[Sosfbay-discuss] Fw: nuclear power

[Caroline Yacoub]

----- Forwarded Message ----
From: Rosie Yacoub <rayacoub at yahoo.com>
To: Jim Doyle <j.m.doyle at sbcglobal.net>; Caroline Yacoub <carolineyacoub at att.net>
Cc: yacoub8003 at yahoo.com
Sent: Mon, November 23, 2009 8:08:56 AM
Subject: Re: [Sosfbay-discuss] nuclear power


SMUD I think commissioned the Ranch Seco Nuclear Power Plant in the early 70's as gas prices were skyrocketing.  Because it is a publically held utility, there was a grassroots movement to decommission the facility and it worked.  Now, that could have left the utility with too many customers and not enough energy.  It could have made them more subject to the turbulance of the open energy market when CA degregulated a bit circa 2001--but it didn't.  In fact--at that time when PG&E doubled the price of their kilowatt, SMUD had a much more modest increase--and utility customers in Davis, CA started to have SMUD-envy and have since been organizing to be included in SMUD's service area.

Why?

The Sacramento Public Utility District decided that they would make up for Rancho Seco's output with conservation.  They paid direct rebates to people who upgraded their appliances to ones that use less energy, installed insulation, dual-pane windows, and weather strippin, or agreed to have shut-offs installed on their heating and air units that would turn them off when peak demand exceeded a certain amount.  They paid to plant 1,000,000 deciduous trees around people's houses and in parking lots--which made the whole city measurably cooler in the summer.  They have a program that provides the fianancing and handles all the paperwork for rebates for installing roof-top solar (and have had this program since the late 80's/early 90's).  It was a gamble which happened to pay off, and one of the things I really love about where I live.

Best,
Rosie

--- On Sun, 11/22/09, Caroline Yacoub <carolineyacoub at att.net> wrote:


>From: Caroline Yacoub <carolineyacoub at att.net>
>Subject: Re: [Sosfbay-discuss] nuclear power
>To: "Jim Doyle" <j.m.doyle at sbcglobal.net>
>Cc: yacoub8003 at yahoo.com, rayacoub at yahoo.com
>Date: Sunday, November 22, 2009, 9:30 AM
>
>
>When people talk about huge amounts of money, as in comparing the costs of these forms of energy or health care legislation, a red flag immediately goes up in my mind, and I think, "Where do they get these numbers?" And my cynical self replies, "Out of thin air." It does not seem possible to put a dollar amount on kilowatts or megawatts produced in such diverse ways in diverse parts of the country. I know that the cost of production of nuclear energy varies tremendously from plant to plant, and, I assume, so would wind and solar--depending upon things like whether they purchased their solar panels from American or Chinese sources, and how far from the existing grid would this wind farm be, necessitating construction of miles and miles of towers and lines. I've been to west Texas, and the only thing I saw that would need electricity was the world's largest Dairy Queen. It was so far from anything else,I figured the employees must live in.
>
>I sent your email to my son, who works for GE, but he hasn't responded. I'd like to ask my daughter in Sacramento, also. They shut down their nuclear power plant and I don't know how they are currently generating their electricity. It would be interesting to know how it affected their electricity bills.
>Caroline
>
>
>
>
________________________________
From: Jim Doyle <j.m.doyle at sbcglobal.net>
>To: sosfbay discussion group <sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org>
>Sent: Fri, November 20, 2009 2:17:00 PM
>Subject: [Sosfbay-discuss] nuclear power
>
>Here is a rebuttal to an op ed in the New York Times
>by the CEO of  Westinghouse Electric, Candris.
>Rebuttal provided by Pierre Tristan on Common Dreams:
>http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/11/19-1
>
>---snip ---
>
>Candris' final fallacy: Renewables are "comparatively more expensive 
>energy sources."
>In fact, nuclear energy is more expensive than solar or wind energy.
>
>Take Florida Power & Light's plan to build two new nuclear reactors 
>sometime over
>the next 12 years (it's not clear when), though the company is already 
>socking it to
>customers by making them pay for construction today.
>
>No other state but Georgia allows that con.
>
>The projected cost of the two reactors s $18 billion. It'll certainly go 
>up well beyond
>that by the time they're done, but go with the $18 billion figure. The 
>two reactors
>will produce 2,234 megawatts of electricity. That comes out to $8 
>million per
>megawatt at the opening bell.
>
>FPL just started operating a 25-megawatt solar-power plant in DeSoto 
>County.
>Cost: $152 million, or $6 million per megawatt -- $2 million cheaper 
>than the
>projected cost of the nuclear reactors.
>
>With wind, it's even cheaper. A Chinese-American consortium on Oct. 29
>announced plans for a 600-megawatt wind farm in West Texas.
>Cost: $1.5 billion, or $2.5 million per megawatt.
>
>Cheap nuclear power? Demonstrably not.
>
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> 
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