The short answer is the “95%” Obama promised no tax increases on: Cap and trade is the tax that dare not speak its name, and Democrats are hoping in particular that no one notices who would pay for their climate ambitions. With President Obama depend…

shades of red on March 3, 2009 at 12:06 PM

About 450 nuclear reactors running worldwide…with about 50 being built. The United States leads all other countries with 104 online (and one being built, in the Carolinas, if I remember correctly) and France and Japan come in next with about 40-50 each.

Since the 1960′s accidents are rare…TMI and Chernobyl being two of the most highlighted. At TMI the system worked. At Chernobyl, there essentially wasn’t a system…few procedures that had any engineering basis were followed, and sensors designed to help were ignored, and the on-site crews, terribly amateurish.

Overall, the number of events that could possibly endanger a local community, are few, very very few since the 1960′s. TMI was big because the media hype got out of hand from the instant the event happened.

Nonetheless…better PR is required. Also, litigation needs to be looked at…in order to start a new reactor here in the US one would need several hundred million up front to defray the costs of actually breaking ground and building one.

Second, disposal of the waste. Yucca Mountain, our present best bet has passed all the tests, but now, it seems, the “problem” is with transport of waste from wherever to Yucca Mountain. Individual municipalities have successfully filed suits to block the transport of waste through their communities enroute to Yucca Mountain. Thus, with limited rail passage it falls to over the road transport…and this raises the danger, not from accidents, but from hijacking. Air transport? Out of the question…the friendly skies are not so friendly, or at least the failure rate for aircraft (real or imagined) is enough to concern anyone in the flight path, perhaps rightly so.

At present, we have no unified nuclear policy. It has been cobbled together in fits and starts since TMI.

A rational person would say…let’s look at the possibilities. Most are saying, unfortunately…let’s look at the potential for massive mega-deaths.

By comparison to any other so-called “green” energy source, nuclear energy is proven, safe, and enormously efficient. It has the smallest land footprint of any energy source, and its waste can be used in secondary generation systems (see “accelerator-driven subcritical reactors” for an interesting method of utilising nuclear waste for a second tier of fission power generation).
Wanderlust on March 2, 2009 at 4:56 PM

This is very interesting! And informative! And certainly a better way to deal with waste than storing it.

I was at school a few miles from TMI during the 1979 accident. I have strongly opposed nuclear energy since. (Funny, I now live in the Chicago area surrounded by them!) The PA govt has followed a few of my family members to look for any health issues and cancers (everyone healthy). Though I am still a bit skeptical of it’s safety, nuclear energy could benefit from a good publicist.

The key to energy independence is to do EVERYTHING!

Thank you! By not pursuing every available resource, we are cutting off our nose to spite our face. In another HA thread, there is a discussion of the scientist who testified before Congress about the extent of damage global warming hysteria is causing and the miniscule effect that CO2 has on climate change. Cap-and-trade is a completely disingenuous application of energy policy that further consolidates Democrat power in the WH. The more scientists who speak out on the insanity of man-made global warming, the more Obama and his minions, especially those in Congress, cannot deny the facts. Let’s hear it for real science.

Which begs the question, what are the conservatives who thought this guy would govern as a pragmatic centrist thinking right now?

Doughboy on March 2, 2009 at 4:49 PM

They are the ones out there criticizing the idea of Rush being the defacto leader of the Republican party and bleating about how the party needs to “rebrand itself” to appeal to the moderate voter.

This will spur alternative energy research as companies will now have a lot of incentive to cut emmissions.

So what?

Do you really think that if it were possible to produce energy that’s as cheap or cheaper than oil/gas/coal, someone wouldn’t have found it already?

We’ve been pouring billions into this nonsense for decades and we’re no closer now than we’ve ever been.

You know what’s going to happen?

People close to the Obama-Mugabe administration will get BILLIONS and you know what we’ll get in a few years?

“Well, we tried really hard but we just couldn’t solve the problem. And we spent all of the money. Toodles, we’re off to Antigua!”

NoDonkey on March 2, 2009 at 4:39 PM

OK, but we REALLY need to get off of oil and gas. Look at what happened during the summer.

Is that our alternative?

There has to be a better way than to keep digging in the ground for our energy. You mean to tell me between hydrogen, biodiesel, ethanol, nuclear, solar, and wind that we cannot come up with something to get off of Oil?

We need the collective willingness to do it. I am sure Conservatives can kind the best option and use THAT to drive home conservative principles.

I don’t see a strong enough case to KEEP using oil for the next 10-20 years.

ckoeber on March 2, 2009 at 4:47 PM

You want an alternative to gas and oil? Nuclear. But building enough nuclear power plants will require years. Until then, we need energy, and the only real alternative is gas, oil, and coal.

So there’s your plan. Start drilling and mining, and at the same time start the work going on building nuclear power plants.

Given these estimates, we can conclude that the costs of mitigation are likely to be huge.

Maybe they are the smart ones. Obomba will make other people pay their mortgage, he’ll give them insurance, pay them welfare. Why work? Of course this gravy train will only go on till the money runs out.

Good thing the economy’s so strong. Otherwise, we’d never be able to weather these voluntary economic headwinds….

I believe that there are only two technologies that can produce the bulk amounts of energy that could put the USA into energy self suffeciency. The “green technologies” such as wind, solar, biofuels, fuel cell, etc. can only nibble around the edges.

What I am referring to are nuclear and coal, both of which are obviously blocked politically as is hydropower. The technology is on the shelf for both of these and especially with coal, there are some real innovative strategies waiting to bust out.

I worked for a major chemical company at the time and was pulled into this to evaluate one technology (wood gasification to produce syngas to replace natural gas) in support of the permit applications. Technically is was possible and there was enough slash from logging in the state to support one 1500 megawatt power plant but cost per kilowatt was many times the cost of using natural gas. In the end, we spent towards a million dollars on this paper chase and surprise surprise, natural gas was so much superior, approval could not be sidetracked.

Now of course, the Feds knew this in advance but the main purpose was to feel good about promoting alternative energy technologies and the economy be damned.

Another thing the Carter administration gave us was the Great Plains Coal Gasification plant in the Dakotas to produce syngas. R&D + contruction cost a few billion in 1980s dollars plus they dumped another few billion into operating subsidies into it. The plant only ran a year or two.