McCain wants $30 billion for clean-coal research, 45 new nuclear reactors

[jpak]

http://phoenix.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories/2008/06/23/daily35.html

Republican presidential nominee John McCain derided Democratic plans to sue OPEC over high oil prices and the Bush administration's pleas to Saudi Arabia to boost oil production.

The Arizona senator said Wednesday that asking the Saudi to boost production shows weakness and questioned the validity of Democratic proposals to sue the OPEC oil cartel for antitrust violations.

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney both asked the Saudis to up oil exports.

McCain also said Wednesday he would dedicate $30 billion over the next 15 years to develop cleaner energy use of coal and wants the U.S. to build 45 nuclear reactors by 2030.

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[Whoa_Nelly]

1. Solar and wind power

Time to stop raping the land.

Time for clean energy.

Time to stop the insanity of all the oil speculation that is driving the market, that is being used to abuse and kill people.

Oil dependence is not soley based on vehicle use.

Solar and wind power can reduce greenhouse gases.

We're running out of time.

[loveable liberal]

2. I've heard the French have shut down a number of reactors

*BECAUSE* One of the effects of global warming is that they cannot find water cool enough to cool the reactors. Therefore they are not building new ones or running the ones they have. McCain apparently doesnt listen to anyone else and their experiences either.

[Dogmudgeon]

10. I think you heard wrong

The French have a reactor under construction (Flamanville 3, near Cherbourg) and halfway done. The ones they have are running just fine. Eleven prototype reactors -- mainly smaller, and some experimental -- are being decommissioned, which is the normal process. Their nuclear program will be building Generation IV reactors -- safer, more efficient, and less usable for proliferation -- in a few years.

A few reactors were throttled down during recent droughts and heat waves because of decreased water flow. Overall energy production was not affected. They still had enough extra electricity to sell to Germany, which still has anti-nuclear-energy laws in place. (They won't make it, but they'll buy it. And that is going to change soon.) It is very possible to design gas-cooled nuclear reactors. They already have two or three, and most of the new ones will be gas-cooled.

It's easy to find this stuff online. Do it the same way you'd look for information on wind or solar power -- go to industry websites and look for the informational pages, not the promotional ones. It took me about ten seconds to find http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf40.html">a lot of basic information on the French nuclear energy industry.

So McCain supports nuclear energy. Big deal. So does Obama. BHO's campaign manager, David Axelrod, was one of the main PR chiefs for the nuclear industry for several years. Nuclear energy is widely supported by both Republicans and Democrats -- but it is our version of stem cells or abortion, a supposedly life-and-death worry that has been well-funded and emotionally stoked by tactics perfected by the Bush gang -- like terrorism-mongering. It's time we took possession of the entire issue and stopped imitating the Radical Right's silliness. Even our opposition to nuclear energy should be rational and evidence-based. What we have now is an embarrassment.

--p!

[Finishline42]

11. Nuclear plants in Alabama and Georgia had to shut down

Nuclear plants in Alabama and Georgia had to shut down last summer because of not enough water for cooling.

It's funny how many Republicans keep using the French as an example of success with nuclear power plants. They generate almost 80% of their electricity.

What they don't want to say is that it's a national government run utility. But their bureaucrats are mostly technical and engineers - not lawyers, and they have success with large projects - high speed trains. They decided on one company to build them - Westinghouse. That's not how we do things over here. The new mid-air tanker project for the Air Force is a clear example of the money and influence that goes into the decision making process - not the technical specs.

How many 3.5MW offshore windmills would $30 billion pay for?

[NickB79]

15. Lack of water for cooling will shut down almost any thermal power plant

Be it coal, natural gas, biofuel, or nuclear. Water is integral in all of these for transferring energy in the form of steam to drive turbines.

[rurallib]

3. What's a nuclear plant go for these days? 15 - 20 bil?

Taxpayer money of course. That's only another trillion give away to who? Exxon maybe?

[Nederland]

20. Try 2 billion

More lies from the the anti nuke crowd...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP1000

[bananas]

24. LOL - is that a fixed-cost contract?

Somebody's gonna lose money on that deal!

Areva starts pointing fingers and blaming customers: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x136229

Here's what the nuclear industry says about nuclear prices: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=153252&mesg_id=153278

[Nederland]

25. They won't lose money

The difference is the plant is being built in China, which doesn't have a powerful anti-nuke lobby whose sole goal is to drive up costs so that dirty coal plants get built instead of nuclear ones.

[NNadir]

4. Um, do you know Obama's nuclear and coal policies?

You don't?

