The nuclear industry could not exist except that the government assumes the risk of a major disaster. The private insurance industry simply won’t underwrite those risks.

So a good question for any candidate espousing nuclear energy but rejecting single payer health insurance:

“How come government-paid single payer insurance is OK for nuclear energy but not for healthcare?”

Gen IV reactors are not expected to be commercially available for power production (as opposed to research) for 25 years at the earliest. Furthermore there are several very different designs being considered for the Gen IV Initiative. Also, it’s not accurate to say that waste is “addressed” in Gen IV reactors, since they all the competing designs still produce waste to varying degrees. See the Gen IV website – gen-4 dot org.

So at this point any discussion about their merits is WAY premature and purely theoretical.

If we go ahead with building nuclear plants, those plants will be funded and guaranteed by the federal government. I think our government has taken enough socialist steps recently to last us for some time. Let’s not add new nuclear plants to the list.

Did Tom Ashbrook/On Point producers even consider inviting either of them to this particular talk, or any other non-partisan energy expert? If not, what a shame. It’s highly disappointing and another sign of the falling standards of this program as it keeps limiting different viewpoints.

I agree; I’m just pointing out that if the nuke industry wants us to take nukes seriously as a carbon-free alternative they need to step up to the plate on liability and waste. So far they’ve just tried to dodge these things.

I have a friend who recently built a house that’s totally PV and can even sell the surplus back to the utility. So anyone who says PV isn’t ready is out of touch.

I’m an investor in several alternative energy companies and while I’m happy for subsidies, I’d happily trade away all the subsidies for simply ELIMINATING the subsidies that coal and oil get that makes them artifically cheap.

“Countries went to war over salt mines. It’s a big deal. The way oil is now.” -Jim Woolsey, 10/16/08

Sounds an aweful lot like the ol’ spook considers the Iraq war to be about oil… who would’ve thunk it?

The problem with a nuclear-accident as you well know is that unlike and earthquake you can’t live in a hot zone.

The nuke thing is absurd and to costly, why on earth would we spend billions of dollars on this kind of technology when we could develop wind, solar, hydro, and natural gas. Methane from garbage dumps should be looked at as well.

Conservatives like McCain do not have a leg to stand on when it comes to energy, the record is not in their favor.

Currently there is not a licensed high level nuclear waste repository in the United States.

The other issue is transporting nuclear waste to the site. This would add a huge amount to the cost with insurance. What if one or more states refused to let a train load of this stuff through? It could be a legal mess trying to sort out all the logistics of the interstate transportation nuclear waste on a large scale.

1. There is STILL no capability in place to permanently and safely store nuclear waste. If the nuke industry really cared about the future of their industry and federal government’s slow progress on it they would long ago have developed a storage option themselves.

2. There is no reasonable answer to the question of nuclear-accident liability. Price-Anderson sets the operator liability limit too low to cover a major accident, and instead assumes the federal government will come in and make everyone whole. But after Katrina that approach has no credibility. Not long ago when I attempted to buy a house not far from the Seabrook nuclear plant in New Hampshire I tried to buy a nuclear-accident rider for my HO policy but was told there was none available, because of restrictions in federal law! Needless to say, I declined to buy the house.

But this makes no sense at all! The statistical risk of a nuke accident is very low, so the cost of insurance should also be low. I have an earthquake rider on my HO policy. Earthquakes in New England are a lot like nuke accidents – a statistically low-probability event with lots of damage concentrated in a small geographical area. But insurance is cheap and widely available for quakes.

People will continue to resist nukes as long as these issues are not addressed, but the nuke industry seems blissfully unconcerned.

The Yucca Mountain site, is not a nuclear repository. It is an experiment: One, which most Nevadans oppose.

Currently there is not a licensed high level nuclear waste repository in the United States.

The only byproduct is harmless helium and radiation at backgound levels. The fuel is heavy water that costs about $400 per pound currently. One pound has more energy than the total life time per person comsumption in the U.S. The ocean has billions of years worth of heavy water at current energy consumption rates.

And if this is true, why haven’t you heard anything about this? That is a whole story by its self – the politics of science. Cold fution is a threat to the DOE ITER program that the US is spending $500M per year, total $16B in the last 50 years with no excess heat expected for years to come. Cold fusion research in last 20 years is estimated at $25M total. The U.S. should be spending at least $100M per year on cold fusion.

1. ‘clean coal’ — no such thing exists, and will not in any significant way. MIT may be happy to study this, but the fact is that even if appropriate sites and safe methods existed, there is no cost effective way to do this in the existing plants. We need to invest that money in existing clean technologies and in researching additional clean technologies to bring them to market. Can you imagine getting elected while loosing the coal states? They would actually have to change direction, but like the oil companies, they will not do it till they are forced to. Once they do, they will realize there are plenty of other ways to do business.

2. fuel taxes should be MUCH higher. A small tax will achieve nothing. If a feebate system existed, using fossil-fuel taxes as rebates for clean energy users, we would have a clean system much sooner. Let the market do its work. But can you imagine getting elected by telling people you will raise taxes, in any form?

Do Santa Barbarans support offshore drilling? Hell, no!

The beaches today are clean of oil gobs, but smothered by tourists.

Recently the EU scaled back plans to impose strict carbon emissions on cars because manufacturers and unions managed to convince governments that these measures would cost jobs.

The world is heading into a severe recession and the unemployment rate in the US is expected to climb to 8, and maybe 10, percent by winter. In that environment we can expect that the “jobs” weapon will be very effective at blocking progress on the environment.

Unfortunately, with the price of oil plummetting the economics of “green” energy is weakening at precisly the moment when it would be nice to have some “green-collar” jobs. For example, Evergreen Solar, a Massachusetts solar cell maker that broke ground last spring on a new factory and announced big hiring plans, has seen its stock fall to 1/3 of what it was a few months ago. Likewise First Solar is down 53%.