McCain Backs Nuclear Power

bagsc writes "Senator John McCain set out another branch of his energy policy agenda today, with a key point: 45 new nuclear power plants by 2030." So it finally appears that this discussion is back on the table. I'm curious how Nevada feels about this, as well as the Obama campaign. All it took was $4/gallon gas I guess. When it hits $5, I figure one of the campaigns will start to promote Perpetual Motion.

Seriously, WTF?

Nuclear is the best option. Equating it with perpetual motion shows YOUR ignorance. Hate makes you stupid.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

I don't think it was actually ignorance, it was just showing his irrational bias against nuclear and trying to lump it into fantasy land to influence peoples thinking.

But i agree with you, it didn't really have the effect he was thinking.

However, i would go so far as to say while nuclear is an very important piece of the domestic energy puzzle and needs to be brought back on track, its just one piece.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

Nuclear promotion? Good start. Let's hope they couple it with breeder reactors, to really stretch the fuel and decrease the waste.

Also...let's start drilling for our own oil reserves!! We have bans on drilling off of the east coast, the west coast, and even the eastern part of the Gulf. We have the capability to drill safely these days. Who knows...we might hit the motherload like Brazil did recently that I hear of?

We have TONS of shale oil that is starting to get cost efficient to process.

Why not do all these that are possible now to help our oil needs WHILE putting tons of money and research into the other alternative fuels?? I'm excited about ramping up , wind, solar and biofuels (particularly the algae and other processes to make fuel out of waste)...but, we need more oil now to ease the pain till the switchover.

In the US, we have got to get over the NIMBY. The gulf coast has carried the 'burden' for the drilling and refining for decades...we have to start having the whole country contribute...repeal the bans on drilling....

And it's only taken 2.9 decades

...to start reversing the DEPLORABLE conditions started by Jimmy "I'm a fucking moron" Carter.

You know - the guy who thought that if the US didn't RECYCLE nuclear waste back into fuel (which would SOLVE the "nuclear waste storage" issue) it would be an "example" to tin-pot dictatorships and insane genocidal religious nations like North Korea, Pakistan, India, Iran, Syria, China... and they wouldn't try to get nuclear weapons. Yeah, how'd that work out for us?

The guy who coddled so-called "environmentalists" to the point where we haven't built SAFE, CLEAN electrical power generation anywhere because nobody can get past the permits process and NIMBY enviro-wacko whining.

Think about it - even the founder of Greenpeace [wikinews.org] (who long ago left the organization when it became obvious the commies and inmates were running the asylum and not interested in real, rational discussion) says we need nuclear energy because so-called "renewable" sources are inherently (a) unreliable and (b) limited in the scope of what we can do with them.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

There's plenty of fissionable material, especially if you include the recyclable secondary material, somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000 years' worth I once heard. I'd hate to strip mine half the planet to get it, but I suppose it's a better choice in the near term than burning all our oil.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

With effective breeder reactors, thorium utilization, and REPROCESSING the number is closer 100,000 years.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

1000 years worth assuming how many reactors covering how large a percent of our energy needs?

The reserve is based on the current price of the material and the current drain on that reserve. So actually, if the price goes up, that means there's more available because you can spend more to get to it. Kinda like the oil reserve. The more the price spikes, the more that can be spent on drilling, recovery, refining, etc. So there you have it.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

Because volcano's don't conveniently locate themselves next to large population centers?

Solar and Wind are nice and all, but it's Nuclear power that's going to pull our eco-bacon out of the fire; it is the cleanest source of power per kwh that we've got. Once we start reprocessing the waste, we'll be able to sustain output for a long time.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

Because volcano's don't conveniently locate themselves next to large population centers?

You've got the logic reversed. Large population centers wisely do not locate themselves near volcanoes.

See: Pompei

Re:Seriously, WTF?

We only need enough fission fuel to last us for 50 years... after that we can count on fusion. Fusion is the future.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

People really need to start investing in sustainable renewable energy, things like tidal, wind, solar, and what IMO is the most untapped, geothermal. Seriously, we have all these active volcanos around the planet exerting kilotons of energy spewing gasses into the air and creating massive amounts of heat, why aren't we harnessing that more?

If it were economical to harness energy from all those sources, don't you think the greedy capitalists would've been all over it?
The reason nobody wants to harness those sources is because they are inefficient compared to coal and oil. Spending money to get energy from inefficient sources only makes mankind poorer.

Nuclear is a great idea.

I would support this and would allow it in my back yard.

Re:Nuclear is a great idea.

Hell I WANT it in my back yard. I have a Coal plant within 30 miles and it is an eyesore of the comunity. the piles of coal and the huge ships coming and going are ugly ugly ugly. and the days when the scrubbers fail or are offline you can see the crud going up in the air.

