Jeff Perren over at Shaving Leviathan comments on Barack Obama and his derisive stance on the coal industry while shunning nuclear power as a viable alternative to meet our energy needs of the future:
Once again, the goal is to use the power of government to rush ahead of the market to create a 'clean' source of energy. The cover story for this is to usher in a new age of energy production with no alleged downside: solar, wind, biodiesel. The fact is, that all these have significant drawbacks both economically and environmentally.
Beyond that, they have one major drawback that no one knows how to overcome yet. They don't exist, not on anywhere near the scale that would be required to replace coal as an energy source. (Coal is used to power over 48% of all U.S. electricity production.
The only viable replacement for coal, and it's a superb one both from the standpoint of cost and pollution, is nuclear fission power plants. That technology is safe, cost-effective, and well-developed. There are also immediately deployable improvements that would make it lower cost, safer, and provide for long-term energy supply.
2 comments:
I've added a YouTube video of the SF Chronicle interview containing additional material. Among other things, this wannabe petty tyrant re-states his patently ridiculous claim about lack of knowledge of how to safely handle nuclear material. I shred that with common sense observations requiring no particular technical expertise on the subject.
Stumbled! I think EVERYONE needs to know about this if they haven't already heard about it.
You're right - great post over there! Going over there again to stumble that one too!
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