[gotribe]

The greens will scream themselves into irrelevance on this one.

[xcamel]

imagine the headline:

Nuclear power's 'New Glow'?

[Buck W.]

One of the very few things that the French have done right.

[rottndog]

"We have 103 nuclear reactors operating in the United States, which represent 2,500 combined reactor years. So we have compiled quite a lot of experience."

You throw in the hundreds of reactors the US Navy has built, operated, and decommissioned without incident, and the safety record of US nucs is truly impressive.

[VOA]

bump

[SnuffaBolshevik]

Let's see-

The tree huggers don't like fossil (carbon dioxide, greenhouse gasses, global warming, unsightly Gulf Oil rigs).

Hydro-electric (ugly, deprive fish of upstream affirmative action rights).

Windmills (Despoils Kennedy's ocean view, kills birds too dumb to avoid blades).

Geothermal (Screws up Old Faithful)

Nuclear (Three Mile Island, Chernobyl)

Wood, Coal, Pellet stoves (See #1)

Solar (Icky rows of cells in the pristine desert)

The only thing left is to burn endangered species manure and go to work on bicycles dressed in Mao suits.

[SamAdams76]

Back when I was young and ignorant, I used to go around wearing a "No Nukes" T-shirt and all that time I was thinking "No Nukes" was the name of a super rock band that featured Jackson Browne, Bruce Springsteen and a host of others.

I'm not young anymore.

And what's this big thing about Bonnie Raitt? She's been a critic's darling for like 30 years now and I think her music is godawful. And I'm saying that as a blues fan too.

[mike70]

The idea is great, but the siting is not good. Put all nuclear plants in the deserts of Wy, Nv, NM, or MT, well away from cities. We now have nearly lossless superconductor cable that can transfer the electricity to whatever power grid needs it, all we need is high temperature superconductor interconnects. New superconducting cable has a core of stainless steel and is strong enough to withstand watever stresses it encounters (I was the first one to deposit fully superconducting thin films on stainless steel.)

As a side benefit, we can bury the cables (reduces heating) and run maglev trains atop the cables.

Sometimes we Americans are dumber than we should be.

[ConorMacNessa]

In the U.S.A., deaths inside a nuclear reactor are slightly behind deaths in cars driven by Ted Kennedy. TMI killed no one with the possible exeption of guys who lost their jobs in its wake. Chernobyl only illustrates what will happen in a command economy supervised by a totalitarian government. It has no relevance to anything in the U.S.

Time to fire the nukes up - they're safe.

[RCNOVA]

If one believes Gore and his followers (I don't) then the only real option is to build a lot of nuclear power plants. Ironically, it will be that crowd which resists it the most.

[Tribune7]

bump. The silver lining to the global warming panic.

[D-fendr]

20% of U.S. energy use comes from nuclear plants today.

The amount of power output from nuclear has increased dramatically even though no new plants have been built.

[D-fendr]

Vermont, in 2005, generated the greatest percentage of its electricity from nuclear energy of any state: 72 percent. New Jersey and South Carolina generated more than half of their electricity from nuclear energy in 2005.

[backhoe]

I have covered, ( Or, as Seamole calls it...-backhoe's pseudoblog--...-more- ) pseudo-blogged, these issues for years-- we all need to get serious about our dependency on foreign sources of energy, and use our own resources.

Our consumer-based economy is driven by and dependent upon readily-available, reliable energy-- choke that off, and we'll all be back to using one rotary dial phone in the dining room, watching one TV in the living room, and driving one car per family-- probably a Hudson Hornet or a Nash Metropolitan...

We need to

1) end the nonsensical ban on offshore drilling off California and Florida--read & weep:
Castro Plans to Drill 45 Miles from US Shores, But We Can't

2) build a lot of next-generation nuclear power plants, not just for electricity, but for any process requiring heat, power, or steam.
And if we replaced our existing nuclear plants with this one there would be significant benefits.

3) end Jimmy Carter's idiotic ban on recycling nuclear waste, and reprocess the stuff rather than fighting over where to bury it. Europe has done this for decades.-- what to do with spent nuclear fuel? Answer here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1468321/posts?page=50#50 hattip:  Mike (former Navy Nuclear Engineer)

4) use the 300-500 years worth of coal we have on our own land, using the new clean-coal technology.
-Clean Coal Centre--

5) and finally, there's nothing wrong with conservation, we should all practice it- but you can't conserve your way out of a shortage. Nor is there anything wrong with "alternative" energy sources- except they don't supply the vast ( not to mention readily-available ) amounts of power we need at a price competitive to more conventional sources.

Then again, there is this to ponder:
Energy From the Gulf Stream
http://www.energy.gatech.edu/presentations/mhoover.pdf

Tidal energy farm proposed for Vineyard Sound

We do need to get serious about this before we get strangled by a bunch of petty thieves and dictators who don't like us much.

My tongue-in-cheek collection of energy-related links:

Sticker Shock-$3 a gallon gas? Click the picture:

And kindly note, and note well-- the first reply to this post ( when gas was $1.45 a gallon ) was derisive... so, who's laughing now?

Vest-Pocket Summary:

1- drill for gas & oil like crazy- onshore, offshore, and in Alaska
2- go nuclear for power
3- convert stationary plants to clean coal technology or Next-Gen Nuclear
4- slash taxes and regulations like crazy