McCain Backs Nuclear Power 1563
bagsc writes "Senator John McCain set out another branch of his energy policy agenda today, with a key point: 45 new nuclear power plants by 2030." So it finally appears that this discussion is back on the table. I'm curious how Nevada feels about this, as well as the Obama campaign. All it took was $4/gallon gas I guess. When it hits $5, I figure one of the campaigns will start to promote Perpetual Motion.
Nuclear is a great idea. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Seriously, WTF? (Score:4, Interesting)
There is a very limited supply of easily accessable fissable material on earth. The more plants we build the more the cost of *THAT* will go up.
People really need to start investing in sustainable renewable energy, things like tidal, wind, solar, and what IMO is the most untapped, geothermal. Seriously, we have all these active volcanos around the planet exerting kilotons of energy spewing gasses into the air and creating massive amounts of heat, why aren't we harnessing that more?
$5 a gallon? (Score:5, Interesting)
We go thru this all the time with them, they push prices up to where they get worried we might actually go find an alternative, then bring it down just enough ( but higher then before ) to quiet us down and lose interest in alternatives.
Its a cycle that most people are too stupid to see, and thus we are stuck in it.
I'm all for this, IF... (Score:5, Interesting)
The current reactor design is antiquated and hobbled by President Carter's decree that we will not reprocess nuclear fuel [pbs.org]. So instead of extracting 90+% of the energy in the fuel and having 100 year nuclear waste, we extract 2% and have 10,000 year waste with the once-thru fuel cycle [wikipedia.org]. Real smart, Jimmy. And he was a 'Nucular Engineer'!
Re:Obama better support this too (Score:1, Interesting)
Obama opposes our drilling for our OWN oil resources, which is about FAR more than gas: think about how much plastic, rubber, oil-based lubricants, you use in your daily lives: it ALL comes from oil. That pen in your pocket? OIL. The plastic bag you used for your groceries, and the plastic involved in 90% of the food packaging (plastic sealed pouches virtually everywhere, plastic milk jug, plastic lids, etc)... OIL. Your tires on your car or even your bike? That's right, OIL involved. Half of your car's structure? Plastics - OIL again.
Just about everything you use in your daily life comes from petroleum in some fashion, most likely directly some chemical derivative in ADDITION to the heat generation for the melting/forming processes.
Obama is on record that "I am not a nuclear energy proponent", and claims the only energy bill he pushed in the IL senate is an ANTI-power plant bill.
Re:Seriously, WTF? (Score:5, Interesting)
Also...let's start drilling for our own oil reserves!! We have bans on drilling off of the east coast, the west coast, and even the eastern part of the Gulf. We have the capability to drill safely these days. Who knows...we might hit the motherload like Brazil did recently that I hear of?
We have TONS of shale oil that is starting to get cost efficient to process.
Why not do all these that are possible now to help our oil needs WHILE putting tons of money and research into the other alternative fuels?? I'm excited about ramping up , wind, solar and biofuels (particularly the algae and other processes to make fuel out of waste)...but, we need more oil now to ease the pain till the switchover.
In the US, we have got to get over the NIMBY. The gulf coast has carried the 'burden' for the drilling and refining for decades...we have to start having the whole country contribute...repeal the bans on drilling....
Economic arguments (Score:1, Interesting)
http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/plants/plants.pdf
Re:Seriously, WTF? (Score:1, Interesting)
2.) Risk of meltdown. Minor risk, but major effect. Personally I don't think this is a big issue.
3.) End storage. Personally I think that the difference between storing 100 tonnes and 1000 tonnes isn't all that great, you still need the infrastructure. But the cost for building this infrastructure (manpower and energy cost) has to be included.
4.) Hazardous mining. Today Uranium is extracted by strip mining using some very toxic chemicals. This is both an environmental problem and a worker safety problem, especially in under developed countries. Safer methods are available, but again, that increases costs.
True, Nuclear Power is an option, and not one that should be ignored. But building a lot of reactors and thinking it's a long term solution is wrong in my opinion.
Renewable energy and/or decreased energy consumption is sadly the only way to go (except for killing of a good portion on the world population) in the long run.
Re:no American power plants burn Oil (Score:4, Interesting)
Um no. Regulations is exactly why we are in this problem. In the US the red tape that you have to cut through to drill new wells or even just to refine oil prevents many companies from opening new wells and refineries. In the rest of the world (Chindia, Mexico, etc...), the socialist policies that have capped and subsidized gas prices have led to the continued high demand even while prices surged. In a normal market economy demand would have already slowed (as it has in the US) and prices would have come down. I'm expecting demand in China to finally slow when they start removing gas subsidies after the olympics.
