With a stroke of the presidential pen, President Joe Biden has sabotaged domestic uranium mining and put his own energy agenda in jeopardy. Biden’s August 8 use of the Antiquities Act to declare almost a million acres of land in northern Arizona out of bounds for energy development blocks the ambitions of energy firms and nuclear advocates alike, who hitherto saw the territory as the country’s best hope for high-grade uranium. It is a curious decision for a man who alleges he is all-in on grid decarbonization. Uranium is the primary fuel for nuclear power generation, the only scalable, dispatchable, widely applicable form of carbon-free electricity known today. That the decision will exacerbate dependence on Russian uranium makes it yet more suspect.
The move is the latest evidence that the Biden environmental agenda is collapsing in on itself. The president is simultaneously tightening the vise on natural gas and coal power plants, challenging the dispatchable capacity of the nation’s power system, and driving the auto industry towards electrification, which ratchets up power demand. And yet he is going out of his way to stop development of the minerals — not only uranium, but also copper, nickel, and others — that this shift would require.
[No one ever accused Biden of coherency, let alone competency. This isn’t just an issue with Biden either, but with the entire environmental movement while in the throes of global-warming hysteria. They don’t want an effective policy that will supply America’s energy needs at current and growing levels of demand. They want de-industrialization and a forced cap on energy production to impose it. — Ed]
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