i wonder how many of their proposed 100 nuclear power plants are located in red states.

Republicans' "long-awaited" energy plan? "Conspicuously absent" would have been closer to the mark.

In their WSJ editorial, they call for "safe storage" of nuclear waste and want the NRC "to finish its review of a national repository without political interference".

Yeah, that'll happen as long as Congress exists.

I am not afraid of their plan. Some of their proposals, like the 100 new nukes by 2029, are worth considering. Coal is a very cheap commodity. If somebody can figure out how to actually sequester the carbon it emits, hurray for them.

The notion that we shouldn't be concerned about global warming, however, is absurd. We just can't compartmentalized energy independence from other related issues.

Instead of heaping scorn we ought to be making strong arguments for and against.

Yet their proposals were also designed as a critique to Democratic cap-and-trade proposals, which the GOP believes are too expensive and would essentially create a national "energy tax."

The US is by far the most energy-gluttonous nation on earth, primarily because there are absolutely no perceivable penalties for burning through oil and coal like there's a never-ending supply. Meanwhile, the US is by far the largest polluter on earth, primarily because there are scant few penalties for dumping neurotoxins and filth into every waterway and the air.

Because US industries possess no real social conscience [only a limited PR version that involves planting a tree here, giving a C-note to the United Way there] I can see no legitimate argument against an "energy tax." Despite the belief the "End Times" will rescue all the good people before we run out of fuel or choke on its exhaust, the health, economic viability and security of our nation depends upon tough forward-thinking policies that ask all businesses to make sacrifices for the greater good. Since they won't do it voluntarily, I say go ahead and point the tax cannon at them. And fire away!

> If Republicans want to play a more constructive
> policy role, they're going to have to do better
> than this.

If they want to be portrayed as proponents of the policies of George W Bush, who are we to argue?

now if they had proposed creating energy by using the heat generated from their huffing and puffing..

i could have supported that...

Carbon sequestration is a necessity in and of itself. Even the most optimistic CO2 scenarios have increases with serious climate impacts; it's hard to imagine ameliorating them without actually removing carbon.

The Republican plan promises.....and speed up the development of alternative fuels, including controversial carbon-capture and sequestration technology.

the Republican bill specifically says that the "impact" of global warming "shall not be considered for any purpose in the implementation" of their energy plan.

Hmmm.... anybody see a problem with this? Why capture carbon if you don't believe it's a problem?

Instead of heaping scorn we ought to be making strong arguments for and against.
Posted by: Ron Byers

Unfortunately, with republicans it's always a matter of degrees. I guarantee if republicans were in control, this part about Arctic and offshore drilling would be heavily pushed, nuclear would turn into a luck warm inclination, and "development of alternative fuels, including controversial carbon-capture and sequestration technology" would be non-existent. Look at Bush 43 policies if you want to see into the republican energy future.

lukewarm not luck warm - fixed

Said it before, I'll say it again: being a Republlican is a mental disorder. In this case, it's being a drooling moron.

The Republican party's platform is to destruct America by ruining energy, refusing to admit to climate change,unending wars for power and greed and to destroy other than themselves.

Since conservatives believe global warming does not exist, they see nothing wrong with the GOP's energy plan. Making the 2010 and 2012 elections in part a referendum on global warming is a gamble the Republicans are more than willing to take. This no doubt causes scientists who study climate change to shudder, but hey, that's democracy.

If Republicans want to play a more constructive policy role, they're going to have to do better than this.

But they don't and they can't.

Ron Byers wrote: "Some of their proposals, like the 100 new nukes by 2029, are worth considering."

Worth considering and rejecting, unless you want to squander billions of dollars on the most expensive and least effective technology for reducing CO2 emissions from the generation of electricity. Which, incidentally, requires creating, transporting and indefinitely storing massive amounts of the most toxic substances known to science, which incidentally can also be easily converted into the most destructive weapons known to science.

matt wrote: "Carbon sequestration is a necessity in and of itself."

To draw down the already dangerous anthropogenic excess of CO2 by sequestering carbon into soils and forests, yes. As a fraudulent fig leaf to justify continued burning of coal, and building more "CCS ready" coal fired power plants (without actual CCS technology), no.

Like all Republican proposals, this one is thoroughly and blatantly dishonest, and has nothing to do with solving the actual problems at hand, and everything to do with enriching the Republicans' financial backers at public expense.

