Westinghouse AP1000 ... Who is on which side?

Here is an article for your consideration:

ATTEMPT TO DERAIL OR SLOW DOWN WESTINGHOUSE AP1000 CERTIFICATION

This article smacks of ignorance throughout. Worse, revelation of the content of the "anonymous" letters to the NRC reveals that there's no chance they were written by anyone with any experience in nuclear power of any kind whatsoever. In other words, they're not whistleblower letters. They're anti-nuclear activist letters.

But that isn't the purpose of this post... the purpose is to point you all to one of the best responses you could ever see to an article like this. Look down at Rod Adams' answer to this post. Better yet, here is Rod's comment:


"I find it amusing to hear Mayor Stoddard claim that the NRC never says no. Since it was split from the Atomic Energy Commission in 1974 and formed as a regulator with no responsibility to enable the development of nuclear energy, there has not been a single nuclear energy facility proposed, licensed and started up. NOT ONE. Perhaps Stoddard is correct that the agency never says no, but their passive aggressive stance of never saying yes and asking an unending line of questions even on a design like the AP1000 that has been extensively reviewed for close to a decade is painfully effective at scaring away all investors and developers.

When I read about people fighting to make sure that nuclear energy facilities are absolutely, perfectly safe against any potential outside forces - real or imagined by anonymous whistle blowers - I wonder if they apply standards that are even remotely close to that for coal, oil and natural gas facilities? No matter how much non-nuclear alternative energy sources are promoted and advertised by corporations like GE, BP, Shell, Chevron, Vestas, Iberdrola, Next Era, and Siemens, the facts born out by reality are that Florida has just 4 choices for reliable, affordable electricity - coal, oil, natural gas, and uranium.
The highest point in the entire state is less than 400 feet above sea level, so hydro (falling water) is out. The state has no geothermal sources at a high enough temperature to spin turbines, so that is out. The wind and sun only work if the weather is right - and we all know that weather changes without any control signals from human beings.

Anyone who thinks that it is safer to obtain electricity from coal, oil and natural gas instead of uranium needs to recall just how many times every year people die in accidents associated with those competitors to nuclear energy. It makes me wonder who the people fighting nuclear energy are working for. Coal, oil and natural gas interests earn tens of billions of extra dollars every year by selling more expensive, polluting fuel when emission-free nuclear energy is not allowed to compete.

Rod Adams
Publisher, Atomic Insights

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Right on, Rod!

The only hope anyone would have had for calling any government agencies or committees pro-nuclear ended with the disbanding of the Atomic Energy Commission in 1974 and the dissolution of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy a few years later. Since that time, there have been NO ... repeat... NO government agencies actively promoting nuclear energy, and in fact many of them trying to stop it. Rod is absolutely correct when he says that NOT ONE plant has been built as a result of an application first received by the NRC. All of them were received by the AEC prior to the formation of the NRC in 1974.

The closest there is to pro-nuclear in the government is the DOE's nuclear office, which is now in the link list for this blog. Ever hear of them? Most folks haven't. But they all know who the NRC is!

Let's hope all of you who read the story from the Miami Herald, Rod Adams' comment and my few added comments here now have a solid picture of what is really going on.

8:00 PM Eastern Wednesday 5/25
ATOMIC POWER REVIEW