this article is a must read. as nuclear power plants are of *major* concern to me i was very disturbed by the conclusions.

http://www.ucsusa.org/energy/index.html

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-- Anonymous, May 22, 1999

Answers

marianne, Enjoy your astute observations. This group, Union of Concerned Scientific Nuts does concern me, but I find nothing about the article you reference. One note on an article there, that for each person in the US we produce over 40,000 lbs of CO2 is an example. Perhaps if we count the CO2 production of every bacteria, blade of grass, and tree leaf in the country we might, but artificially producing 40,000 lbs of any single commodity for each person in the US is absolute lunacy. These people have their own agenda, so take anything you find with a ton of salt. (my opinion). Nonetheless, I didn't find the article to which you were referring at this site address.

-- Anonymous, May 23, 1999

xBob, I believe the article Marianne is talking about can be found by going to the link she posted, clicking on "Energy" on the left sidebar, then scrolling down the page to click on "Risks and Opportunities: Rnewable Energy in a Changing Electricity Industry. Once there, you have to scroll down the page again to find the link to "Nuclear Safety in a Changing Electricity Industry".

A couple of the pertinent paragraphs which would explain Marianne's concern are:

"The range of estimated closures implies that some nuclear plants face an uncertain future: they will survive only if they can cut costs. Although all power plants will be under increased competitive pressure to cut costs and raise profits, these pressures will be extreme for plants that are economically marginal. And extreme pressure to cut costs at marginal nuclear plants has one very serious possible consequence: it could reduce the margin of error on safety."

"In some cases, this potential has already been realized. For example, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission attributed safety problems at the closed Maine Yankee nuclear plant to "economic pressure to be a low-cost energy producer" -- pressure that limited available resources for repairs."

"It is essential to evaluate the cumulative effect of cost-cutting measures on nuclear safety levels, instead of considering their consequences individually. A bee sting is painful, but it is generally not life-threatening. A thousand bee stings are a completely different story. The backlog of problems at Maine Yankee grew to nearly 3,200 items in 1996, including over 100 high-priority problems that were not fixed during an outage in 1995. No single item seemed serious in itself, but the combined impact of so many small problems forced the plant to shut down in December 1996 for necessary repairs, and to close permanently in May 1997."

Basically, the article's primary subject is an examination of the possible effects of industry deregulation and subsequent competition on the viability and safety levels of nuclear facilities.

P.S. I didn't search for the article on Co2 production you mentioned, so I can't comment on it, but if I remember the basic concept of photosynthesis, grass and trees absorb and use Co2; they produce oxygen.

-- Anonymous, May 23, 1999

sorry about the url...bonnie is correct.

-- Anonymous, May 23, 1999