Times a-wastin' pilgrim.
Posted on 05/19/2008 9:54:02 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
"A nuke in every garage" is the GOP nominee's energy and climate plan.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) made a stunning statement on the radio show of climate change denier Glenn Beck this week:
... the French are able to generate 80 percent of their electricity with nuclear power. There's no reason why America shouldn't.
The Wonk Room, which has the audio, writes of the interview, "McCain Seemingly Agrees With Glenn Beck That Solutions To Climate Change Can Be Delayed." That is lame all by itself. But the statement quoted above is even more radical. McCain is repeating his little-noticed uber-Francophile statement from his big April 2007 speech on energy policy, "If France can produce 80 percent of its electricity with nuclear power, why can't we?"
Why can't we? Wrong question, Senator. The right question is, Why would we? Let's do the math. ...
What would it take for us to be 80 percent nuclear?
We would have to quadruple the number of reactors to 400, which would take decades even if we could somehow return to -- and sustain -- the fastest decadal rate of U.S. nuclear plant construction. But that wouldn't mean just building 300 new nuclear plants, for several reasons.
First, by 2050, almost all of the existing plants would need to be replaced, so that is another hundred to build if we want to hit the 80 percent goal.
And then, since McCain is not a big booster of energy efficiency (his McCain-Lieberman climate bill has no substantive energy efficiency provisions in it at all), we have to deal with some 1.1 percent annual electricity growth, which means we'll need more than 600 nukes in 2050.
Third, McCain wants to switch much of our oil consumption to electricity (a strategy I endorse). As he said in last year's energy policy speech:
I'll work to promote real partnerships between utilities and automakers to accelerate the deployment of plug-in hybrids ... Fifty percent of cars on the road are driven 25 miles a day or less. Affordable battery-powered vehicles that can meet average commuter needs could help us cut oil imports in half.We import more than 12 million barrels of oil a day. To cut that in half to 6, when EIA projects we will import over 16 in 2030....means replacing far more than 100 billion gallons of gasoline a year with electricity. If 80 percent of that electricity comes from nuclear power, then that is -- very conservatively -- another 100 nukes.
Bottom line
To satisfy McCain's odd desire to be like the French and get 80 percent of our electricity from nuclear power in the coming decades would require building more than 700 (gw-sized) nuclear power plants by mid-century -- more than one a month.
Is the author trying to make the case that this is a bad thing?
If we had kept building them all along, think how much better off we would be
Wow. Was McCain being crazy like a fox with his support of the Global Warming garbage?
Because with pebble-bed reactors he really could make a heavily nuclear America happen. Old Nuclear tech is precisely that, old.
Uh, because we want to reduce our reliance on oil?
Yes, we get eletricity from Nuclear Power Plants but only about 4% from Oil fired power plants. It’s the othe 1,100 products we get from petroleum that we need the free flow of oil to support.
“...climate change denier...”
I thought our strength was our diversity. Socialists have no tolerance for diversity of thought. The science is not there that man is responsible for global climate change. Certainly there are periods on Earth that man was not a factor and the planet as underground much more major shifts (warming cooling) than we are experiencing now. And how does the Left link man on Earth to the climate change of Mars?
As long as he supports amnesty of any kind and his unbridled love for crossing the aisle I will not vote for him.
Climate change maniacs are as great a threat to America as is Al Queda.
That would be demand rather than supply. Would want to import 16.
The main problem with building nuke plants is the regulations required by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. When a company proposes to build a nuke plane, they must submit the complete plans to the NRC who have the power to force them to redesign the whole plant even if it is 95% complete. The result is HUGE cost overruns. Also, each company will naturally have a different idea about how a nuke pp should be designed, therefore very few (if any) power plants are identical.
It would be nice if the eviro-whackos would at least support building a few every year. If the whackos really believe that global warming is the biggest threat to mankind (which they really don’t despite what they say), then building a few nuclear power plants makes perfect sense.
Heck I want my own pebble bed reactor in my garage. And I want it to come with the house when it’s built. And I want the utility company to resell my surplus. How cool would that be ?
Our politicians have not just failed to implement an energy policy, they have done all they can to prevent the US from having a policy.
Times a-wastin' pilgrim.
Okay then, let’s start building. Even if we don’t end up hitting some impossible goal, that’ll still be a bunch more reactors online.
Let’s gether done!
It's already $9 in some Alaska villages and they are stocking up.
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