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.
I have been saying so for months now on this forum, based on conversations with some of his advisers. It is total triangulation. I still don't like his rhetoric, but clearly he is screwing with the Gorian nutbags to get young skulls fush of mush votes.
I have been saying so for months now on this forum, based on conversations with some of his advisers. It is total triangulation. I still don't like his rhetoric, but clearly he is screwing with the Gorian nutbags to get young-skulls-full-of-mush votes.
One really good thing about this article: it proves that getting rid of oil is IMPOSSIBLE!!!! Anyone with half a brain should realize that creating energy policy on global warming means 2 things:
1.) destroying our economy
2.) giving the government dominant power over how we live our lives
Going nuclear is the only real way it can be done. The powers that be in this nation that have let our power supply situation detiorate to today’s crisis should be strung up high. Everyone’s bad mouthing this or that solution and, as a result, nothing of any substance has happened. Its gotten to the point where the only way we can get the right thing to happen is to shotgun it. By ‘shotgun’, I mean that we’re going to have to give the Greenies some money for their wet dream solar and wind projects.
Well how do you think he plans to man his 700+ fantasy nuke plants?
“McCain calls for 700+ new nuclear plants costing $4 trillion”
Surely there’s a quantity discount or price break!
Interesting point. Socialists claim to be all for diversity, but they really want the appearance of diversity. I read once on FR someone had said that socialists allow a very narrow range of opinions but encourage vigorous debate among those choices. Basically, they want us to get all of our energy from conservation, now it is up to us to debate where to conserve.
McCain may just have got my vote. I’ll keep my eye on this. Energy is as serious as the GWOT, IMHO.
McCain’s call for building more nuclear power plants is absolutely right. There are just over 100 nuclear plants in the US today. Yet we haven’t built a nuclear plant in a quarter century. In this case, the French are right. Having 50-100 nuclear plants -— or more -— under construction in the next few years would not only help to cut our dependency on foriegn oil, but it would put thousands of Americans to work. The US needs a realistic and forward looking energy policy, NOW!
That’s what I call new job creation - construction and staffing!
I keep on looking for the part where completing a plant a month would be a bad thing. Standardize the design and get building, already.
Once the first few are built, and the bugs worked out of the production schedule, there is no reason why you couldn’t ramp up production. Lots of sites, and lots of customers, so why not?
Of course, the question is, are these to be financed by utilities (and, in turn, the customers), or are these to be financed as a government program. If it is a government program, we would be lucky to build one plant in a decade.
Going nuclear frees up the coal and induces 'Coal to Oil' projects.
I am all for more nuclear power plants
now, thanks to the Dim’s environmental wing
those plants were not constructed years ago when cement and steel cost half as much as they do today
with all of Asia just now building the kind of infrastructure we have had for nearly 100 years
cement and steel - the largest material cost for a nuclear plant - are among the materials in greatest world demand
will stupid, ‘bipartisan’ McPain campaign on that knowledge, showing Dim obstructions to be the cause of the ‘energy crisis’?
NO
like idiot Bush, he wants to ‘reach across the aisle and be known as a nice guy
it will get him as far as it got GW - nowhere
Wow.
I didn’t see this coming. He usually does something to piss off the base every monday.
Too bad it’s a fantasy that he thinks we’ll buy. Face it, it isn’t going to happen and we all know it.
I agree that we need as many nuke plants as possible.
Too bad it’s a fantasy that he thinks we’ll buy. Face it, it isn’t going to happen and we all know it.
Looks like its time to buy some Westinghouse Electric stock.
McCain isn’t setting a goal of 80%. It’s rhetoric. France gets 80% of their electricity from Nuclear, why can’t we? That means why can’t we get a lot more of our electricity, not 80%.
There are methods of generation we have no need to replace, like hydroelectric, that France has no access to.
We have a lot more land, so we should be able to get to 10% of our electricity from solar and wind power.
Ignoring ecological effects, we have an “unlimited” supply of coal, so we don’t need to replace our coal burning plants.
The plants we want to replace are the oil plants (which are a very small number) and our gas-fired plants, which I think are 30%.
Then we need to double our electric output to help with whatever the next generation cars need — either recharged batteries, or hydrogen gas.
The big obstacle standing in McCain's way -- he may well call for whatever he wants to, but CONGRESS holds the purse strings, CONGRESS must do it. I wish the man luck, but Dems in control, I've got my doubts.
Low bid and cheap labor??? Yeah I want one in my neighborhood.
For 1 million US, one can buy a mini nuke plant from the Japanese. The plant will put out 1000k for 100 years. pretty cool, wish I had a million bucks to spare. Wish the Feds woould allow me to buy one. BTW most homes can be run on 50k so the unit could power 20 homes.
Numbers above from memory, think there are pretty close.
Is that the Toshiba turnkey unit? $1 million? Actually would not be so impossible if the 20 residential units would care to split the cost.
On threads about electric cars, there is the question, "Where does the electricity coming from"?".
Nuclear power and electric cars go together.
“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”
Ahhh....the beauty of technology!!!
I remember when Mitt Romney brought this up a few months ago. The beautiful thing about it is that there IS a cap on the price of oil. And it may be one we can lower with increased research and experience. But we need efficient nuclear power first!
“This plan has a minor hurdle, too; the electricity for driving the chemical processes, according to a white paper describing the overarching concept, would come from nuclear power. The proposal says it’d be worth it to have a payoff of steady, secure streams of methanol and gasoline with no carbon added to the atmosphere (and a price for gasoline at the pump of perhaps $4.60 a gallon — comparable to petroleum-based fuels as oil becomes harder to find).”
http://www.lanl.gov/news/index.php/fuseaction/home.story/story_id/12554
And the point of the article is..? That McCain can’t do math? Nuclear power is too French? Excuse me, “uber-French”.
You might be interested in some of the articles I posted on this thread. Going nuclear has the potential to allow us to create synthetic, clean-burning hydrocarbon fuels to power our cars, planes, and boats, as well.
It’s not just that we produce cleaner, more efficient energy. It’s that with a little technological development, we may be able to send a middle finger to the Middle East if they start going bonkers again.
You’re right— it’s a fantasy. But it’s the first time I’ve heard a candidate actually mention a realistic solution to energy independence.
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