MIDDLEBURG HEIGHTS, Ohio - Republican John McCain said on Tuesday if he is elected president, the nation will be building dozens of new nuclear power plants.
The presidential nominee, touring an Ohio factory that makes parts for nuclear power plants, said the United States needs to build 45 new nuclear power plants by 2030 to create jobs and to help achieve energy independence.
“It’s obvious to me we will be expanding nuclear power plants in America,” McCain said, adding that the nation also needs to store and reprocess nuclear fuel.
“We can do that. Other countries in the world are doing that, and we can as well,” he said.
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Photo credit: Reuters (Three Mile Island)
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It is unfortunate to see the number of misinformed posters on this website. Almost every anti-nuclear rationale listed goes against all evidence, fact, and experience.
Safety: New reactors are designed with passive safety systems meaning that the physical properties and laws of nature will not allow a serious accident.
Nuclear Fuel: If we move to a closed fuel cycle and reprocess our fuel, we can reduce already small waste volume by 90%! France already does this in fact. This also means a practically infinite supply of nuclear fuel.
Waste Storage: Yucca mountain is an seismically stable, safe and excellent option. With reprocessing, it will not fill up for several hundred years. The alternative is that waste is stored on site at the plants, as it is done now.
Cost: Over the lifetime of a plant, nuclear power is very cost-competetive and can be cheaper than other sources. It is also not as sensitive to market fluctuations, especially if we mine our own fuel.
The construction of a new generation of reactors will be accompanied by research on waste reprocessing, as well as waste transportation studies. Please do not think that we plan to build a new fleet of reactors with no regard to safety, cost, and environmental impact! We have the scientists to do this, but the real problem is that the government labs doing this research are not receiving the necessary funding. (I am a doctoral student in nuclear reactor physics, so I am personally involved in research at our national labs and major universities.)
We also need a fundamental change in the way the government supports a good climate for nuclear power. Without significant legislative changes for reactor licensing, we will fail to see nuclear investors. I believe McCain will see this process through to the end, and under his direction we will begin construction on the first nuclear plants in many years.
- Posted by EmmaIdeally renewables will be our only source of energy in the long-term. They are the only sustainable option. Short and medium term have to be dominated by conservation and large-scale, carbon-free, sources. Our grid is not built for a distributed system, and this will take a lot of time to move in that direction.
I also put conservation in the short term category because it is quick to enact, but does not last forever. As a species, we are energy users, and conservation will ultimately lower prices and allow people to use more for the same amount of money. There are conservation programs that have worked, namely water, but water is not energy and we can only find so many ways to use it. I am not saying we shouldn’t conserve, but realize that in a free market conservation will only have a short-term effect.
From the studying I have done on nuclear energy, both formally and otherwise, this is our only viable solution fon carbon-free energy right now. It is not perfect, but it will lead us in the direction of cleaner, safer, and ultimately sustainable energy sources.
As for ‘doing the math.’ go to http://www.americanenergyindependence.co m/solarenergy.aspx to check my sources. Each square yard of land receives about 5 kilowatt-hours of sunlight per day. The US uses somewhere around 4 trillion kilowatt-hours per year. Converting, a one square yard area receives about 1825 kilowatt-hours per year. Dividing 4 trillion by 1825 gives me 2,191,780,821, or over 2 billion square yards of solar cells to run the US. That is around 707 square miles of solar cells to run the US, or the size of Lake Okeechobee in Florida. Not bad. A sloar cell is only about 15 to 20% efficient though. so dividing 707 by 0.2, we get 3535 square miles, or about 3.5 times the size of Rhode Island. Couple that with the fact that this energy would need to be stored in batteries and you have an evern larger area because batteries are not 100% efficient and leak power. I am not saying this should never be our goal, but we cannot go renewables alone at the moment. As prices continue to fall and efficiencies go up, we will see more and more renewables. I cannot wait for the day that we can get all our power from solar, wind, and other renewable sources, but we need to reduce our carbon footprint now, and nuclear power is the only source we have that can do this without raising our energy costs to rediculous levels.
- Posted by Ian“Nuclear power is unsafe, unclean, unsustainable, and provides centralized power for the few. How many small communities or even indiduals are going to own their own source of nuclear power? Give me a break! Whereas people all over the country do have wind and solar power sources in their backyards and on their roofs. (Not to mention micro-hydro if you are lucky enough to live near a stream or river.) ” — Robert
You are so uneducated about this topic, it is laughable. Nuclear power is the the cleanest, most efficient energy source there is. And people really have wind sources in their backyards? Have you seen one of the turbines for wind power? not exactly small, not to mention require wind to generate power at very low amounts. No don’t get me wrong i am not against wind and solar, but they are not substitutes for nuclear power when it comes to efficiency and quantity.
As far as only providing power to a centralized few near a large source of water. Would you care to explain the phenomana of the plant in the middle of the desert that provides power to over 4 million residents in one area and hundreds of thousands of others in neighboring states. That is only ONE plant. Not to back for a “centralized few”, huh? Especially considering that the closest major water source is at least 100 miles away.
Read up on a few things before making assumptions.
- Posted by ProGuys I’m about as anti-McCain as they come but nuclear power is def. a good route to go. We need more uses of alternative energies especially nuclear but also wind and solar in the areas where they can be utilized effectively.
- Posted by MichaelWind, Solar and biofuel will only ever be niche players in an energy market. We will never be able to conserve (save) our way to energy independence, take for example all the anti nuclear comments appearing in the comments. Maybe these anti nukes should lead the conservation efforts by turning off their computers and reducing thier carbon footprint. The vast majority of people want refrigerators to store our food, hot water to clean ourselves and all the other luxuries electricity brings with it.
- Posted by Dan MilroyWhat’s going on? Mr. McCain is trying to back out of the debate on Friday! Will he get away with this?
OK Jack
- Posted by OK Jack
Jack,
Wrong thread. Anyway, who was it that was afraid to do 10 town hall debates (no teleprompter)? Oh yeah, that was Obama.
By the way, how’s your boy Biden? I hear him claiming FDR was in office in 1929 making statements on television (many years before it existed) about the depression. Love how none of your liberal cohorts in the media have reported on that idiot.
- Posted by MattNIBY
- Posted by DJNuclear power is unsafe, unclean, unsustainable, and provides centralized power for the few. How many small communities or even indiduals are going to own their own source of nuclear power? Give me a break! Whereas people all over the country do have wind and solar power sources in their backyards and on their roofs. (Not to mention micro-hydro if you are lucky enough to live near a stream or river.) Rooftop solar water heaters are another example of how solar power is ALREADY working.
The funniest thing about listening to advocates for nuclear power is hearing them talk about the CO2 emissions, like they even care about global warming. They are just using that as an argumentative tactic - most of them simply do not believe global warming is true. This is not surprising, the same group of people believe the earth is only 4000 years old.
- Posted by Robert