This is where John McCain made his central energy pitch in Friday night's debate. It's a short passage, but it is remarkable for the amount of nonsense it manages to pack in:
1. This came at the culmination of a discussion about cutting spending, with McCain touting his credentials as a fiscal conservative and even boasting of a "spending freeze." But 45 new nuclear reactors by 2030 would cost around $315 billion, possibly much more, with taxpayers on the hook for loan guarantees, defaults on which could potentially add up to $100 billion. How does that qualify as fiscal conservatism?
2. McCain says constructing all those reactors would create 700,000 jobs, a claim he's made several times before on the trail. There's no documentation for that number on his website. The New York Times says, with delicate understatement, that it's "a figure that many experts find to be inflated. " A recent report from the wildly optimistic nuclear front group American Council on Global Nuclear Competitiveness projects half McCain's number. Even nuclear lobbyist extraordinaire Patrick Moore will only claim 225,000, less than a third McCain's number. Taking job creation numbers from the industry's own Nuclear Energy Institute -- even the most wildly optimistic estimates of direct and indirect, short- and long-term jobs combined -- only gets to about 171,000.
By contrast, a recent report from the Center for American Progress found that $100 billion invested in renewables and energy efficiency could create two million jobs in two years -- less money, more jobs, in a fraction of the time.
3. McCain says nuclear power will reduce our reliance on foreign oil, but nuclear power creates electricity. Oil heats homes, powers transportation, and is made into a range of products. There's very little in McCain's plans or his rhetoric indicating that he'll push for a wholesale switch to electric powered transportation (unless that $300,000 car battery prize really pays off).
4. Why does McCain reference the work on climate change he did "with Senator Clinton"? It's Joe Lieberman who cosponsored the only climate change bill McCain has ever offered (he's introduced it three times). Clinton has signed on as co-sponsor to that bill, along with several other climate bills, but so has Obama. McCain did no special work with Clinton on climate legislation. Why is he trying to write Lieberman out of his history on this issue?
5. Finally, is it me, or when McCain rushed through "wind, tide, solar, natural gas, flex-fuel cars and all that," did he sound openly dismissive?
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Two senators push to ramp up nuclear energy
Comments
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GRLCowan Posted 12:01 pm
28 Sep 2008
He probably did sound dismissive.
If I recall correctly, the proposed battery prize is $300 million, not $300 thousand. Where oil heats houses, electricity can power heat pumps to heat them.
The estimated price of future nuclear plant construction always seems to exceed that of equivalent natural gas-fired plant construction by about the same amount as the uranium-versus-gas fuel savings over ten years. After that, big savings, some of which are at government's expense. If government is a few tens of billions poorer, but ~$500 billion of miners' labour has been saved through their mining of U rather than gas, wasteage has indeed been avoided. That means reactor developers need to be protected from government, lest it seek to protect that -- to it -- lucrative waste. Nuclear loan guarantees provide that protection.
--- G.R.L. Cowan, author of How fire can be tamed
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BILL HANNAHAN Posted 12:16 pm
28 Sep 2008
" But 45 new nuclear reactors by 2030 would cost around $315 billion, possibly much more, with taxpayers on the hook for loan guarantees, defaults on which could potentially add up to $100 billion. "
By the time those reactors come on line electricity prices will be sky high from renewable energy subsidies, as in Denmark, 38 cents/kWh. They will rake in tons of money. Each 1.5GW plant will be earning about 3 billion dollars per year. The loans will be paid off with interest.
He should not hype the jobs issue. The more jobs an industry makes the less efficient it is. If we outlawed the use of tractors and harvesters the farm industry would produce vastly more jobs.
Suppose somebody invented a briefcase sized 50 kW electric cold fusion reactor that sold for $1,000 each, and could be mass produced at the rate of ten thousand per day in a fully automated factory employing 100 people. It would eliminate tens of thousands of windmill manufacturing jobs. Would that be a bad thing?
