The China Syndrome

[70salesguy]

Originally Posted by reggaenaut

It put a damper on nuclear proliferation.

The term "nuclear proliferation" generally refers to nuclear weapons, their development, research and deployment, not peaceful use for power production.

Although it is debatable whether or not the movie had any effect on the slowdown and eventual stop of the construction and operation of nuclear power production facilities, it certainly was a reflection of an attitude held by a certain group of people who opposed nuclear power as a concept.

Looking back all these many years, what did they accomplish?

They DID accomplish the eventual halt of several plants in the planning stage and several more in the early phases of construction. All that they hoped to accomplish through their protest and spread of disinformation with their campaign of fear and ignorance did not directly stop the industry. However, the greatly increased burden of onerous regulations shifted the economics of commercial power production to a point where at the time, the long term picture did not justify the expense.

As a result of this, we have built untold numbers of fossil plants which carry a much higher burden to the environment as well as left ourselves dangerously short of "rolling reserve", that amount of additional electrical production capacity that is available when needed for peak periods of use. This peak capacity has been ever increasingly provided by CT units, combustion turbines which are actually specially designed jet engines to run generators for short periods of high demand.

In the event that the electric car becomes viable for large numbers of people, where is this power going to come from? A major shift to electric vehicles will create a huge demand for electric power to charge these vehicles,

Fortunately, several domestic utilities have began the long and arduous process to attempt to build new commercial nuclear power facilities. Currently, France produces over 80% of electricity via nuclear power.

In a world with an ever increasing demand for energy, I hope that the US is successful in building new commercial nuclear power facilities, unless many of you folks have amplifiers that run on solar power! (I know that we have at least one AKer that has raised the question).