Why am I not surprised?

In fact, anyone who bad mouths nuclear energy reflexively - that is anyone who is calling for a return of the 19th, or maybe the 18th century - is bashing the policy of the Democratic Nominee for President.

The only candidate speaking against nuclear power is the ignorant Repuke Ralph Nader.

I note that he was espousing the "solar and wind will save us" view 30 years ago, just like the other members of the anti-nuke religion.

Like Jesus, "solar and wind" have not returned from the dead to save the world. The wolf is at the door for most people on the planet, and they are decidedly not impressed at what kinds of opinions drift around the dinner table behind the gates in gated communities.

[jpak]

12. I guess that means LaRouche is the candidate for molten salt breeder squad

:evilgrin:

[NNadir]

17. You guess a lot of things. In fact, that's all you do, is guess.

The Democratic nominee for President has a rational nuclear energy policy.

I was chatting with a fellow from Brookhaven National Laboratories a few weeks ago, a fellow who works on actinide and fission product separation. He's voting for Obama. So am I.

We're pleased as peach.

Maybe you can move to coal land, um, I mean, Germany, to get a policy more like you're own, although I note that the Liberal Democratic Party in Germany may align with the next government to turn over the coal and gas company's nuclear phase out.

[jpak]

18. Umm...Obama wants to "explore" the nuclear "option" and (unlike the NEI) claims it is no panacea

McCain is the true friend of nuclear in this election year.

too bad for you and your so-called "friend" at Brookhaven...

[NNadir]

21. I have not claimed it is a panacea. Thirty years of ignorance has prevented nuclear from

being able what it might have done to save humanity.

The result has been the continuance of 120 exajoules, internationally, of coal burning.

Heckuva job.

I note, with contempt, though that the "solar will save us" cults are still blabbing about "world's largest solar" stuff even as solar energy cannot keep pace with even one dangerous fossil fuel.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/alternate/page/renew_energy_consump/table1.html

Nuclear energy will not save us because - like a bunch of suburban volunteer firefighters who engage in arson to give themselves meaning - the anti-nuke cults had a period of popularity that has done irrevocable damage to humanity's chances.

Ignorance not only kills but it killed.

Heckuva job.

In fact, all nuclear energy will be able to do is what it has consistently done for the last three decades, remain the world's largest, by far, form of climate change gas free form of energy.

If nuclear energy gets to 80 exajoules it will do so in spite of vast ignorance and mysticism from the "nuclear is dead" crowd that has spent the last 200 billion tons of dangerous fossil fuel waste dumping announcing "solar breakthroughs." Probably those 80 exajoules will represent the bulk of what is left to whatever survives of humanity.

The Democratic nominee for President - and from the looks of it, most Democrats - couldn't care less what the Greenpeace cult thinks. I note that there were at least two anti-nuke "renewables will save us" candidates in the Democratic Primaries, and they lost. Neither even made it to becoming finalists. Meanwhile members of the anti-nuke cult come here regularly to announce that they speak for the Democratic Party - there's more than one cult member here who claims to mystically and psychically channel Al Gore - even though the membership of Greenpeace is trivial when compared to the membership of the Democratic Party. It follows - at least for those who can compare two numbers - that there are huge numbers of Democrats who do not buy Greenpeace dogma.

In fact, membership in the yuppie cult at Greenpeace is declining, while membership in the Democratic Party is rising.

And speaking of comparing numbers, let's play a game of 6.830 > 6.992.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/alternate/page/renew_energy_consump/table1.html

[losthills]

23. Stop wrapping yourself in the Democratic flag.

It doesn't look good on you.

You promote the republican energy policy here day after day. And nothing else.

Nothing.

You are way closer to McCain than Obama-- on the RIGHT side of McCain-- because you're even closer to Cheney than McCain.

Take off the Democratic flag and get yourself a clown suit.

[jpak]

13. Yes - Obama wants to spend $150 billion on renewables

McSame is opposed to homeowner tax credits for solar.

The reflexive solar haters have a candidate...

[NNadir]

16. This is different: A repuke against subsidies for the rich.

That is different than normal repuke stuff.

He's still a Repuke, though.

[jpak]

19. Ummm...the average American homeowner is not "rich"

Giving tax credits to homeowners is *not* rupuke policy - it is Democratic energy policy that McCain, the GOP and the NEI oppose.

nice try though...

[NNadir]

22. That would depend on who's defining "rich."

I once lived on an estate owned by a doctor whose family owned all the sand pits that went into making the concrete that became the Empire State Building, the Chyrsler Building and the UN building and other New York icons.

