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TechnoratiObama's Excellent Atomic Omission
Unfortunately, two others---"clean coal"---were included.
An increasingly desperate reactor industry just tried to sneak a $50 billion loan guarantee package into the stimulus bill. But for the third time since 2007, it got beat by a powerful national grassroots movement and key Congressional leaders.
Nuke pushers now want reactors painted "green" in a renewable standard Congress may soon set.
Hordes of radioactive lobbyists will swarm around that and new energy and global warming legislation. Every obscure sentence in those bills will be targeted for hidden handouts. Unfortunately, some money may already have slipped through from previous Bush-Cheney maneuvering.
EDF, the French national utility, wants to force its nukes into the American market. With Wall Street unwilling, Areva---the EDF front company---would use French tax money here as in Finland, where a new reactor project is already years behind schedule and billions over budget.
In Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, Maryland, Texas, Missouri, Wisconsin and elsewhere, the industry wants to tax ratepayers for reactor construction in advance. In Florida and Georgia, rates are already soaring. A Missouri utility is trying to overturn a 1976 public referendum banning such scams.
Obama's position has been largely opaque. Close to pro-nuke Illinois utilities in his early days, he has never renounced the technology. But he's firmly opposed Nevada's Yucca Mountain high level repository, whose failure---after fifty years---leaves the industry with no solution to its waste problem.
Energy Secretary Stephen Chu has made pro-nuke rumblings. But the critical component---massive federal funding---has not materialized. So we green energy advocates held our collective breath when Obama promised to "invest fifteen billion dollars a year to develop technologies like wind power and solar power; advanced biofuels, clean coal, and more fuel-efficient cars and trucks built right here in America."
In his acceptance speech for the Democratic nomination, Obama included nuke power. Now the reference is gone. Let's hope that signals an end to all taxpayer funding for this catastrophic failed technology.
Unfortunately, Obama did mention "clean coal," which---like "safe nukes"--- does not exist. On March 2, there will be non-violent civil disobedience against a coal burner in the nation's capital. This welcome action follows in the tradition of mass occupations at the Seabrook (NH) and other reactor construction sites since 1976.
Back then, grassroots organizations like the Clamshell Alliance developed a Solartopian vision of a world totally free from fossil fuels and atomic power. The plan was born in part at a "Toward Tomorrow" energy fair in Amherst, Massachusetts that featured wind power pioneer William Heronemus and efficiency guru Amory Lovins.
A green-powered Earth means ending both fossil and nuke power, to run totally on solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, non-food-based biofuels and other true renewables, with increased efficiency and restored mass transit.
Like stashing nuke waste in an earthquake zone surrounded by dormant volcanoes, as at Yucca Mountain, carbon sequestration for coal is unworkable, unacceptable---and unnecessary.
The upcoming march against that coal burner will be ushered along by three decades of anti-nuke activism. Let's hope it prompts Obama to omit that clean coal oxymoron from his next speech---and from all proposed government funding.
12 Comments so far
Show All"The most fuel efficient car is a parked car."
"Many of us WANT to do without them."
I HATE driving. I would LOVE to be able to use public transportation most of the time. But the country is just not configured for it now. It WAS configured that way many years ago, but the OIL and CAR companies conspired to eliminate it, and we spent trillions building highway systems. However, there is enormous POTENTIAL for building a national high speed rail system. All we need to do is lay tracks right on top of the existing interstate highway system. Phase out cars and phase in trains. And at the same time phase in your light vehicle idea for short trips. But all of this is much too logical and "fanciful" for our dimwitted politicians to understand or admit let alone take any action.
d.k.shaw
Some "parts of the country" are still configured to be walking and transit friendly, including where I lived until recently and will hopefully soon move back.
You need to vote with your feet.
---USAn---
"more fuel-efficient cars and trucks built right here in America."
Mr. Wasserman, you mean FEWER cars/trucks, ehh? The USA consumption machine needs to take an extended lunch hour. But when we have to build another one, YES we need to build it right here in our neighborhood workshop, oh yes.
Regarding fuel efficiency, we have to disseminate the complete picture to the people. And here it is: The most fuel efficient car is a parked car. So we keep it parked as much as possible (extending its service life to 30 years). Many of us WANT to do without them. Suggestion: DEMAND rail/bus public transport (including long distance high speed rail - over 300 mpg/passenger compared to 70 for aircraft), and organize activities CLOSER TO HOME.
When we MUST drive (and daily commutes to work are NOT a must - try working near home) then we have to drive a LIGHT vehicle (e.g. 1000 lbs, instead of a 7000 lb SUV), with the minimal power (20 hp), bio-diesel (150 mpg), and if we drive it more than 1000 mi/yr, it should be a series bio-diesel-electric with a smallish battery (200 mpg), speed limit 45 mph, properly inflated tires, and reasonable aerodynamics.
sorry, its:
scitizen.com/screens/blogPage/viewBlog/sw_viewBlog.php?idTheme=14idContribution=1338
The US cannot afford to waste more time and money doing the nuclear two-step or the clean-coal shuffle.
