Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Congress / Woods Going Nuclear: Lamar's Flimflam Energy Plan
Posted by Jeff Woods on Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 5:48 AM
"We should want an America in which we create hundreds of thousands of 'green jobs,' but not at the expense of destroying tens of millions of red, white and blue jobs," the senator says.Setting aside the obvious problem (what would we do with all that nuclear waste?) Alexander's plan also fails to make economic sense, as energy industry analyst David Fiderer points out. Alexander claims it will lower utility bills and shouldn't add to the federal budget since ratepayers will pay for building the plants. But if ratepayers are picking up the tab, then won't their utility bills go up? Click here to learn more about what Fiderer rightly calls Alexander's flimflam plan:
Anything that addresses the issue of climate change involves a tradeoff, and nuclear power may very well be one part of the long-term solution. But this Republican scheme offers nothing to reduce greenhouse emissions in the short run. Alexander's claim that it imposes less of a financial burden on utility ratepayers than the current House Bill is close to fraudulent.
Comments (5)
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As a liberal and someone who considers themselves at least somewhat concerned about the environment I've never understood the left's vehement opposition to nuclear power. Yes nuclear waste is a bitch - but its far less of bitch than elventy billion lbs of CO2 and ash being spewn into the atmosphere (and elsewhere).
Currently nuclear & hydroelectric are the only viable replacements for coal, oil & gas burning power plants. Now if we could only get cold fusion to work.
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"Setting aside the obvious problem (what would we do with all that nuclear waste?)"
We can put in Yucca mountain - the facility that was built for it.
There is no physical reason it can't be stored there - only a political BS one.
The taxpayers have paid tons of money to construct that facility and aren't getting any return on the investment.
We can also start building breeder reactor type power plants that can generate as much or more fuel than they consume. It can be reprocessed and used over and over again. Now that's renewable energy.
The political opposition tends to obscure the fact that there are legitimate concerns about the ability of the proposed Yucca Mountain repository to prevent extremely raioactive waste from contaminating the water supply. In addition to worries about water infiltration and subsequent corrosion and leakage of the storage containers, a 5.6 earthquake damaged a building at the site and the Lathrop Wells cinder cone, visible from the top of Yucca Mountain was created by volcanic activity 80,000 years ago. It is the responsibility of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to give a "second opinion" and decide if the Yucca mountain repository should be licensed.
We created the nuclear industry and exported it it to other countries, who are now using it to help their energy picture (China, Japan, France, Brazil, etc). Soon the Saudi's will have nuclear power to desalinate water if the French plans work out.
I seriously think that within the next 4000 years we'll have solution to nuclear waste, well within the lifetime of mosts of us, and by then other more promising alternatives will be on-line.
