Johnny Mac Goin' Green?
The Maverick™ from Arizona announced his bold, ambitious, super-duper fantastic empty wish-list plan to provide energy security to America, the most prominent position besides unnecessarily giving more federal land away to the oil and gas companies that they won't use, is to "set this nation on a course to building 45 new reactors by the year 2030, with the ultimate goal of 100 new plants to power the homes and factories and cities of America."
While I am generally more of a proponent of Nuclear power than some of my liberal brethren, McCain's ambiguity is deafening. He often cites (as he did in this speech) France as an example of what America can do with nuclear energy, but the problem is that France's nuclear production capacity is nationalized. The reason they have so many plants is because the taxpayers pay for it and the Government builds them.
I can't find anywhere on McCain's site or in his speech the specifics on his plan to build these 45 new reactors. Is he simply going to give more tax breaks to energy companies that build them? Or will the Maverick be willing to look towards France (as he does now) as an example of what we could do if the Federal Government took more responsibility for our energy security? My guess is this is yet another throwaway line from the substanceless Senator from Arizona, with no solid plans to back it up.
6 comments:
I agree with you that there is some greater role for nukes to play as we get out of this mess... but according to those tree huggers in the US Army, we've only got about 30 years worth of uranium at projected consumption.
Clearly we need to up what we're doing, but it doesn't seem capable of being the grand solution McCain would have us believe -- controversial and unsolved safety and waste issues notwithstanding.
From the report cited: "If
breeder reactors were to be developed and become viable, uranium resources would
be virtually renewable and last for thousands of years."
But then in the conclusion for nuclear they state: "Assuming an annual
usage of about 150 million pounds per year, this equates to about a 33 to 43 year
supply at current consumption rates. Here again, since uranium is a non-renewable
natural resource, it supply will eventually reach a peak and trend downward. However,
there is no shortage of world capacity to supply uranium at this time."
Seems kinda contradictory. But converting all of the nuclear weapons to nuclear fuel and using it up would be a side benifit of going nuclear for our power needs.
Well breeder reactors dramatically change the equation from the fusion reactors we're using.
As I understand it there are even greater safety and security issues to using breeder reactors and they're still considered highly experimental even thought I think there may be a few in operation already (with France again leading the way).
Like I said I do think nuclear is an important part of the way out. I just don't think it forgoes the need to push farther into the true renewables. I think ultimately we're going to need a flexible energy pool that draws from many different sources.
... yet another throwaway line from the substanceless Senator from Arizona...
Don't beat around the bush Sean, tell people what you really think of McCain.
Can we expect more bombs as the summer wears on or might we expect respectful disagreement?
John McCain lacks substance, that isn't a bomb, its just an observation based on his policy proposals. Budget too high? End earmarks. Economy bad? End earmarks. Washington broken? End earmarks.
runescape money runescape gold tibia item tibia gold runescape accounts tibia money runescape gp buy runescape gold tibia gold tibia item buy runescape money runescape items tibia money
Post a Comment