The fact is, we’re not ready to produce all — or even most — of our energy from renewable sources like wind and solar. Nuclear energy is a good alternative which is already providing large amounts of energy. Given liberals’ concerns about global warming, nuclear energy is a clean energy technology that does not contribute to climate change.
I understand that there are concerns about the storage of waste, and these concerns are valid. So far, we have yet to find an energy source that is without pitfalls. But given the potential for clean energy, and nuclear’s ability to provide the energy we need right now, we should certainly be favoring new nuclear plants over new coal plants.
Hooray! A voice of reason. Without doubt we need new nuclear power plants in America. I have my doubts, though, that the voice of reason will resonate across this blog. After all, how are we all going to charge the batteries in our electric cars? Everyone just says, "plug 'em in". Hmmm!
Lift the moratorium.
It's funny because I consider myself pretty much liberal but I've long been a proponent of nuclear power. I find the opposition on the liberal side more a historical accident than a consistent or necessary consequence of liberalism.
As soon as they solve the problem of the waste produced, I'm all for it. Until then, we should probably try not to shit in our nest. Especially since that shit is toxic for 30,000 years.
Agreed
Right on, Richard.
We, especially conservatives, like easy answers. Just cut spending they will say, and have no answers on how exactly to that. Just drill here drill now, even though there is no infrastructure to increase drilling. Just build more nuclear plants, as if it's that easy.
A typical nuclear plant would cost around $10 Billion. You think a private entity can afford to lay out $10 Billion or even finance $10 billion and wait three years for construction without any revenue coming in? The ideas are all well and good, but the details make it harder.
It's just money. Borrow it from the Chinese.
Reagan/Bush economic plan
If there are two areas I'd like to copy France on, they are the expectation of drinking a glass of wine with every meal, and the ability to generate most of your energy from nuclear power. The French have actually put more of our good nuclear research into practice than we have.
No energy source is perfect. Nuclear has waste. But compared with the fact that today, our fuel waste floats up in the air and sits there for decades, it probably is a risk that can be dealt with.
I'd like to copy France
That's interesting considering Freedom Fries and all that but what concerns me more is if we copy France, are we going to be dumping our nuclear waste off the coast of Somalia, or are we going to keep it in our hemisphere and aim for Belize or Costa Rica?
No, the coast of Somalia works for me.
our fuel waste floats up in the air and sits there for decades
That sounds like a perfect rational to impose some kind of tax on polluters. We could maybe call it Cap and Trade>
Solar, geothermal, and wind are vastly superior to nuclear.
My aunt recently built a 2K square foot house that now costs $1200 per year to heat. and cool…in Duluth. Every house in America could be retrofit with such technology for relatively modest cost, and with no residual nuclear waste.
Finally, a reasonable position that points out the good and the bad for nuclear power. Is it ideal? No, but it's a hell of a lot better than more coal plants, or the doubling/tripling of electricity costs incurred by choking off new supply. Good article, lets hope it gets done.
Build Nuclear facility, mine copper and nickel up north, build a new cleaner coal fired power plant in western mn that adds capacity to build more wind turbines, and build a natural gas fired power plant in lent township.
Build it all. Why? Because we need the energy, and we need the jobs, and the state needs the money in new tax revenue.
There is a way to do this safely, MN has strict environmental laws, follow them, and build these things.
"build a new cleaner coal fired power plant "
Nope. There is no such thing as a cleaner coal fired power plant.
There are already some strategies for dealing with the waste - molten salt reactors and reprocessing. We don't reprocess because of proliferation concerns, but I think someone should take a look at that policy. Coal is HUGELY attractive because we've got metric butt-loads of it sitting around and plants to burn it in. It is directly screwing up the environment though, to the point where excess nuclear material sitting around won't really be noticed by the remaining cockroaches.
It is always amazing to listen to the right campaign for more nuclear power, when the private sector considers nukes too dangerous to insure and the power companies consider them too dangerous to operate without government insurance. What ever happened to free market fundamentalism?
Agreed. The only reason a nuclear plant's product is price competitive is because of the subsidization of liability insurnce.
Every industry I know of has to provide liability insurance, save one: nuclear power production.
Seems to me the free marketeers should be screaming about this one; instead, they're at tea bag parties and they're screaming about deathers and birthers and tenthers.
When nuclear can prove it can clean up it's mess and operate without federal subsidy, I'll be all for it. Until then, I'm against it.