I can’t quite understand what system of beliefs would create this policy proposal: 45 new nuclear plants by 2030.

If you believe nuclear power is unsafe, either because of potential meltdowns or because of nuclear waste, you shouldn’t want to build any new power plants.

If you believe (or you think voters believe) –
a) that global warming is a potentially disastrous reality (which McCain professes to believe)
and
b) that there’s virtually no risk of meltdowns and that we can easily store nuclear waste –
then you should support of policy of replacing all power with nuclear power ASAP — in five years or less.

Why?

Nuclear power is dirt cheap. Current plants can kick out power for 1.5 cents per kilowatt hour. Assuming you’d get some economies of scale by building several hundred plants, you could probably get that number below a penny per kilowatt hour — including all the costs of construction and waste storage.

And, of course, nuclear power plants emit zero air pollution and zero carbon dioxide.

You probably don’t care all that much about cheap power if you think nuclear power is a greater threat to human health and the environment than coal and natural gas — but I’d presume McCain’s proposal of building some new plants indicates he thinks nuclear is safe.

So why the timid proposal? What’s the thinking here?

[P.S. Before anyone takes my time estimates to task by pointing out that the current design review period for a nuclear plant (let alone the construction time) exceeds five years, I’ll preemptively counter that there’s no need for any new designs or any design review.

All the government would really have to do would be select the best design that’s already been built and copy it as many times as necessary to meet our nuclear power needs.

As for construction taking a decade — nothing takes a decade if you’re really hurrying. The U.S. built its military from nothing to the world’s largest in less than a year after the Pearl Harbor attacks. Besides, by using the exact same design time and again, you’d be mass producing a building, which would greatly speed the construction and assembly of parts.]

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This entry was posted on Thursday, June 19th, 2008 at 6:00 pm and is filed under General News.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.