The US uses far more electrical energy than it needs to. Let's phase out both coal and nuclear, and start replacing it watt for watt with renewables, the cheapest of which can be obtained from "vertical winds" via the Atmospheric Vortex Engine.
Ref: http://vortexengine.ca
and
http://www.scitizen.com/screens/blogPage/viewBlog/sw_viewBlog.php?idTheme=14&idContribution=1338
Tea leaves?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10141790-38.html
"Two lethal words went thankfully unspoken in President Obama's address to the nation this week---atomic energy."
Thank you President Obama.
"Unfortunately, two others---"clean coal"---were included."
Unfortunately it's not either/or. It's both that must be excluded. Fortunately green alternatives abound and more appear each day. Careful, limited and decreasing use of oil will get us there.
Addressing overpopulation and resource depletion by broadly expanding family planning help would be one best long term solutions.
Limiting the military's profligate use of oil by making deep cuts in the military budget and ending for-profit wars would save lots of energy and fight global warming.
As Mountain Mike pointed out in his first paragraph, my observations of the nuclear industry flying under the radar are based in their track record, not tea leaves.
The Utility execs. in the states mentioned in the article will no longer need to be jealous of the Wall Street Bankers. Now they can accelerate the rip off of taxpayers and ratepayers by adding charges to monthly utility bills for nuclear plants that may never produce power.
The bail out of the nuclear power industry has had several attempts to be snuck into unrelated legislation several times. And investigative reporters out there? Find out who the legislator is that is doing that. Then as Deep Throat once said to Woodward and Bernstein to get to the bottom of the Watergate scandal, "follow the money." I will guarantee that legislator has been the errand boy for the nuclear industry due to large industry donations to that legislator.
I appreciate the tireless efforts contributed by Harvey Wasserman to get us redirected toward renewable alternative energy sources. He is on target with atomic energy, as that industry has never answered the simple and straight forward question "what do we do with the radioactive wastes." They are pretending that Yucca Mountain deep mines is the answer but won't be honest and tell us the use of Yucca Mountain for that purpose is tied up in court, as the Shoshone own that land by treaty and do not want it used for the radioactive waste of the world. Then if you do the math, it is easy to predict Yucca Mountain could be full within a couple of years. Then what?
Clean coal? I have yet to see a comprehensive study supporting that this can be done.
But there is a third item on the list Wasserman overlooked, shale or sand oils. There are adds being run currently by the oil industry. What they don't tell you is shale oil is economically feasible when the cost per barrel of oil goes over $80 a barrel. The pristine Rocky Mountains wilderness and the pristine Northern Canadian wilderness would be where they would have sites and the operation is a close parallel to strip mining or what they called placer gold mining where vast amounts of water are used. Huge amounts of water would be needed and would be polluted in the process.
We currently have outstanding breakthroughs in solar energy. We are accustomed to seeing pricey solar panels using silicon operating at about 15-20 percent efficiency. Our current breakthroughs present us with much cheaper non silicon materials operating close to 100 percent efficiency. We are also close to the plug in electrical vehicles that could be run effiently off of such solar panels.
However, there will be a gap of time to transition. This means we will continue to use coal and other traditional energy sources until these alternatives are fully developed. It will take time to fully address our national massive hunger for energy.
For my taste, a bit too much tea-reading of Obama's speech by both Wasserman and the post by raydelcamino. So Obama didn't mention nuclear power and I too took encouragement from that, but there sat his Secretary of Energy Steve Chu, he of the U Cal nuclear labs, looking smug as a bug as Obama spoke of alternative energy sources, and who knows, maybe the President just dropped that line that was in his script. As to raydelcamino's counter-suggestion of Obama's NOT mentioning it as indicative of his knowing that the nuclear industry is flying under the radar on its development plans: that may be, but making too much of the fact, one way or the other, of the simple fact that Obama didn't mention the matter, illustrates the hazards of these tea-leafs readings of the President's words, which are not (yet) Holy Scripture that scholars have to interpret for the masses.
Not only is nuclear power incredibly dangerous for all the above named reasons, but uranium is also a finite resource. These nuke plants cost billions and billions to build and will ultimately remain as useless highly radioactive white elephants with spent fuel stored onsite, just an accident waiting to happen.
d.k.shaw
The nuclear industry is glad Obama kept nuclear power out of his speech.
The nuclear industry's recent PR campaign has already painted itself green by convincing many voters and elected officials that because nuclear power creates less greenhouse gas than coal burning, it is a green solution to combat climate change and is worthy of jumbo taxpayer-funded subsidies.
Due to rapidly falling demand for metals, mines are shutting down all around the world. The mining industry will increase their lobbying for government-subsidized nuclear power as they shift their efforts from mining metals to mining uranium. Providing jobs for laid-off miners will be considered worthy of stimulus package money.
The nuclear industry believes that by operating beneath the radar they will be able to get more taxpayer and ratepayer money to fund expansion.