Quoth he: "I'm middle class."

I suspect that there are lots of people who grow up behind the gates on Mom's dollar who claim they're not rich.

The median home in the US is about $210,000, after the fall of the real estate market. Obviously this isn't San Diego. In the west the median home cost $290,000, in San Diego, $470,000.

Chicken change, eh JPak?

The per capita income of the US is $45,000/yr roughly.

In El Cajon California, the per capita income is the per capita income is less than $17,000/year.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_locations_by_per_capita_income

How many citizens of El Cajon own homes that they can install one of a brazillion solar roofs?

How many of them have food?

Health care?

Decent schools?

If their kids get pink eye, do they get to go to the doctor or do they get to go blind, so all your pals can have solar roofs?

Got any spare "subsidies for these people?" No. Couldn't care less behind the gates because the topic of those dirty people in El Cajon isn't polite conversation?

[robertpaulsen]

5. Are there any non-renewable forms of energy McLame doesn't like?

God forbid we create an infrastructure that relies on a resource that won't eventually peak out.

[losthills]

6. But But But.... How can he be for coal AND nuclear?

Are you sure you have that right?

Because there are 5 EXPERTS who come here every day telling us that you have to be for either coal OR nuclear and that nuclear power is poised to put coal out of business. How can it be that McCain has not heard of this? Is he as far out of the loop as Dick Cheney, who also shills for both coal and nuclear?

If I keep hearing stuff like this, I'm going to have to conclude that nuclear power is NOT an alternative to coal.....

[NNadir]

7. Don't try to think too subtly. It will overload your circuits.

And let's face it, there's been a lot of short circuiting going on.

And now from the laundry list of bad thinking - the anti-nuke "logic" manual for rhetoric:

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/poisoning-the-well.html

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/ignoring-a-common-cause.html

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/hasty-generalization.html

If I were teaching a course to sixth graders on critical thinking, and I wanted to find examples of how poor thinking and irrationality works - and if the members of the anti-nuke ignorance squad didn't exist - they would be a perfect invention.

Now, without burning too much of that thick insulation around those low capacity wires, try and see if you can find the reasoning problem one:

This is a website for opposing Republicans.

It is dedicated to exposing Republican thinking as fallacious.

A Republican, their Presidential candidate, claims that nuclear and coal are the same thing.

Therefore, we can conclude that nuclear and coal are linked irrefutably because the Repuke said as much.

In fact, genius, there are several big differences between nuclear and coal. Deaths from nuclear power in this country are so rare - if they exist at all - that zero anti-nukes have been able to produce a single irrefutable case of one. None the less anti-nukes spend all of their time whining about theoretical nuclear dangers. On the other hand, coal produces hundreds of thousands of deaths each year, and is now destabilizing the atmosphere. In contrast to the nuclear case, the anti-nuke cults couldn't care less how many people die from coal.

You want to know the difference between nuclear and coal, and can't figure it out without help from John McCain? Just count how many posts you've dedicated to whining about coal deaths and compare to them to the number of posts where you make stuff up about nuclear.

If you can count, you can easily tell the difference.

Oh wait a second, I see the problem.

The answer involves counting...

http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update42.htm

You couldn't care less.

[losthills]

9. I'm still trying to figure out your "logic......"

When Dick Cheney has secret meetings with CEOs of energy companies to plan the neocon energy platform, he invites coal AND nuclear parasites.

Bush Jr. promotes coal AND nuclear.

John McCain shills for coal AND nuclear power.

It seems clear to me that the neo-con energy platform revolves around coal AND nuclear power, while they work tenaciously to block solar and wind power.

It also seems clear that liberal leaders, including the entire environmental community, are for wind and solar power, and universally opposed to coal AAANND nuclear power.

That's the world outside this forum.

Here in this lttle forum, we have people insisting to us day after day that coal and nuclear power are in opposition to each other, and that anyone in favor of developing renewables is "working for the coal industry. (?)(!)"

Weird, huh?

I can't figure it out.

[kgrandia]

8. Clean Coal is a frickin myth

By the time they figure out how to make coal clean (if they ever do at all) it will be too late to do anything about climate change.

[DogPoundPup]

14. Nuke power could mean billions more in radioactive lucre for reactor builders

who may never deliver a single electron of electricity.

It's no accident that what Bush/McCain are not advocating is a massive shift to increased efficiency and renewable energy .
http://www.alternet.org/environment/89426/