As a Native Nevadan... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm a citizen of Reno, first and foremost. After that, and in a larger sense, I'm a citizen of Nevada. If there is a measure that is good for the state on a whole and Reno does not get benefit from it, I still vote for it. Why? Because it is for the good of my fellow statesmen. After this, I am a citizen of the United States, and if there is a measure that my fellow American citizens will benefit from while Nevada or Reno might not, I back it, again, because it is for the good of my country and my fellow Americans.
The concept of working together for the greater good has been replaced with NIMBY communities and people who are too self-centered to think of anyone but themselves -- i.e. most of the people in my generation and the generation before me, the same people who took advantage of these Liar Loans and are being foreclosed upon now.
The other argument that I bring up to people that I discuss this topic with is that there is a great deal of money to be made for not only the State of Nevada, but also any and all states that have any railroad lines crossing through them that will be used to bring the nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain. The cut and dry of it is this: in exchange for not fighting to keep this project from happening, cut a deal with the federal government, using the old States Rights trick, and charge a fair rate for every cubic meter/yard/whatever that has to be transported to help cover the potential risk of a spill and for the right and privilege to cross through the state. This would give Nevada and the other states quite a bit more funding, bring the waste in to a place that can store it, and put this damn issue to rest already.
Nukes could solve a lot of issues (Score:3, Interesting)
How about a 2 gigawatt plant dedicated to pumping and desalianting seawater for the Southwest's water supply? Not only could this provide a primary source for drinking water, it would provide the immense environmental benefit of stopping the drain-to-dry on the rivers and aquifers.
How about a 2 gigawatt plant dedicated to producing hydrogen from seawater and allowing a bulk source of hydrogen? The hydrogen could be shipped elsewhere and used for electricity generation, fuel for more mobile vehicles, etc.
Building the plants and using the majority of the power on site has big benefits, too, since you won't lose half your power to transmission loss -- it's like getting a free power plant.
Re:$4 for gas, come on (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:$4 for gas, come on (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm sure it must be real tough.
Liquid Flouride Thorium reactor (Score:2, Interesting)
I'll believe it when I see it. (Score:2, Interesting)
There is a big push here to get a tri-core closed cycle plant (it makes and processes its own fuel). The locals are all for it, the state is all for it, the feds won't lift a damn finger.
So, I'll believe it when I see it.
Re:Seriously, WTF? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Seriously, WTF? (Score:3, Interesting)
Give it a few years and there might be Chinese modified pebble bed reactors that could be bought if Jingoism does not prevent it - but for now if electricity generation is the only criteria nuclear is the worst choice. Nuclear power generation technology works in Japan where there is fear of a blockade, in submarines, in aircraft carriers, in developing nations where they want weapons material (CANDU!) - but it's a really expensive and complicated way to boil water so it's not very useful outside of these edge conditions. The sheer amount of effort that occurs to get things running and get those megawatts really stops it from being as "greenhouse friendly" as is claimed - they run in stuff made from rock in a complex process and not simple magic beans.
Re:Seriously, WTF? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Seriously, WTF? (Score:2, Interesting)
Wow, Slashdot is amazingly broken. I'm really tired of starting to type in a comment box and having it disappear. I have to ^A^C every minute or so to keep from losing my comment submissions. It just happened to me while writing this comment.
Anyway, comment revision 2.0...
Uh, is it? Solar panels could repay the energy cost of construction in six years twenty years ago and the wind farms we are building today are just retarded, we know they're some of the least efficient designs we could build, but we build them anyway.
Granted, I wouldn't feel so bad about nuclear if we reprocessed waste. But I will rabidly :) oppose the construction of ANY nuclear plants BEFORE we start doing so, not least because the plant must be designed to run on reprocessed waste.
Re:Seriously, WTF? (Score:1, Interesting)
The GOP discussing nuclear power and an option is promising, as it is a means to getting away from our dependency on coal and oil. So I'd say it's good news that this can become a discussion, and a good sign that the "drill more oil" answer isn't going to cut it anymore.
Re:Seriously, WTF? (Score:4, Interesting)
Aren't earthquakes and volcanos natures way of releasing a build up of energy? So if you do something to cause the release of that energy in advance, shouldn't the event be smaller? eg if the forces that cause an earthquake 'build up' over 20 years, but you test an underground nuke 5 years into that time and it causes the earthquake to happen then instead, wouldn't that earthquake be smaller than it would have been 15 years down the track?
