Ditto
Posted on 11/21/2005 7:28:39 PM PST by FairOpinion
Prime Minister Tony Blair plans to begin construction of new nuclear plants in Britain, The Times of London reports.
The newspaper said Blair not only wants new nuclear generating stations but plans to speed up the process so the first can be under way in less than a decade.
Although a government report two years ago came down against nuclear power, Blair has decided it is the only way the country can get an adequate energy supply while reducing emissions of air pollutants, his advisors told the Times.
Margaret Beckett, the environment secretary and the government's leading critic of nuclear power, hinted she would support Blair.
"I've always accepted we can't afford to close the door on nuclear," she said in an interview with the BBC.
Blair hopes to have a new report from a government commission by next summer.
Another good point from Blair.
Related informative article from Scientific American:
Smarter Use of Nuclear Waste
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&articleID=000D5560-D9B2-137C-99B283414B7F0000
Despite long-standing public concern about the safety of nuclear energy, more and more people are realizing that it may be the most environmentally friendly way to generate large amounts of electricity. Several nations, including Brazil, China, Egypt, Finland, India, Japan, Pakistan, Russia, South Korea and Vietnam, are building or planning nuclear plants. But this global trend has not as yet extended to the U.S., where work on the last such facility began some 30 years ago.
If developed sensibly, nuclear power could be truly sustainable and essentially inexhaustible and could operate without contributing to climate change. In particular, a relatively new form of nuclear technology could overcome the principal drawbacks of current methods--;namely, worries about reactor accidents, the potential for diversion of nuclear fuel into highly destructive weapons, the management of dangerous, long-lived radioactive waste, and the depletion of global reserves of economically available uranium. This nuclear fuel cycle would combine two innovations: pyrometallurgical processing (a high-temperature method of recycling reactor waste into fuel) and advanced fast-neutron reactors capable of burning that fuel. With this approach, the radioactivity from the generated waste could drop to safe levels in a few hundred years, thereby eliminating the need to segregate waste for tens of thousands of years....
As much as I despise the idea of the "Kyoto Agreement", it could force us (and UK)to pursue Nuclear power plants. The Democrats are standing in the way of a source of energy technology that we excel at and would create true independence from the Middle East oil noose.
We should look at nuclear power because it makes sense for a lot of reasons, none of which have to do with Kyoto. We should NOT let ourselves be pushed by a bunch of countries, whose sole objective is the destruction of the US economy.
I agree completely. There are tons of FR posts on new reactor technology ready to be built NOW! My only point is that we need a tipping point to move the process forward, and if the Kyoto supporters were to think beyond what the implementation would mean... nuclear power is the only answer. Bush has done his part on regulations as best he can, but Congress needs to show some leadership and get things moving faster.
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