Florida Approves First Nuclear Power Plant in 33 Years

[phantom power]

TALLAHASSEE, Florida, August 11, 2009 (ENS) – The Florida Cabinet today approved site certification for Progress Energy Florida's Levy nuclear power plant, the first nuclear facility approved in the state since 1976.

Governor Charlie Crist, Attorney General Bill McCollum and Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, serving as the Siting Board, unanimously approved Progress Energy Florida's site request for construction of a nuclear facility on a 3,105-acre location in Levy County.

...

On December 18, 2008, Progress Energy announced it will retire the two oldest coal-fired units at the Crystal River Energy Complex in Citrus County after a new, advanced-design nuclear plant is built in Levy County. Doing so will reduce the company's carbon dioxide emissions by more than five million tons per year, which the company says is the equivalent of removing more than 830,000 vehicles from Florida's roads.
The nuclear reactor at Crystal River Energy Complex (Photo courtesy NRC)

The Crystal River Energy Complex, with four coal-fired units and one nuclear unit, is one of the largest generating facilities in the country.

The Siting Board's approval of the Levy nuclear plant includes a requirement for the coal-fired units to be discontinued by December 31, 2020, assuming timely licensing and construction.

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/aug2009/2009-08-11-091.asp

[ensho]

1. really bad news

nt

[NNadir]

2. Yeah, it would be terrible to actually DO something about climate change.

It would be far better to have a lot of highly paid dangerous fossil fuel "bait and switch" marketeers succeed in demonizing the world's largest, by far, form of climate change gas free energy based on scientific ignorance, particularly while Florida sinks below the waves.

[pscot]

3. I've come around to your way of thinking

Based on our experience in Washington state (whoops, the Hanford death complex) I've been generally opposed to the idea of more nukes. But given a choice between localized problems with radiation and waste disposal, and the Carbon Death of the global eco-system, atomic energy seems like the better choice. I can't say I'm happy about it, but where are the viable alternatives?

[kristopher]

4. "Where are the alternatives"? How many do you want?

Here:
http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/15x31uzlqeo5n/1#

And here:
http://apolloalliance.org/programs/apollo-14/executive-summary/

And here:
http://www.wecansolveit.org/content/solutions/

And here:

http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/EE/article.asp?doi=b809990c

Energy Environ. Sci., 2009, 2, 148 - 173, DOI: 10.1039/b809990c
Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security

Mark Z. Jacobson

This paper reviews and ranks major proposed energy-related solutions to global warming, air pollution mortality, and energy security while considering other impacts of the proposed solutions, such as on water supply, land use, wildlife, resource availability, thermal pollution, water chemical pollution, nuclear proliferation, and undernutrition.

Nine electric power sources and two liquid fuel options are considered. The electricity sources include solar-photovoltaics (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave, tidal, nuclear, and coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The liquid fuel options include corn-ethanol (E85) and cellulosic-E85. To place the electric and liquid fuel sources on an equal footing, we examine their comparative abilities to address the problems mentioned by powering new-technology vehicles, including battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and flex-fuel vehicles run on E85.

Twelve combinations of energy source-vehicle type are considered. Upon ranking and weighting each combination with respect to each of 11 impact categories, four clear divisions of ranking, or tiers, emerge.

Tier 1 (highest-ranked) includes wind-BEVs and wind-HFCVs.
Tier 2 includes CSP-BEVs, geothermal-BEVs, PV-BEVs, tidal-BEVs, and wave-BEVs.
Tier 3 includes hydro-BEVs, nuclear-BEVs, and CCS-BEVs.
Tier 4 includes corn- and cellulosic-E85.

Wind-BEVs ranked first in seven out of 11 categories, including the two most important, mortality and climate damage reduction. Although HFCVs are much less efficient than BEVs, wind-HFCVs are still very clean and were ranked second among all combinations.

Tier 2 options provide significant benefits and are recommended.

Tier 3 options are less desirable. However, hydroelectricity, which was ranked ahead of coal-CCS and nuclear with respect to climate and health, is an excellent load balancer, thus recommended.

The Tier 4 combinations (cellulosic- and corn-E85) were ranked lowest overall and with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste. Cellulosic-E85 ranked lower than corn-E85 overall, primarily due to its potentially larger land footprint based on new data and its higher upstream air pollution emissions than corn-E85.

Whereas cellulosic-E85 may cause the greatest average human mortality, nuclear-BEVs cause the greatest upper-limit mortality risk due to the expansion of plutonium separation and uranium enrichment in nuclear energy facilities worldwide. Wind-BEVs and CSP-BEVs cause the least mortality.

The footprint area of wind-BEVs is 2–6 orders of magnitude less than that of any other option. Because of their low footprint and pollution, wind-BEVs cause the least wildlife loss.

The largest consumer of water is corn-E85. The smallest are wind-, tidal-, and wave-BEVs.

The US could theoretically replace all 2007 onroad vehicles with BEVs powered by 73000–144000 5 MW wind turbines, less than the 300000 airplanes the US produced during World War II, reducing US CO2 by 32.5–32.7% and nearly eliminating 15000/yr vehicle-related air pollution deaths in 2020.

In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered. The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss, and the biofuel options provide no certain benefit and the greatest negative impacts.

[bananas]

6. U.S. can meet entire 2020 emissions target with efficiency and cogeneration and save $700B

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x203713

[bananas]

7. More...

"If Obama stops dirty coal, as he must, what will replace it? Part 1"
http://climateprogress.org/2009/02/18/obama-replace-dirty-coal-nuclear-efficency-cogeneration-wind-solar-csp-biomass-cofiring/

[kristopher]

5. It is impossible to underestimate the Good People of Florida

The future will identify Florida as Ground Zero in the global epidemic of stoopid.