Glenn Beck and nuclear power

From time to time I check out Glenn Beck. Today was one of those days. Of course, the topic of conversation was the emerging nuclear disaster in Japan, and that morphed into a conversation about the USA nuclear industry. In a nutshell, Glenn pointed out that 20% of our power today comes from nuclear plants. So, if we didn’t get that from nuclear plants and we couldn’t increase the use of coal or fossil fuels because of the carbon emissions, then what would we, as Americans, be willing to unplug. Not to mention the fact that the price of electricity would soar.

The real nuclear power problem

In case you haven’t been paying attention, lots of folks, including President Obama have been talking about building new shinny nuclear power plants as part of the solution to meeting our energy needs without creating a big carbon emission footprint. And with the emergence of electric cars that actually seems to make sense… less cars putting carbon in the air and the power plants putting less carbon in the air. Aha, but here is the dilemma. Wall Street doesn’t like new nuclear power plants. So, where’s the money to build them going to come from because it isn’t from private industry. In steps government subsidies.

Actually, what is really happening is that while all the talk in front of the camera is about new nuclear power plants, the thing that is really going on behind the scenes is the effort to extend the operating licenses of the current 104 nuclear power plants in the USA. The problem is that for the most part, those plants were engineered to have about a 40 year life… and are reaching the end of the life now. But, wanting to squeeze every drop of profit possible out of these plants, the nuclear industry is petitioning to extend their life by another 20 years and run them at 10 to 20 percent over capacity. That’s not a good thing because, guess what… radiation causes metal to get brittle and break. Yup, most of the parts in these aging plants are made of metal. Is something wrong with this picture or what?

Thinking out of the box

The reason we seem to have such difficulty solving problems is that we fail to think out of the box. The particular box we are stuck in is created by the economic interests of some very very powerful industries like oil, power, and defense. We are stuck in building great big centralized power companies because that’s how the power industry makes profit. The keep charging everyone their monthly electric bill and watch the dollars roll in… ka-ching, ka-ching.

Let’s look at a totally out of that box solution. First let’s put a few facts on the table.

• According to the Census Bureau, there are about 13,000,000 households in the USA.
• The annual military spending in the USA is about $664,000,000,000 per year.
• Oil companies make $230,000 a minute in profits but receive big subsidies from the government.
• A recent House bill would strip $38,000,000,000 in subsidies from the oil companies over 5 years.
• The Cato Institute has estimated that real oil subsidies are between $78,000,000,000 and $158,000,000,000 per year when you include the cost of securing the flow of oil from the Middle East. That doesn’t include the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
• The cost of to equip a household with solar panels is about $15,000 when you consider economies of scale.

So do a little math. The cost to convert all USA households to solar panels is about $195,000,000,000. If we do that over a 10 year plan, that’s about $20,000,000,000 per year. Let’s take away the $38,000,000,000 in oil subsidies ($7,000,000,000 per year). Then lets cut military spending by 2 percent ($13,000,000,000) per year. Bingo, we just paid for every single home in the United States to have solar panels. If we add one more year to the plan, then everyone can have solar panels, solar water heating, and solar heating. Oh yea, what about all the jobs that would be created in the solar industry.

Now think about the implications. Each year more and more homes would both become independent of the power grid (that means no more electric bills) and would, in fact, contribute their excess electricity to the power grid that would be used by all the non-households like businesses and governments… and yes, they can be converted to solar too!

Robin Hood economics

The problem is that such an out of the box solution is Robin Hood economics. Take money away from the rich, powerful industries with lots of lobbyists and give it to all the ordinary folks out there… and we live in an economic system that the Sheriff of Nottingham and Prince John would be proud of.

Yet it is becoming more and more apparent that many solutions to problems we face are likely to be found in the decentralization of technology. Personal power generation, personal water purification, and local food production. Now your challenge is to think how you can bring this personalization of technology into your life to make a better world.

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