And if you are releasing it slowly over a period of time, (i'm talking about volcano's now and tapping into geothermal energy) could that stop the event from happening at all?
(i'm actually asking a question here - i don't know the answer even if it sounds rhetorical).
Re:Oil not equal to nuclear (Score:4, Interesting)
I actually think Geothermal will be the only dependable energy source over the long haul, but we need to work out a few bugs first. [treehugger.com]
Electric powered cars will lower oil dependence for a bit, but since so many other products are made from oil [eldr.com] it will continue to be an important resource regardless of whether people burn it or not.
In fact we depend on plastics so much now, that in my mind burning it as fuel makes as much sense as burning the food supply for fuel. [wikipedia.org]
Re:Oil not equal to nuclear (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Oil not equal to nuclear (Score:5, Interesting)
It is only 'weaponization' of the fuel...IF you put it in a weapon.
Frankly, we've got enough nuke weapons now, and aren't really looking for a new source of fuel for those. If we look into IFR (Integral Fast Reactors) and the like...we can make very efficient use of the nuclear fuel...and reduce the amounts of waste, and possible weaponizable by products.
We do have pretty good scientific minds in this country, if we'd just use them, and stop playing politics with all this....our energy needs should be above petty partisanship.
Re:Seriously, WTF? (Score:2, Interesting)
Regardless, the OP's argument is still correct: geothermal hot spots are far away from populated areas, which means greater transmission losses are unavoidable. Higher voltage would ameliorate this, but if it were that easy (and cost-effective) to do, why aren't we doing it already with non-geothermal power sources? I suspect there's a reason in there somewhere that is detrimental to your argument.
Re:Oil not equal to nuclear (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, in the northern US, it would/could make a big difference. For some reason up there...they use heating OIL to heat their homes during the long, hard winters.
Perhaps if we had more nukes providing cheaper electricity...we could get the heating done up north without so much oil usage.
Re:Seriously, WTF? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Obama better support this too (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Seriously, WTF? (Score:1, Interesting)
Does anyone wonder why we're the only country on Earth that willfully ignores it's own oil reserves in favor of outsourcing our oil exploration and drilling to the brown man? Why? So drilling platforms 20 miles offshore don't destroy some senator's view from his vacation home on the coast? Fuck that shit. Drill here, drill now. Granted, we need a multi-pronged approach to reach the goal of true energy independence, including oil, coal, nuclear, wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, etc. Nothing should be off the table except E85 ethanol which is just a huge farm subsidy in disguise.
It's a bit hypocritical of President Bush to tell the Saudis to increase their oil production if we're unwilling to do the same. Furthermore, only about 18% of our oil imports came from the Middle East in 2007. People love to point the finger at the Saudis, but the fact is that we purchased around 45% of our imports in 2007 from countries in the Western hemisphere that don't have insane anti-civilization energy policies in place forbidding them from tapping their own oil. Wake up, folks. This is an artificial supply shortage resulting from nearly 40 years of failed leadership at the federal level, combined with obstructionism from misanthropic and nihilistic environmentalists. And this is the same government that you want to make decisions about which medical treatments you are allowed to have? Here's the Hillary/Obama socialized medical plan: make the middle class foot the bill for everyone else while the wealthy jet off to India or Latin America for affordable rates on the procedures not covered by the federal plan - thus making the barrier between middle class and upper class even more insurmountable.
Re:Seriously, WTF? (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't know the actual numbers and am too lazy to look, but is Plutonium (the waste) way more radioactive then the fuel (Uranium)?
Re:Obama better support this too (Score:3, Interesting)
Barack Obama: [...] "Absolutely, and look, the NRC is a moribund and...it's a moribund agency that needs to be revamped and it's become captive of the industries that it regulates and I think that's a problem. It's not unique by the way to the nuclear industry [...] We've got a whole bunch of federal agencies that over the last seven years have been filled with cronies, have lost their sense of mission. It's true in the justice department, the civil rights division. [...] Part of what I want to do as President is I want to make government cool again. I say that only partly tongue-in-cheek. I want to be able to attract a whole new generation of talent to go into the federal government and their charge will be make these agencies lean, mean, make them work [...] Let's restore this sense that government can get things done [...] I would describe myself as agnostic on nuclear power in the sense I'm not somebody who says nuclear's off the table no matter what because there's no perfect energy source and given the importance of producing carbon emissions, nuclear should be in the mix if we can make it safe [...] There are a whole set of questions and they may not be solvable and if they're not solvable then I don't want to invest in it. But if they are solvable, why not?"
