On Al Gore and the Future of Nuclear Energy

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore is in Australia promoting his documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. Over at the World Nuclear Organization blog, Ian Hore-Lacy has some dissenting thoughts.

For more on the nuclear energy debate in Australia, click here.

Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Power, Energy, Technology, Environment, Electricity, GHG, Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth, Australia

Comments

Brian Mays said…

Hmm ... are these reporters recycling old stories and quotes (sound bites?) or is Gore just reading from the same cue card over and over?

"Nuclear power plants are the costliest to build and they take the longest time and at present they come in only one size — extra large."

It seems to me that I've heard these words before.

Wait! News flash! The situation has become more serious: apparently "at stake is nothing less than the survival of human civilisation!"

Well, grand hyperbole aside, to read this I would think the we could use a few more "extra large," emission-free 1000 MW, 1500 MW, and 1600 MW nuclear power plants. Don't you think?

Costly, you say? Well, exactly how much is "human civilisation" worth to you?

That's what's so sad about Gore. I realize that he's nothing but a politician, playing political games, but he's not even a good politician. He's not dynamic, he's stiff, he uses ridiculous, overblown rhetoric ("moral issue" and whatnot), and he leaves no room for compromise. His position on nuclear — which should be clear to anyone reading this article from Australia is in the "anti" camp — is just another example of his pathetic environmentalist hogwash, taken straight off of the scripts of various Green Left organizations.

Unless he starts promoting some real solutions — something other than "join Kyoto," which will accomplish almost nothing, since many countries who have signed the treaty are not going to meet their commitments — then he has done nothing. Well, I suppose if you have a vested interest in selling solar panels or Toyota Prius cars, then he has done something for you, but other than that ... ?

November 21, 2006 at 6:11 PM

Fluor Invests in NuScale

You know, it’s kind of sad that no one is willing to invest in nuclear energy anymore. Wait, what? NuScale Power celebrated the news of its company-saving $30 million investment from Fluor Corp. Thursday morning with a press conference in Washington, D.C. Fluor is a design, engineering and construction company involved with some 20 plants in the 70s and 80s, but it has not held interest in a nuclear energy company until now. Fluor, which has deep roots in the nuclear industry, is betting big on small-scale nuclear energy with its NuScale investment. "It's become a serious contender in the last decade or so," John Hopkins, [Fluor’s group president in charge of new ventures], said. And that brings us to NuScale, which had run into some dark days – maybe not as dark as, say, Solyndra, but dire enough : Earlier this year, the Securities Exchange Commission filed an action against NuScale's lead investor, The Michael Kenwood Group. The firm "misap

An Ohio School Board Is Working to Save Nuclear Plants

Ohio faces a decision soon about its two nuclear reactors, Davis-Besse and Perry, and on Wednesday, neighbors of one of those plants issued a cry for help. The reactors’ problem is that the price of electricity they sell on the high-voltage grid is depressed, mostly because of a surplus of natural gas. And the reactors do not get any revenue for the other benefits they provide. Some of those benefits are regional – emissions-free electricity, reliability with months of fuel on-site, and diversity in case of problems or price spikes with gas or coal, state and federal payroll taxes, and national economic stimulus as the plants buy fuel, supplies and services. Some of the benefits are highly localized, including employment and property taxes. One locality is already feeling the pinch: Oak Harbor on Lake Erie, home to Davis-Besse. The town has a middle school in a building that is 106 years old, and an elementary school from the 1950s, and on May 2 was scheduled to have a referendu

Wednesday Update

From NEI’s Japan micro-site: NRC, Industry Concur on Many Post-Fukushima Actions Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues • There is a “great deal of alignment” between the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the industry on initial steps to take at America’s nuclear energy facilities in response to the nuclear accident in Japan, Charles Pardee, the chief operating officer of Exelon Generation Co., said at an agency briefing today. The briefing gave stakeholders an opportunity to discuss staff recommendations for near-term actions the agency may take at U.S. facilities. PowerPoint slides from the meeting are on the NRC website. • The International Atomic Energy Agency board has approved a plan that calls for inspectors to evaluate reactor safety at nuclear energy facilities every three years. Governments may opt out of having their country’s facilities inspected. Also approved were plans to maintain a rapid response team of experts ready to assist facility operators recoverin

NEI Nuclear Notes

Search This Blog