Tom Farrell’s nuclear fantasy

paxus:

Missing from this otherwise fine opinion piece is that Dominion just closed the Kewaunee reactor – which had no problems other than a poor performance record. See http://funologist.org/2013/05/13/may-is-kewaunee-closes/

Originally posted on Power for the People VA:

Tom Farrell doesnâ??t get it. Dominion Power, the utility of which he is CEO, has been all about building natural gas plants for the past couple of years, as it rushes to take advantage of cheap fracked gas. Out with the aging coal plants that had been its first love, in with the next cheap thing, and never mind the pollution! Then suddenly two weeks ago, faced with a question about climate change, Farrell told reporters

the answer is more nuclear plants

.

Mother Earth to Tom Farrell: The correct answer is â??renewable energy.â?

Most of the rest of the country gets this. Wind supplied more new electric generation than natural gas did in 2012. More people work in solar energy than in coal mining. Renewable energy has overtaken nuclear worldwide. Almost no one is building nuclear plants, partly becauseâ??here’s an inconvenient truth for you, Tomâ??they cost too much. Almost three years ago a Duke University study found that power from new nuclear plants is more expensive than solar energy, and the cost of solar has only gone down since then.

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