Re:Seriously, WTF? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Seriously, WTF? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Oil not equal to nuclear (Score:3, Interesting)
As far as nuclear, I find it hard to believe people will like have nuclear heated water run through their homes. The paranoia factor is just way too high. There are other uses for it, though. People will just have to be creative. Free heated water = efficient fish farm? = year-round tropical oasis in my home state of Minnesnowta?
Re:Seriously, WTF? (Score:5, Interesting)
This just proves how out of touch the old man is. (Score:3, Interesting)
If you want McCain as president, you're not considering the truth, or you're incapable of thinking for yourself.
He wants them to open Florida's west coast to offshore drilling. This won't have an effect on gas prices.
Since Florida governor Charlie Crist is being considered for VP, he did a 180 against the interests of his own state and supported McCain's plan.
It will only take one spill to destroy the everglades entirely. Before you go on about "we don't need the everglades", it's the source of fresh water for the entire Southern part of the state.
This is just out of touch with reality. No one will actually benefit from this except the oil companies.
yep, just don't vote for John McCain. Nothing he is, is what we need.
Re:Seriously, WTF? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Seriously, WTF? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Seriously, WTF? (Score:2, Interesting)
That said, are you by any chance also opposed to the use of nuclear fusion for energy generation? I'm just curious as to why you have the viewpoint that you have.
(on a related note: handling nuclear waste is done with the utmost care in every country I've read about, and any gross boundary stepping (like dropping radioactive material in the sea) would most certainly be ended by the larger world community)
Re:Seriously, WTF? (Score:5, Interesting)
And those people don't seem to mind that much that most of our energy comes from coal, and the largest powerplant, supplying 1/4 of energy, uses BROWN coal... But they still have a solution - waterplants. Problem is - they don't mention that, with our energy needs, we'd have to turn all major rivers into concrete waterways, and it still wouldn't be enough.
Perhaps now you see why I used "(anti)enviromentalists" at the beginning - those people do much more harm than good to the enviroment. Not only because of their direct actions, but also because they undermine authority of true enviromentalists.
And yes, I'm bitter. And...yes, YOU might have genuine concerns...but usually the most vocal, the ones pushing PR machine, are extremists with blind agenda (I remember TV show with one of their leaders vs. some academic; the first one painted catastrophic visions of his mind, caused by radiation of course; first question of the second one: "do you even know what radiation is?". Yeah, you call it sarcasm. But guess the answer)
PS. Well, we'll have to build nuclear powerplant anyway in the next 15 years...and you know what, the whole mess assocaited with it might end up pretty good for me - I had an idea of moving as close to it as I can. Not only it's very nice area overall (hilly lakeland very close to sea and one of most culturally interesting aglomerations), but also it's a rule in EU that areas around nuclear powerplants are actually the ones with most pristine enviroment/etc. Perhaps because people are fleeing the area and they are much more harmfull than any nuclear powerplant... And there's bonus: less stupid, ignorant people around.
Re:Seriously, WTF? (Score:3, Interesting)
Then, when you are no longer ignorant of the technology, you can talk about whether or not you are spreading FUD.
Until then, you are the equivalent of the FBI agents who decided GURPS cyberpunk was a hacking manual.
Re:no American power plants burn Oil (Score:2, Interesting)
I'd guess the reason why Mexico imports 25% of its gas from the US is either a) it doesn't have enough refineries to meet local demand (gas!=oil) or if you meant that it imports 25% of its oil from the US b) it can sell its oil on the market for more than it costs to import oil from the US.
Either way, I'd say you should take Economics 201.
Re:Seriously, WTF? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes. Natural uranium produces very little radiation. It isn't until it's enriched and undergoes fission that it gives off massive amounts of radiation. (Which is actually GOOD in this case, because we use those radioactive particles to heat the working fluid in the generators.)
After the uranium is burned via fission, a number of unstable isotopes remain. These isotopes will decay into other materials until they reach a stable state. This decay produces radiation of various types. Generally speaking, anything that's extremely "hot" will not remain so for very long. Since mass is being directly converted into energy, an isotope that gives off a lot of radiation will reach a less dangerous state faster than an isotope that gives off lower levels of radiation. This works to our advantage as contaminated areas can become safe for cleanup operations fairly quickly. (e.g. The wildlife in the Chernobyl area has already returned and adapted to the higher levels of radiation. In addition, the Chernobyl area is LESS radioactive than some areas of naturally occurring radiation where people are already present and thriving.)
