In the wake of yesterday's front page story in the Wall Street Journal on the French commercial nuclear energy program, Pat Cleary over at the NAM Blog had this to say:
Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Power, Electricity, Environment, Energy, France, Manufacturing
Here in the US, it's a different story. We remain hamstrung by some pretty lousy policy choices we've made on energy. The enviros have all but achieved a moratorium on nuclear plants here. They don't want us to drill for oil, or for natural gas, or to mine -- or burn -- coal either, by the way. And so we sit and watch our energy prices soar while our competitors can only look at us and scratch their heads. We are the only country that restricts access to its own natural resources. Who else among our competitors would be dumb enough to do that?Not China, Japan, Korea or Taiwan, that's for sure.
Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Power, Electricity, Environment, Energy, France, Manufacturing
Comments
Right now the U.S. imports about 15% of its gas consumption. 85% is from Canada. Our source is stable and we don't feel the gas markets from around the world.
That's projected to change over the next 25 years. Canada gas supply will slow down quite a bit and our LNG imports are expected to rocket. Because of the LNG imports, the U.S. will be subject to much more of the world gas market and have to compete with Japan, China and India. It will be a disadvantage for the U.S. because we'll have to pay much more transportation costs.
Check out EIA's AEO 2006 Figure 74 chart (pdf):
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/
aeo/pdf/trend_4.pdf
Natural gas could become the next oil for the U.S.
I am sure there are a few more items that I missed, but they are never left out. Is there a reason why the MSM is dying on the vine, is it radiation damage, or is it that the factual content of what they report is always overwhelmed by the pre-digested prejudice and the simple minded fill in the mad-libs stories.
Profitable government financed and owned trains that swosh past in 320 km/h.
Byebye long range car and air voyages, bye bye oil consumption.
Another thing for the US to emulate.
Does anyone believe the US net of superhighways would ever have been built without massive government support?
Hardly.
If I were president (and had congress on a tight leash etc etc all damn checks and balances) I would create a government owned power company (let's call it American Energy) and order a batch of 50 new nuclear reactors.
Then I'd sell those reactors to private power companies (expensively) and use the profits to give the US a useful centrally managed continental power grid. One that does not break down spectacularily all the time like the current which is in deep disrepair.
If I haven't yet been burned at the stake by the prophets of neoliberalism I'd spend a few hundred billion dollars to build TGV across the whole US and connect all major cities (hey, it's just the cost for a few months in Iraq anyways).
Then I'd order 200 more reactors.
Taxes are too low in the US anyways. ;)
The Italians would be better off too, since they would not have to suffer the humiliation of buying so much of their electricity from France.