Increase consumer bills. Duh.

That’s not all of it. Different ratio’s of the above, different decay energies; some elements do not exist in nature because they are not part of the natural decay chain.

I am going back and reading your blog entries on nuclear subsidies as you recommended.

There are several questions so far that do not seem to be addressed.

1. You point to the 2003 MIT study and make the point that projected nuclear capital costs have increased substantially. However, you do not seem to notice that the cost of both natural gas and coal per unit heat are close to 3 times the “high cost case” from that study.

2. Your paper about the self-limiting nature of nuclear power talks a good deal about water uses, but you have also indicated on a number of occasions that you are a fan of concentrating solar power systems. Can you explain to me the difference in water use between a nuclear steam plant and a solar thermal steam plant? Since solar thermal plants will preferentially be located in areas with little rainfall and little natural water supply, while nuclear plants can be built close to water, isn’t this an issue worth discussing?

3. Finally, where did you get your definition of “baseload”? I used to run a factory that met its demand surges by moving to 3 shift production. With high energy use all hours – machines that melt and inject plastic at high pressure do not do well with interrupted power. I am pretty sure that steel mills, aluminum smelters, chemical processing plants, and other 24 x 7 enterprises would not agree that “baseload” is served if there is a power system that can run for 18 hours.

Nuclear plants have demonstrated that they can provide reliable power nearly 8000 hours per year and the few hours that they spend shut down are almost all planned.

Oh yeah, one more question – if the previous generation of nuclear plants cost so much and had such huge overruns, how in the world did they achieve a condition where they are nearly all paid off with a good 20-40 years of life remaining?

What Joe keeps coming back with is that the dose and exposure are what is important. I agree with him wholeheartedly on that point. Your probability of getting hurt by falling rocks depends on how close you are to where they are falling and how many are falling and from what height. But the dose and exposure are independent of the whether the isotope was natural or manmade. It doesn’t matter if the rocks were pushed or fell on their own. In this respect, radiation IS radiation is radiation, and David Bradish was correct on this point.

Claiming that manmade radiation is bad, but natural radiation is not-all- that-bad, as Joe has done, is disingenuous from someone who claims to have studied the topic a great deal, but cannot explain why they are different. I’m willing to be corrected, if there is a lesson to be learned here. But for now I think the lesson is for Joe to be more careful in what he say

The claim that they are different is like claiming falling rocks are different if someone pushed them versus if they came free through erosion.

Expect better of Romm? I for one did not.