From: crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass)
Subject: Re: ZERO Nuclear impact (was: Is car pooling for real? etc)
Organization: University of Virginia
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1992 16:59:24 GMT

In article <50875@dime.cs.umass.edu> yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken) writes:
>In article <1992Jul24.205505.14538@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass) writes:
>>     Just an observation.  'Let's have' is a command economy (communist)
>>     concept.  We do things a bit more efficiently 'round these parts.
>>     It makes little sense to do such generation unless it is a priori
>>     profitable or competetive with the utilities.  There is little
>>     intrinsic worth in an expensive distribution of power production
>>     to millions of sites, and there are many many drawbacks.
>
>We do things more efficiently around here? In what way is the AEC/NRC
>an "efficient" organization? In what way have the major investors in
>nuclear energy power supplies, e.g. WHOOPS and TVA, been either "efficient"
>or not part of a "command economy". In what way have the major manufacturers
>of US power plants been either "efficient" or under market discipline?
>Is it your contention that when vast military/government
>contracting corporations like Westinghouse and GE  make deals with the
>TVA to construct power plants which will use fuel enriched by the DOE,
>mined on Federal land, to be put in power plants regulated by the AEC/NRC
>with liablity limits set by federal fiat, and to be operated
>by legally mandated monopolies, under federal laws pre-empting local and
>state oversight , that this process is
>in any ways "efficient" or  "market driven"? Arguments which find 
>mass transit and government subsidies for efficiency to be "big brother"
>while finding the corporate/state organization of nuclear energy to be
>"free-market" driven, are truly strange.

     Ho, ho, ho.  Good examples.  The TVA is a very good example of 
     why the government should not, in general, be spending money
     on huge projects that would be more efficiently developed and
     run by private enterprise.  Counterexample, Virginia Power has
     a reactor complex at Surry and one at Lake Anna that were privately
     funded and produce much of the power with which I am using to respond 
     here.

     As far as the NRC, I agree completely.  The government in all its
     forms overregulates nuclear power.  I find it hard to believe that
     you agree with this statement.

     As far as liability limits, that is a perfectly good part of tort
     law.  There are limits in Virginia on malpractice claims.  I hardly
     think such limits in restraint of free trade.  They are a restraint
     on the largess of the legal system.

     The market is very "efficient" and "market driven" when it is allowed
     to be.  I find it hard to believe that you, of all people, want
     to allow it to be.  You might find 30 nuclear plants in New Hampshire
     selling power to the Commonwealth's that would rather choose to
     pollute our air and squelch economic growth rather than get power
     from anything with the code-word 'nuclear'.

                                     dale bass

--
C. R. Bass                                           crb7q@virginia.edu
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, Virginia                            (804) 924-7926
Newsgroups: sci.environment,sci.physics,sci.energy