As for what to do with the waste, the best solution is to burn it in a reactor. e.g. PU-239 is a natural by product of the U-238 that even highly enriched uranium contains. It's useful for implosion nuclear weapons (super-hard to construct), but it's also useful as a fuel to further power the nuclear plant. Once the fuels are no longer useful for power generation, they often become useful for a number of industrial, medical, and (*gasp!*) consumer applications. As a result, nearly all of the fuel can eventually be used.
Q: So why is there a problem with nuclear waste? A: Because politicians think that fuels like PU-239 are too dangerous because terrorists or foreign nationals might get hold of the materials and make an implosion bomb. (Did I mention that such bombs are incredibly hard to make?) As a result, they let the spent fuel rods sit in cooling pools where they pile up and become a disposal problem.
The odd part is that the government seems unconcerned that the Uranium fuel rods currently in use are very useful in creating a gun-type bomb. Gun-type bombs are easy to create. Any country with a strong enough industrial base could easily produce a gun-type weapon. Gun-type weapons are dangerous because the chances of the nuclear weapon going off by accident are fairly high in comparison to implosion bombs. But if your aim is to get the bomb by any means necessary, it doesn't seem like a big problem. Especially compared to the incredible amount of effort and testing that has to go into creating an implosion weapon.
Long story short: No, you can't put the materials back in the ground. Thankfully, there is no real reason to do so.
Re:Seriously, WTF? (Score:3, Interesting)
Solar already has the highest amount of subsidies going, we could have had a couple nuclear plants for the cost.
Furthermore, I've been seeing a lot of 'worst case scenario' for the cost and time needed for a nuclear plant. I've seen estimates that could have a nuclear plant done in 2 years, though 3-5 is more likely. $10B for a GW sized plant, when the estimates I've seen say $2-3B. $3B for the first plant, $2B for subsequent plants.
If we can cut through the red tape enough, they'll be able to be built much faster and cheaper, and that changes the equations quite a bit.
Solar water heating makes a lot of sense down south. Solar electric panels on Minot AFB doesn't. We'd be better off putting in a small nuclear reactor where the old steam plant used to be. Renovate the steam pipes going to all the buildings and we'd be able to have the base operate independantly of the grid.
Casualties of TMI (Score:4, Interesting)
More than that, depending on how you look at it. Losing the wrecked reactor and shutting down the one next to it meant that the reactors were no longer saving lives by displacing coal. A nuclear power advocate named Petr Beckman took the Office of Technology Assessment figures for premature deaths due to coal use and calculated that having those two plants off the grid cost 100 lives per year.
Don't forget the Water (Score:2, Interesting)
Put them all on the hurricane prone and tsunami-expecting Atlantic or Gulf coast? The scenic Pacific coast? Got a river in your backyard? Good thing all that waste heat dumped into the oceans isn't considered "global warming". Just let the Gulf Stream carry all the waste heat north to help melt Greenland's glaciers.
How much gas/diesel would be needed to build 45 plants? How much new power distribution infrastructure will be needed to carry the power from 45 suitable locations to power hungry consumers? Fourty-five new terrorist destinations?
I'm more against monopolies and putting one's eggs in one basket than I am against nuclear power plants. Decentralized and diversified power production is my choice, perhaps through a "third industrial revolution". When will we all take personal responsibility for the resources we use?
I expect more questions than answers in the short term.
Re:Seriously, WTF? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Seriously, WTF? (Score:5, Interesting)
Radiation is essentially zero, safety is as great, and potential fringe benefits (could easily provide municipal steam/heat to a moderate community) make it an easy choice.
Let's compare the people killed *per year* by
Re:Seriously, WTF? (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree with the GP poster. I would welcome a nuclear power plant in 'my backyard'. Not my actual back yard, I wouldn't want any kind of power plant that close to me, just because they're all ugly and have other undesireable features (such as noise, normal industrial scale pollution, the kind of stuff that any industrialized area suffers from that keeps people from building houses in industrial zones). But as close as any other industrial facility would be fine by me.
And I seriously, really, mean it. I suppose the only thing I would not be happy about is that the value of my house would go down because most of the population is just as ignorant as you are and have an irrational fear of nuclear power plants.
