Nuclear Power Plant? Desirable?

Could some of the seemingly endless problems re: the cost & availability of electricity in La Republica be reduced by the construction of 1 or more nuclear plwer plants? In a more remote part of the country. Near an ocean. With adequate protection for wildlife & residents within 10 miles? Foreign built? Foreign operated? Food for thought?

Who will maintain the plant? Locally maintained, within one year nuclear fallout in the entire Carribean. Foreign maintained, will they get paid, how will they earn a return on their invested money?

Germany just decided to stop using nuclear power in the longer future. The problems not to know where to leave the radioactive waste from the plants was one of the main reasons, beside general safety concerns.

As for the DR: Hispaniola is located in an area of heavy earthquake activity. I would really look for a place somewhere else to spend my vacation if they should build a nuclear plant.

To think about the future the DR should start investing in modern power sources: Wind, solar and maritime energy. But with a government of limited horizon like the present we will not see any of that.

Ronald

I know that in some areas of the US there has been an extra surcharge added to electric bills to pay for the costs of a nuclear plant. Nuclear power is not cheap when you consider the cost of storing the waste for some 100,000. It is ridiculas that the US is considering building more of them since the oil companies took over the presidency in the US. Where I am from in Central Illinios, the power plant took many years longer to build because records were falsified and parts had to be torn down and done all over again.

To solve the energy problems in the DR, they need to attack it from different angles. Get everyone metered and paying for their actual consumption is the most important. Improving the tranmission and distribution systems where they can handle the load and are not a danger to the community. (Go look at how people tap into a transformer sometime) Some 20% of the electricity produced is lost because of the system and 40% is stolen, which means only 40% of the electricity is actually paid for. Privitization was supposed to bring in more capital to fix these things, but I suspect that the distribution companies are holding back some until they figure out how to get everyone to pay. I assume the government is still paying for all the customers who are stealing the electicity, thus not able pay the generators, and they respond by shutting down. When the generator in Puerto Plata did this a few years ago, Leonel sent the military in and made them keep the turbines running.

Next the focus needs to be on conservation and effeciency. My old boss was thinking out loud one day and said if the government bought compact flourescent bulbs and passed them out free to everyone in the country, it would be cheaper than building more generation plants.

I have worked with renewable energy in the DR and it is a tough place to make a living. It looks like the wind farm in Puerto Plata may be a reality. I always believe it when I see it. We worked with stand alone systems for people not connected to the grid. Expensive technology and the poorest customer base. I guess TW would say we don't know what we are doing. There is a network of committed people trying to do something positive in the country in relation to electrifying some 200,000 homes not connected to the grid (20% of the population). We think that maybe 2-3% are currently using solar.

My friend, mentor and old boss commmited a good chuck of his life making this happen. Living in a shack for some of those years and really getting his hands dirty.

1) Earthquakes--one little crack and meltdown
2) Radioactive residue--no place to put it.
3) Too much sun to waste it all, don't you think?
4) A really huge coal fired plant could take care of the South and another one the North. Coal will be around longer than oil and is cheaper.
5) Newest turbine generation units are 95% cleaner, near zero maintenence and Green approved, earth friendly.
6) We haven't even scratched the possibilities of bio-gas, solar on a large scale orother re-newable sources. Some posters here are very knowledgeable as to solar and wind generation....

HB

If we never had winter in the Dominican Republic, be ready for Nuclear Winter!
Can you imagine the CDE handling a Nuclear Plant. No only would I leave the DR, I would probably cross the Pacific, as far away as possible.
With all the leaks they have with our present generation, one can imagine what CDE would do when they hire our "highly efficient" civil enginneers and use cheap materials to build the plant and have it collapsed on our heads just like the Hollywood moviehouse in Santiago. Think about our confidence in their soil studies..wow!

Good Lord, dont even mention it. There many alternative energy sources we can develop with good management. Its just that there is no political will, except for pocketing our money.

with the macuteo who be watching the disposal of waste?

There is supposed to be geothermal resouces near Azua that have never been explored because of $$$. Coal is very dirty even though technology is improving. I think most generators being built today are fired by natural gas (in the US).

Another point to make about putting in big centralized systems is that it is difficult to manage the resources with the few who control it takes advantage of the situation. Look at California. From my reading on my energy forums the future is to decentralize systems where localities build there own generators and not send it so far over the high voltage transmission lines. System design gets complicated and where you want to have 10-20% more thatn peak demand. When you are running those things at full throttle all the time, maintenance costs go up. I still have a lot to learn and it will be interesting to see how the privitization thing works out. People I know in the DR who work in the field think it will be 5-10 years before it is fixed.