike a negative pose on the latter, it actually heartened me.
Much more work for me to do.
(Note: my most left-leaning bone is my green bone. Non-violent treehuggers don't bother me in the least so long as they are intellectually honest.)
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