Now all we need...

are 45 backyards in which to build them.

Seriously, the NIMBY (not in my nackyard) and BANANA (build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything) mentalities have held back nuclear power as much as anything else, especially after TMI. Getting local communities to agree to construction will be no small task.

Re:Now all we need...

Ah yes, TMI.

The amazing thing about TMI is that, had everyone left things alone and let the automated safety systems do their job, a normal shutdown would have occurred. Instead, the human operators intervened and basically did everything they could to cause a meltdown. Nonetheless, the whole thing went out with a fizzle, with essentially zero radiation being emitted to the outside. You'd probably receive more radiation smoking a pack of cigarettes or flying across country than you would have sitting in TMI's backyard.

Nonetheless I'm sure when the general population hears TMI they think (OMFG! Meltdown!!!!!111)

Wha-huh?

Nuclear seems to be working pretty well for various foreign countries. It takes a while to get a reactor on-line, and it's not a perfect solution... But it's better in many ways than the fossil fuel options.

Wind and solar are great, and I support them also. But, $4 gas or not, all energy options should be on the table. And they should've been for about the last 30 years.

$5 a gallon?

Didn't you hear, opec has decided they pushed the bubble far enough and is going to scale back the 'waters testing'?

We go thru this all the time with them, they push prices up to where they get worried we might actually go find an alternative, then bring it down just enough ( but higher then before ) to quiet us down and lose interest in alternatives.

Its a cycle that most people are too stupid to see, and thus we are stuck in it.

I'm all for this, IF...

I'm all for this, if it includes research into IFR technology [nationalcenter.org]. If you haven't read this article, please do. I know it's biased toward IFR technology, but even if 10% of what the scientist says is true, we should be researching the hell out of it! Here's Wikipedia's take on the IFR [wikipedia.org].

The current reactor design is antiquated and hobbled by President Carter's decree that we will not reprocess nuclear fuel [pbs.org]. So instead of extracting 90+% of the energy in the fuel and having 100 year nuclear waste, we extract 2% and have 10,000 year waste with the once-thru fuel cycle [wikipedia.org]. Real smart, Jimmy. And he was a 'Nucular Engineer'!

Global Warming

You can not think global warming is both human caused and a genuine threat and not be for nuclear power. Yes nuclear power has its own problems, but far better than the purported consequences of global warming. Keep your eyes open for "environmentalists" that are against nuclear power. Those people have other interests in mind. "Environmentalism" is just their tool.

In addition to Carter, here's who to blame...

...for our current backwater nuclear power status. From Wikipedia: [wikipedia.org]

With the election of President Bill Clinton in 1992, and the appointment of Hazel O'Leary as the Secretary of Energy, there was pressure from the top to cancel the IFR. Sen. John Kerry (D, MA) and O'Leary led the opposition to the reactor, arguing that it would be a threat to non-proliferation efforts, and that it was a continuation of the Clinch River Breeder Reactor Project that had been canceled by Congress. Despite support for the reactor by then-Rep. Richard Durbin (D, IL) and U.S. Senators Carol Mosley Braun (D, IL) and Paul Simon (D, IL), funding for the reactor was slashed, and it was ultimately canceled in 1994. [Just 3 years before completion.]

Emphasis mine. See all those bold 'D's for Democrat? Uh huh.

Re:no American power plants burn Oil

Yeah, and Mexico's ban on private capital investment in oil production is why Mexico imports 25% of its gas from the US, even though it's the world's 5th largest producer.

You know why?

Economics 101: Price controls create shortages. Every. Time.

Re:And it's only taken 2.9 decades

Yea, because Carter, the only president to have ever had any formal training in any sort of nuclear technology, and also the only president ever involved in the cleanup after a nuclear accident [wikipedia.org], is all irrational and uninformed where nuclear power is concerned.

The 70's were a different world. Nuclear power meant nuclear weapons, and the public opposition then to nuclear power is hard to even imagine today. Don't blame Carter for the hysteria of the day.

Re:$4 for gas, come on

Don't think that all Americans are as naive as CmdrTaco. I, for one, realize both that $4 for a gallon of gas isn't extravagant, and that the cost of a gallon of gas has little to do with global nuclear energy politics. McCain is simply following the Bush stance on 'alternative energy' which is to say, any alternative to oil that will net equally high profits for equally large, heavy lobbying companies.

Re:Obama better support this too

I also oppose drilling for our own oil resources. Why the hell should we? Let's use up the oil resources of the people who hate us while it's still relatively cheap, then tap our own resources at $300 a barrel and make them come crawling.

Re:Obama better support this too

Let's use up the oil resources of the people who hate us while it's still relatively cheap, then tap our own resources at $300 a barrel and make them come crawling.

s/crawling/attacking/