On Apr 9, 7:30*pm, "Jay Honeck" wrote:
Right. *And would you want that unregulated refinery built upwind from
your hotel?? *Didn't think so.
Ah, yes -- another person who apparently hasn't flown over most of the
country -- which, by the way is almost entirely VACANT. * Of course you
wouldn't build a refinery in a populated area.
Apparently you have never flown over this country at night. When I
have, I have looked down at thousands of lights, everywhere. Other
than the mountains, there are not very many areas that are not
populated. But I notice that you don't want a refinery built near
your home or business. Well everyone else feels the same way, and
THAT is a major problem for building new refineries. That isn't a
liberal or a conservative issue. Even a teeth-gnashing conservative
like yourself doesn't want one of these things built near him.
It's too bad all those existing refineries were shut down. *It would
be a lot easier to expand those than to build new ones. *By the way,
from 1975 to 2000 the EPA received exactly 1 permit request for a new
refinery. *The oil companies haven't exactly been tripping over
themselves trying to build new capacity.
Wow, talk about confusing "effect" with "cause"! * The plain and simple
reason there have been almost no applications is because the draconian
environmental rules have made building a new refinery a multi-billion-dollar
nightmare of paperwork, hearings, and a never-ending web of interlocking
regulations that would keep a fleet of lawyers busy for decades.
No, Jay. They didn't build them because they didn't want to.
Refining has always been a low-margin business. It was more
economical to expand the existing refineries. The permits for those
expansions were submitted to the EPA, and they were approved.
What new American oil fields have they been prevented from developing?
Here's a quote from 2005 -- when oil was at "record prices of $50/barrel":
************************************************** ************************************************** **********************
"America has no shortage of oil. Washington has a shortage
of political will to let American workers go get it."
- Chairman Richard W. Pombo
I checked out your document. Here is another quote from the same
article:
"Contrary to the claims of special interest groups, we can produce
more energy to grow our
economy and continue environmental achievements at the same time,"
Pombo said. "These
efforts go hand in hand. They are not mutually exclusive."
I assume you are in the special interest group he mentioned. Seems
like your man Pombo disagrees with you, Jay.
By the way, did you even bother to read that article? It was about
"technically recoverable" oil. That is oil that up till now has been
too difficult or expensive to recover. Here again, this oil will be
more expensive than the current, easily recovered reserves. That
translates to expensive fuel, so it isn't going to decrease our energy
costs.
You might want to check this DOE document, which was the source of his
information: *http://tinyurl.com/5fv3nj
It's even more pertinent today than it was in 2005.
Here again, from 1978 until 2007 the NRC received exactly zero
requests for nuclear plant permits. *The problem isn't that the
industry is getting turned down. *The industry isn't trying to build
new plants. *The reason is that nuclear plants are so hideously
expensive, and the payback period is so long, that it is a huge
financial risk to build them.
Again, you've got the cart in front of the horse. *The reason reactor costs
are prohibitive isn't because the technology is any big deal -- just check
out the way the Navy builds reactors for the fleet, without incident -- but
because the regulation of domestic reactors has been made purposefully so
convoluted that they CAN'T be built without literally spending years in
court, supporting another fleet of lawyers.
There are about 30 new nuclear plants in the planning stages now. Why
all of a sudden is the industry going back to nuclear power? Did all
those nasty environmental laws suddenly get repealed? No. The reason
is economics. Here is an article for you to read. There isn't much
mention of environmental laws (except to note that any future carbon
tax would actually favor nuclear plants). There is a lot in this
article about the financial risk of building these plants. And that
translates to nervous regulators who regulate these public utilities.
But it is the finances that give them acid stomachs.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16286304/
But before we ramp up the use of these, we need to
have a solution for long-term (10,000 years) storage of the
radioactive waste. *Right now it's just sitting around at the existing
plants.
Another environmentalist-induced catastrophe waiting to happen. *The safe
nuclear waste storage facility has been built (at a cost of billion$) and
has been ready for years -- but "environmentalists" (and I use the term
loosely) have the whole concept of long-term storage tied up in an endless
series of lawsuits. * So, all of our ever-growing stockpiles of nuclear
waste continue to be stored unsafely at each power plant. *It's criminal..
Yeah. The big problem is all those flaming liberal environmentalists
in Nevada don't want the storage facility in their back yard. Nevada
is full of flaming liberal environmentalists, right??
Sounds good, but where do you get the hydrogen??
Why, from the newly-built plethora of safe, non-polluting nuke plants that I
(as King) decreed -- of course!
:-)
I can see that you really want to believe that it is environmental
regulations that are causing these problems. *That gives you a nice
boogey man you can rail against. *But it is more complicated than
that.
I didn't say environmental regulations are "causing" the problems -- I said
over-regulation has made the problems virtually unsolvable. *Bottom line:
Until these onerous agenda-driven regulations are relaxed, we will continue
to see our economy thrashed by ever-increasing energy costs.
Well, the nuclear industry is moving forward and the "agenda-driven
regulations" haven't been relaxed. What does that tell you?
Phil