Re:Seriously, WTF? (Score:1, Interesting)
Unfortunately, right there you ran smack into another nuclear power misconception. The US government doesn't pay for nuclear power plants. The operators do. They're almost all (there's a few special purpose reactors, like the Navy's training reactor) privately financed, constructed, and operated.
McCain doesn't need any money for these reactors. He just needs to make sure there aren't any unnecessary regulatory hurdles that keep them from being built. The $100 billion or so that 45 new reactors would cost (the price is much lower with the newest, standardized reactors like the AP1000) would come from energy companies looking for a reliable, stable, inexpensive source. And while $100 billion sounds like a prohibtive amount of money, when you consider that these 45 reactors will altogether generate about $10 billion/year worth of electricity (at $0.03/kw-hr) and last 40+ years each, it's clear why the power companies will want to make the investment.
However, the next president's policy on nuclear energy should not end there. The Yucca Mountain repository must get finished and opened. It's been a requirement of federal law for 2-1/2 decades, but most of that has been spent inventing new types of paperwork to fill out, most of which says nothing new. It's costing us hundreds of millions of dollars each year for temporary waste storage that isn't nearly as safe as Yucca Mountain will be.
The other thing the next administration should do is support research on advanced fuel cycles: reprocessing and/or breeder reactors like IFR that will substantially reduce the amount of waste future reactors produce, as well as fusion research. The US has multiple times failed to meet committments to the ITER project. We long ago lost the opportunity to host the ITER reactor itself, but there's plenty of research to be done outside the reactor, especially on materials.
gas, shale oil, ethanol (Score:2, Interesting)
Even if the oil companies could do whatever they wanted, "shale oil" production (which really isn't oil at all) would not help gas prices. "Shale Oil" production is extremely expensive and the technology is really not yet ready for large scale use. It also doesn't produce the gasoline that our cars run on, and it's extremely damaging to the environment -- much much worse than oil wells. It wasn't until gas prices became so ludicrous that anyone really gave it much thought. If prices went back to $2.00 per gallon, the oil companies will not bother to strip mine for "shale oil" (it wouldn't be profitable). Besides, they are so profitable now, what's really in it for them to get prices down?
The fact is that the US only has 2% of the world's proven oil reserves. Our oil production peaked in the 70's and has been declining ever since. If we pumped out EVERY DROP of oil we know about in the USA and didn't import any oil, it would only last us around 3 YEARS and then it would be ALL GONE.
I personally believe we need to start a "man on the moon" style project for alternative fuels and higher efficiency. It's necessary for the environment, stable gas prices, and independence from foreign counties.
Brazil is 100% independent of foreign oil. Why? Mainly because 30 years ago they started a crash program of Ethanol production from SUGAR CANE. Today virtually all of the cars in Brazil run on ethanol that is produced from sugar cane grown in their own country. All of their gas stations sell ethanol. There was an excellent special on CNN showing how "We were warned' several times -- most notably in the 70s when there was an oil embargo from the middle east and people had to wait for hours to get gas in lines that went around the block.
By the way, compared to corn, it is 4-8 times more efficient and cost effective to convert sugar cane into ethanol. However, the US is pushing corn because of politics. We even have a HUGE TARIFF on imported ethanol (so Brazil can't compete). We tax foreign countries for selling us clean burning ethanol, but we don't tax foreign countries a dime for oil! It doesn't make economic sense, but it is what it is.
Re:Now all we need... (Score:3, Interesting)
Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and a few other less-publicized incidents serve as object lessons in why we should be very circumspect about allowing the construction of nuclear power plants: these plants will be run by humans.
In an age when you can't eat tomatoes, brush your teeth, feed your pets, depend on a levee, trust your banker or mortgage lender, or take a prescription drug without risking death or disfigurement or disappointment, the nature of nuclear power plants and the organizations responsible for their safe operation make me skeptical.
And given the state of our educational system and the aggressive dumbing-down of our society, I despair when I meet some of the youth who would be stewards of these technological marvels; I imagine a legion of Homer Simpsons throughout our country minding potential radioactive piles of rubble.
Re:Nuclear is a great idea. (Score:3, Interesting)
I coworker of mine went to college in Missouri, and during his time there he witnessed a professor attempt to organize a student rally against a new reactor that was to be built in another city.
While watching them go back and forth about it, he quietly interjected with something along the lines of "Why drive that far to protest when there's a reactor on campus?"
It took a few minutes, but he eventually convinced the professor that there was in fact a reactor on campus and housed in a building near the football field, weather he believed it or not.
The clincher, the name of the schools football field? "Reactor Field"