Shoreham Chapter 2 – Project focused on reducing oil dependence
One of the myths about nuclear energy is that it is unrelated to oil consumption because the US does not burn much oil to produce electricity. That may be true today, but it certainly was not true during the two decade long campaign against the Shoreham nuclear power station. As late as 1978, power plants burning oil produced up to 16% of the electricity in the US. In that year, oil consumption in power plants was nearly 1.5 million barrels of oil per day out of a total oil consumption for the country of about 19 million barrels per day.
Long Island, was a place where virtually all of the electricity and the space heat came from burning oil. The leaders of the Long Island Lighting Company (LILCO) were being truthful when they told the public that one of the reasons they were building Shoreham was to reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil.
In this second chapter on the Shoreham story, James and Ray describe how their library research efforts helped them to understand more about this issue.
Chapter 1 – Chapter 1 (The Penn Jillette Inspiration)
Chapter 2 – Project focused on reducing oil dependence
Chapter 2.5 – Researching background, dramatizing fear
Chapter 3, 4, 5 – Chapters 3, 4 and 5 – Karl Grossman, Marge Harrison, Rod Adams
Chapter 6 – Logical inconsistency: Wanting clean air while fighting to shut down nuclear
Chapter 7 – Lying about Three Mile Island
Chapter 8 – Revealing portrait of antinuclear tribe
Chapter 9 – Concluding thoughts; one battle in long war over nuclear energy
I think this documentary would be a good fit for HBO to the same tune of the film GasLand.
Rod Adams wrote:
One of the myths about nuclear energy is that it is unrelated to oil consumption because the US does not burn much oil to produce electricity. That may be true today, but it certainly was not true during the two decade long campaign against the Shoreham nuclear power station.
I believe that a good deal of oil is still used for the generation of electricity in Hawaii and Puerto Rico. Small nuclear reactors would be the ideal solution in both locations.
Hawaii has the highest electric rates of any state. The use both traditional thermal plants and Gas Turbines but both use diesel fuel (aviation for the GTs) or bunker oil (used in old steam ships) as fuel.
Both PR and Hawai’i would be ideal sitings for SMRs. You would need at least 2 per island. In Oahu’s case, the most populated one where Honolulu is located, would need about 6 50MW SMRs for redendency. It’s quite doable.
David
Here is an up to date Japan Radiation Map:
http://japan.failedrobot.com/
The unit of measure is msv/hour. To get dosage per year simply multiply by 24 and then by 365.
The evacuation notices were lifted for the 20-30 km zone, but I do not see any danger outside a 5 KM radius. (Of course there is no scale on the map so I may be off a tad)
Remember, cities in Iran and Brazil get way over 200 msv a year in radiation exposures.
It’s time to go home Japan!
By the way, has the NRC Chairman lifted the 50 mile area restriction for US citizen regarding Fukushima ?
I wish the NRC would have told US citizens in Japan to follow evacuation orders of the Japanese government and in addition don’t go any closer than 50 miles so as not to get in the way of evacuating people.
Your wish was granted and the US military was kept out of helping reach when the crisis was at its peak.
That was a tragedy caused by the NRC Chairman.
Yes, a decision by military leaders to avoid the possibility of future “atomic veterans.”
I hear there’s a lot of anti-nuclear sentiment in Hawai’i. What I’m wondering is why they haven’t gone in for geothermal energy there…
There are normally half a dozen or so small reactors floating in Pear Harbor on Ohau at any given time. The populationa has been living alongside them for the past 50 years.
For island and archipilagoes, floating plants are the best solution. redundancy can be economized as they can be moved to wherever required.
Puerto Rico has 1 nuclear plant, if I remember correctly.
Hawaii has a state law prohibiting nuclear plants which will need to be overturned. I looked into this issue either back in the summer of ’09 or ’10 when I thought Hawaii might be a nice place for the 2nd mPower site (following the Clinch River site).