Dismantling A Nuclear Power Plant

As you read this, what was once the world's largest nuclear power plant in Zion, Illinois (just outside of Chicago), is being dismantled. The plant, which was opened in 1973 by Exelon Corp., was moth-balled in 1998 when it became unprofitable, and has been sitting, collecting dust (and making more radioactive dust) for the past 12 years. Exelon was paying about $10 million a year just to maintain the plant, but did not want to handle demolition itself.

Now, in a first-of-its-kind deal, Excelon has transferred custody of the plant to a private dismantling company. It actually took an act of the federal government to make this happen. A demoltion company called EnergySolutions stands to get nearly $1 billion in business by taking on the project which is being funded by money Excelon set aside from utility fees for just this type of plant demoliton they knew would be needed one day.

EnergySolutions has developed a four-step plan to dismantle the Zion nuclear power plant that will most likely set the standard nationwide as America's earliest nuclear power plants start to age and must be dismantled.

First, the spent fuel rods that are housed at the plant are placed into steel canisters which are lowered into a concrete sleeve. This concrete sleeve can withstand temperatures close to 1500 degrees, tornado winds, and direct impacts of objects up to the size of a car, traveling 125 miles per hour. The sleeves, of which there will be 61 at Zion, each weighing 157 tons because of the concrete's thickness, are placed within a three-foot thick slab of more concrete, the size of a football field. The sleeves are permanently housed at the site of the nuclear plant. Vegetation growth will be encouraged to hide the concrete casks and slab. Armed guards will keep people away. The casks and armed guards will theoretically be in place as long as there is still civilization around to coordinate it all.

The next step is to dismantle the actual concrete containment domes that sat over the plant's reactors and the reactors themselves, down to the small components, until nothing is left. All of the dismantled material will then be transported to a radioactive disposal facility in Clive, Utah. Each reactor and dome will produce about 4 million cubic feet of material, roughly enough to fill 800 rail cars.

Once in Clive, Utah, the 4 million cubic feet of material will be pulverized into fist-sized chunks and buried in above ground graves which, like the sleeves and slabs back at the power plant, will be monitored and secured for as long as society exists.

While the materials are on their way to Utah, crews then begin dismantling all of the remaining structures - office buildings, etc. - and once all of that material is hauled away, crews will plant large expanses of grass, hopefully making it look like the nuclear plant was never there.

An Underground Race

There is a race going on right now that very few of us have heard about. It is between two competing energy companies, one in Australia and one in Switzerland.

The competition is to be the first energy company in history to tap deep enough into the Earth’s core to use its heat to generate steam-based power on a commercial scale.

The energy companies hope to use a system of water pumps that send water down into the Earth’s depths, then bring it up once it is heated so that it can then drive steam-powered generators to make electricity.

These power companies hope that by using heat from the Earth itself, they can reduce reliance on fossil fuels and cut down on emissions.

There has been a set-back, however. “The glass vases on the shelf rattled, and there was a loud bang,” Catherine Wueest, a tea shop owner from the Swiss city of Basel, on the Rhine River, recalls. “I thought a truck had crashed into the building.”

It was not a truck, but in fact, the result of drilling by Geopower Basel that set off a magnitude 3.4 tremor. There have been several other, smaller tremors since December. So many, in fact, that the city has asked the power company to halt the project.

Scientists say that if we could tap just 40% of the geothermal heat below the United States, we could meet our annual energy demand 56,000 times over, eliminating entirely our dependence upon fossil fuels for energy production.

The obstacle, however, is the cost. It costs $1.4 million to drill a new oil well, but would cost about $7 million to drill each geothermal well.

Geothermal wells would also tap out an area’s heat energy in a couple of decades, needing to be re-drilled about every 20 years.

Then, of course, there is the problem that Basel Geopower is facing, which is earthquakes that might be set off by tapping into the Earth that far.

Basel Geopower is currently researching their options, but for now, drilling in Switzerland has stopped, giving the Australians time to take the lead.

Know We're Paying For That?

When you depsoit your money in the bank, you feel comfortable because of those FDIC plates that tell you that your money is insured.

Well, it is true that your money is insured, but here is something that you may not have known...if the U.S. Government had to pay out on that FDIC insurance on a mass scale, it could total up to $3.4 trillion based on current deposit rates.

Where do you think the U.S. Government will get that $3.4 trillion dollars when it needs it? Why from the citizens, of course, through a tax hike, where else?

Here are some other things that you might not know.

The U.S. Government insures American farmers - we all know that - but did you know that the potential for loss could be as high as $41 billion in a single farm season?

When you buy flood insurance, chances are that you are buying that flood insurance from the U.S. Government because almost all private insurance companies will not take on the risk. An unheard-of catastrophic flood season could potentially carry a bill for the tax-payers of $643 billion.

How about nuclear power plants? Did you know that once an accident bill at a nuclear power plant exceeds $9.4 billion, there are laws in place that say every penny over that amount will be paid for by the U.S. Government, again, meaning the tax-payers?

Now, here is the real kicker. You might work a job where you have no pension, or no retirement plan, but when the U.S. Government steps in to bail out failed pension plans through The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., it uses your income tax dollars to bail out the pension. It doesn’t matter what side of the political spectrum you are on...that’s gotta upset you.