Things Everybody Should Know About Energy
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saluki Posted 2:25 pm
28 Sep 2008
I guess the morons on this site are not too good at math. If we take 100 billion and break it up among 2 million people (new jobs), it would give each of them about 50,000 total. So this 100 billion would keep that 2 million people employed for exactly one year. But does anyone actually expect that the entire 100,000 billion will be used on salaries. What about the purchase of property. What about the purchase of things like windmills and solar panels - most of which are manufactured outside the US. So if we are lucky, half of that 100 billion would be used for jobs for Americans. So now those 2 million people are getting one year of impossibly low wages of 25,000. The loonatic left is loose again.
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fireofenergy Posted 2:54 pm
28 Sep 2008
You' the moron if you think that we can continue to sustain billions of people on existing energy policy and you are not if you agree with nuclear and can prove the best disposal thereof
With the (less expensive and UNLIMITED) potential of solar power towers, our problems can be solved. Oh ya, SPT's need nuclear class tubines in order to handle all that energy, (so even more of your jobs would be created!
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fireofenergy Posted 3:02 pm
28 Sep 2008
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David Bradish Posted 9:48 pm
28 Sep 2008
You guys ever going to bash Obama for supporting nuclear energy as well? Boy, I bet it must make some Grist readers upset to know that both candidates support nuclear.
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wesrolley Posted 2:23 am
29 Sep 2008
OK, I get it. Most people don't care because that is all out in the desert, like where the Indians live.
Check the statistics on breast cancer among Navajo women. Better yet, read about the research now being done at Northern Ariz. Univ.
Any congress critter who votes for nuclear needs to agree to move their families to the Window Rock or Farmington, breathe the air, drink the water, go to the hospital.
Wes Rolley
CoChair - EcoAction Committee
Green Party US
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BILL HANNAHAN Posted 7:38 am
29 Sep 2008
" I have yet to see one that includes full costing of the effects of mining.... Most people don't care because that is all out in the desert, like where the Indians live. "
Mining impact / kWh is much less than coal, and seawater uranium extraction is practical.
http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/4558#comment-413193
The Indian land has been radioactive for millions of years and erosion brings uranium deposits to the surface, blows it around and washes it into the sea. Uranium has a 4 billion year half life. Converting it to fission products will make the world a less radioactive place in a short span of geologic time, as the naturally occurring Oklo reactors did.
http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov/factsheets/doeymp0010.shtml
Things Everybody Should Know About Energy
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Delay And Deny Posted 9:06 am
29 Sep 2008
I notice you say nothing about the pointed jabs by McCain at Obama regarding his being in the employ of the ethanol lobby.
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Pangolin Posted 10:38 am
29 Sep 2008
Presumably some nation with the capability of making one of these could purchase nuclear waste from the US and France and make a killing turning waste into power.
But nobody does it. Not even in nations like China and Russia where they get to ignore public opinion.
Put the Carbon Back
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BILL HANNAHAN Posted 4:55 pm
29 Sep 2008
Spent fuel becomes less radioactive than uranium ore in 0.13 million years. See page 5 of this document, page 18 of the pdf.
http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/TRS435_web. ...
Notice that fresh spent fuel is only about 1000 times more radiotoxic than uranium ore. Large quantities of ore are scattered throughout the earths crust with no engineered containment at all and EPA believes radon, a decay product of uranium, causes 20,000 deaths per year.
http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/b1ab9f485b098972 ...
If humans provide 1000 times more reliable containment than nature, it is safer than ore right from the start and goes down from there.
The best place to put it is under deep seabed mud. That is where the uranium will ended up by erosion if we do not use it.
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/8/10/83934/8341#com ...
Breeder reactors like the integral fast reactor can generate an 80 year lifetime supply of electricity on 6 ounces of uranium and produce waste that is less toxic than ore in 300 years.
Things Everybody Should Know About Energy
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anyone Posted 6:42 am
16 Oct 2008
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1554 ...
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=8916 ...
After 60 years of massive public funding, it's time for nuclear to learn to walk on its own feet.
Btw, wind power is growing by 7,500 MW in 2008 alone (an increase of 45% compared to 2007)
http://www.awea.org/newsroom/releases/Wind_Installations_ ...
If wind only grows 12% annually for the next decade that'll lead to over 200 GW by 2020 (while the new nuclear power plants still haven't generated one single kWh).
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