Kurt Ullman wrote:

In article ,
"Pete C." wrote:

Yep, cheap, clean, safe, non polluting, non greenhouse gas releasing
nuclear power - power that could be used to replace a good deal of our
current oil use and bring us a lot closer to energy self sufficiency.
With the additional side benefit of eliminating all the daily pollution
from coal and nat gas fired power plants *now*, instead of 30 years from
now when we might have some of the renewable energy sources improved
enough to make a real impact.

I think now is not likely. Even if we magically licensed a nuke
plant tomorrow, it would still take 2-3 years to build it and bring it
online. We would probably be hard pressed to take a current plant off
line because of growth in demand in the interim. And that 2-3 year
thing ain't gonna happen since we aren't going to magically license nuke
plants any time soon. Heck just the enviornmental impact statement can
take a year or so to put together, let alone argue.

We certainly won't get there with the status quo. Something like an
executive order that we'll be energy independent in 5 years with the
weight to quash all the NIMBY and Eco-Loon attempts to prevent it.

What I want to see is a comprehensive push starting with new nukes to
allow the shutdown of the coal and NG plants and stop all that
pollution, provide cheap electricity for electric and plug in hybrid
cars and electric commuter rail and busses and home heating and cooling.
Use the freed up US NG and US oil to keep other transportation going
without foreign oil. Improve conservation as much as possible. Get
realistic renewable sources, including distributed solar and wind
generation online (again quashing NIBMY and Eco-Loon nonsense) over a
reasonable period of time so that in 30 years when those nukes are
reaching retirement they can be retires and we can by on entirely
renewables.

Something sensible like that will never happen of course...