25 April 2006

IMBY, PLease

I want a nuclear power plant (or two) in Santa Monica, and I want it now.

Many countries (amongst them India, China, Russia, South Korea, Argentina) are already using, or have plans drawn up, for coastal nuclear power plants that also act as water desalination facilities.

These can be built safely, cheaply (relative to other forms of power plants), and can function within major urban areas.

The Nuclear Power 2010 program is well under way, Southern California shouldn't allow itself to be left out.

Three of the major growth related problems facing Southern California currently and in the future are, power generation, water supply and pollution. These type of facilities would address all these concerns. Encouraging more nuclear power locally would be a win, win, win situation.

Santa Monica prides itself as being a 'green' city. As far as all the technologies currently available the greenest green is the green glow of nuclear power.

I'm tired of NIMBY (and its even crazier cousin BANANA), it's time for people to say 'IMBY, Please' to nuclear power.

4 comments:

reader_iam said...

These can be built safely, cheaply (relative to other forms of power plants), and can function within major urban areas.

What they can't be is built "quickly." We'd better get a move on if we're going to be serious about this--both in time to forestall an energy crisis and because, well--the teensy weensy thing that lots of people (not you) forget--it takes a lot of fossil fuel to build alternative energy sources.

How often do you see that little bit o' info pointed out?

Think of the implications of what I just said ... .

XWL said...

They can't be built quickly in the United States, other countries manage to make the kind of facilities I'm suggesting within 2-3 years. In the U.S. we've only made huge nuclear plants, it's time to make smaller (safe) plants located closer to population centers like they have in Japan, South Korea, Brazil, India and Pakistan.

It's the forest of regulations and reviews and good old NIMBY that add 5-7 years to the 2-3 years of actual construction.

That's one reason why I'm serious about local politicians taking the lead in asking for these places to be located near them. That would speed things up tremendously.

And some of the designs for Gen-III and Gen-IV nuclear power plants are capable of producing hydrogen as well (hydrogen fuel cells seem like they may be for real within 3-5 years on a limited basis).

Icepick said...

I've been putting off writing a nuclear power post for weeks now. I may have to get off rad-free posterior and write it now.

reader_iam said...

They can't be built quickly in the United States, other countries manage to make the kind of facilities I'm suggesting within 2-3 years.

Indeed. But this is this country. It would be helpful, but not "guaranteeing," if people "asked" for them (and I laud you for asking people to ask).

It was interesting to see the Greenpeace guy's missive of last week backing off of his position of a quarter century ago, in respose to TMI (overblown and mostly political from DAY ONE) and for much of the time since.

But you just don't get "do-overs" on a dime. He may have become enlightened, but the general "facts" and "attitudes" that he and myriad others fostered won't just go away like that. That's the problem with what they did, not in the name of science, but in the name of knee-jerk, then-progressive ideology to begin with.

Can anyone doubt it? This is surely an "as you sow, there shall you reap" sort of situation.

Beyond sighing.