<![CDATA[Grist - Comment Feed for Ohio officials tout plans for new nuclear power plant]]> Grist Comment Feed en Comment #1 by randino http://www.grist.org/article/2009-06-18-ohio-piketon-nuclear-plant/ Fri, 19 Jun 2009 04:13:16 -0700 http://www.grist.org/article/2009-06-18-ohio-piketon-nuclear-plant/1 Molly Ivins once said that Texas was the incubator for bad public policy.  Well, Ohio is not far behind when it comes to bad environmental policy.  The State House removed the ability of local governments to regulate gas wells, the results are coming in and the only people who are smiling are the drillers.  The State House is now considering throwing open the gates of our state parks to drillers just to make sure that there is not a square foot of the state that is not a free fire zone for the natural gas industry. Now this crap in Piketon.  Ohio is not a state.  It is a museum.  All our calendars are wrong. It is totally run by the utilities and the coal industry. Ohio - at the cutting edge of the past.

Randy Cunningham  Cleveland, OH

]]> Molly Ivins once said that Texas was the incubator for bad public policy.  Well, Ohio is not far behind when it comes to bad environmental policy.  The State House removed the ability of local governments to regulate gas wells, the results are coming in and the only people who are smiling are the drillers.  The State House is now considering throwing open the gates of our state parks to drillers just to make sure that there is not a square foot of the state that is not a free fire zone for the natural gas industry. Now this crap in Piketon.  Ohio is not a state.  It is a museum.  All our calendars are wrong. It is totally run by the utilities and the coal industry. Ohio - at the cutting edge of the past.

Randy Cunningham  Cleveland, OH

]]> Comment #2 by Cato http://www.grist.org/article/2009-06-18-ohio-piketon-nuclear-plant/ Fri, 19 Jun 2009 11:45:14 -0700 http://www.grist.org/article/2009-06-18-ohio-piketon-nuclear-plant/2 Well, if relatively clean burning natural gas offends people like Randy, perhaps he should welcome the opportunity to expand domestic nuclear power generation in Ohio.  We can't have it both ways, people.  Nuclear power is the cleanest and most compact source of high output energy known to our science. And it produces zero carbon emissions.   You'll never get the gigawattage we need to power our nation from wind or solar alone---the environmental lobby will never allow the permits to get approved for a wind or solar powered economy on the scale you'd be talking about. You can't even get one lousy wind farm approved off Hyannis Port thanks to Ted kennedy.

More to the point, Hyperion has developed a completely self-contained nuclear power generator that is about the size of a tool shed and can power 25,000 homes for 7 years leaving only a single piece of nuclear waste the size of a football.  It's essentially a nuclear battery. It should be in mass production  by 2015. It holds great promise to reduce coal combustion for baseload power generation. 

Meanwhile, we'll still need fossil fuels for decades to come. Until you develope a hydrogen powered jet plane or a solar powered tractor trailer truck, we're stuck with the usual suspects for energy. And as such, I prefer we utlize more of America's own resources for our energy and not those of some foreign dictator who's looking to fund his nuclear weapons program with our cash. So, let's wise up. This kneejerk negativism towards using our own resources is extremely hypocritical when you have an oil import bill the size of America's.  We apparently don't have any hangups at all about burning vast qualitities of foreign oil.  But heaven help us if we try to use our own people and natural resources to fuel our country's enbergy needs. 

More is the pity.

 

Cato

]]> Well, if relatively clean burning natural gas offends people like Randy, perhaps he should welcome the opportunity to expand domestic nuclear power generation in Ohio.  We can't have it both ways, people.  Nuclear power is the cleanest and most compact source of high output energy known to our science. And it produces zero carbon emissions.   You'll never get the gigawattage we need to power our nation from wind or solar alone---the environmental lobby will never allow the permits to get approved for a wind or solar powered economy on the scale you'd be talking about. You can't even get one lousy wind farm approved off Hyannis Port thanks to Ted kennedy.

More to the point, Hyperion has developed a completely self-contained nuclear power generator that is about the size of a tool shed and can power 25,000 homes for 7 years leaving only a single piece of nuclear waste the size of a football.  It's essentially a nuclear battery. It should be in mass production  by 2015. It holds great promise to reduce coal combustion for baseload power generation. 

Meanwhile, we'll still need fossil fuels for decades to come. Until you develope a hydrogen powered jet plane or a solar powered tractor trailer truck, we're stuck with the usual suspects for energy. And as such, I prefer we utlize more of America's own resources for our energy and not those of some foreign dictator who's looking to fund his nuclear weapons program with our cash. So, let's wise up. This kneejerk negativism towards using our own resources is extremely hypocritical when you have an oil import bill the size of America's.  We apparently don't have any hangups at all about burning vast qualitities of foreign oil.  But heaven help us if we try to use our own people and natural resources to fuel our country's enbergy needs. 

More is the pity.

 

Cato

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