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George Monbiot: taking the heat from other enviros for supporting for nuclear power

February 23rd, 2009 No comments

UK enviro-journalist-commentator George Monbiot has an interesting post in the Feb. 20 Guardian that explains his why he now believes that “A kneejerk rejection of  nuclear power is not an option“, and why he’s willing to take heat from others by raising the topic.

Reasonable (even if partly so) enviros?  What’s the world coming to?

Progressives urge Obama to invest in fast reactors to recycle nuclear "waste"

November 17th, 2008 No comments

Is the Progressive Policy Institute signalling an Interest by Obama in making greater use of nuclear power? 

A November 7 press release, the PPI specifically urges in the headline that “Dealing with Nuclear Waste; America Must Emulate France’s Model of Reprocessing Waste into Usable Energy”.

The press release describes the latest in the PPI’s (PPI) Memos to the Next President series, “America’s Nuclear Waste and What to Do with It,” a study by Bill Magwood, Principal of Advanced Energy Strategies, and Mark Ribbing, PPI Director of Policy Development.  The study calls on the next president to “begin investing in options that can reduce and recycle nuclear waste, noting that benefits of nuclear energy are often outweighed by concerns over the waste produced”.

 

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Ron Bailey/Reason: Gore’s proposal to generate all power carbon-free in 10 years requires trillion$ on nukes

July 30th, 2008 6 comments

On July 17, Al Gore challenged our nation to produce “100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly carbon-free sources within 10 years“.

Ron Bailey, science correspondent of Reason online, has examined whether Gore’s proposal is at all practically achievable.  Bailey reviews the main options mentioned by Gore (solar, wind and geothermal) and the chief option implied but unmentionable – nuclear power – and concludes that low ball estimates of the costs for realizing Gore’s target are on the scale of $1 trillion to $6 trillion, with nuclear being by far the cheapest.  Concludes Bailey:

Curiously, nowhere does the “N-word”—nuclear—appear in Gore’s speech. Currently, 104 nuclear power plants generate about 20 percent of America’s electricity. Once a nuclear plant is up and running, it is essentially carbon-free. Westinghouse claims that it can build a third generation 1,000 megawatt nuclear power plant for around $1.4 billion. Assuming this estimate is right, all U.S. carbon-emitting electricity generation plants could be replaced with nuclear power at a cost of about $1.2 trillion by 2018.

“Of course there are those who will tell us this can’t be done,” warned Gore. I am not one of those people. I am sure it can be done. But before embarking on his “generational challenge to re-power America,” I would like the former vice-president to sketch out a few more details on how it’s going to be paid for and who’s going to be stuck with the bill.

These numbers – roughly on the scale of our out-of-pocket and committed costs for our Iraq and Afghanistan adventures (largely corporate welfare for the defense/logistics industry, good friends of Republicans) – help us get a bit of a handle on the opportunity costs of those wars, which have undermined rather than improved our security and jacked up oil costs.

Bailey also comments on the costs of shifting our automobile fleet to one that is powered by electricity.

Bailey’s piece is here: “Al Gore’s Curiously Cost-Free Plan to Re-Power America“.