Nukes? More fossil fuels? Drill, baby drill? Fuggedabout global warming?

The "plan" sounds like an effort to hurry on the end times.

FTW is a policy?

"The Republican plan promises to bring 100 new nuclear reactors online by 2029"

Rev up the NIMBYs. Not to mention THE most expensive method of generating electricity. Talk about an energy tax.

"permit oil exploration in offshore and Arctic areas"

MORE DRILLING WILL NOT CHANGE GAS PRICES

A Department of Energy study from months ago found that drilling in ANWR and the outer continental shelf would POTENTIALLY lower the price of a gallon of gas by about two cents, but it would take until the year 2025:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/servicerpt/anwr/pdf/sroiaf(2008)03.pdf

"speed up the development of alternative fuels, including controversial carbon-capture and sequestration technology."

Technology that not only does not exist, if it ever does exist, it will likely be 20 years or more away. Far too late to have any beneficial effect.

The Giant Ostrich Party.

Stick their heads in the sand and ignore everything around them, except their ideology.

As long as the Rethugs command unchallenged media attention, and sell their fantastical anti-scientific reality to a credulous and scientifically illiterate audience, we will be besieged by such obvious nonsense as their so-called energy policy.

As long as there is one ton of coal or one barrel of oil in the ground, and there's money to be made exploiting it, the Rethugs will be behind the damage burning them does.

Build 100 nukes? Typical Republican pie in the sky technology will save us schtick. Build 10 nukes and prove they are practical would be more realistic.

For that matter, if one is not considering climate change (which they claim they are not), why would you build anything except coal plants?

The Europeans (especially the French) have quietly advanced nuclear energy greatly. The legitimate fears surrounding the first generation nukes are much diminished. The high construction costs associated with the first generation nukes have also been addressed. Standardization is the key to cost control. Costs can be held in check if we don't build a new generation of one off experiments. The real problem with nuclear energy is waste disposal. It might prove impossible, but nuclear energy is still worth a close look.

I support the movement to use more nuclear power generation. Most of the rest of the GOP energy agenda sucks.

Nuclear power gets us to the electric age sooner with less economic impact. Other alternative electric power sources will come along. But the needed energy storage technology is lagging.

Ron Byers wrote: "The Europeans (especially the French) have quietly advanced nuclear energy greatly. The legitimate fears surrounding the first generation nukes are much diminished. The high construction costs associated with the first generation nukes have also been addressed."

The new French AREVA reactor under construction at Olkiluoto in Finland is at least 50 percent (billions of dollars) over budget and years behind schedule, and the subject of lawsuits between Finnish authorities and AREVA.

Construction of this "new generation" power plant began in 2005 and it was supposed to go online this year. AREVA now says that it will be at least 2012 before it can go online, and indeed will no longer commit to any specific date for it to go online.

AREVA says that the cost of a new reactor today would be $8 Billion -- twice the original proposed cost of the Finland reactor.

According to the New York Times, the new AREVA reactor already has safety issues as well: "Serious problems first arose over the vast concrete base slab for the foundation of the reactor building, which the country’s Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority found too porous and prone to corrosion. Since then, the authority has blamed Areva for allowing inexperienced subcontractors to drill holes in the wrong places on a vast steel container that seals the reactor."

An identical reactor under construction in Flamanville, France is also behind schedule and over budget -- and also has safety issues: "nuclear safety inspectors in France have found cracks in the concrete base and steel reinforcements in the wrong places at the site in Flamanville. They also have warned Électricité de France, the utility building the reactor, that welders working on the steel container were not properly qualified."

These are precisely the reactor designs that the industry claimed would be faster and cheaper to build, as well as safer.

With regard to global warming, the main problem with nuclear power is that it is simply not possible to build enough nuclear power plants, fast enough to have any significant impact on reducing CO2 emissions from fossil fuels in the time frame in which that needs to happen.

Meanwhile the resources that would be needed to build nuclear power plants would be far more effectively spent on building up wind and solar electricity generation, and of course on efficiency technologies. Because of these opportunity costs, spending resources on expanding nuclear power hinders, rather than helps, the effort to reduce CO2 emissions from electricity generation.

Renewables and efficiency can do the job faster, cheaper and better -- and with none of the very serious problems and dangers of nuclear power. Nuclear is an expensive, ineffective and dangerous boondoggle.

George wrote: "Nuclear power gets us to the electric age sooner with less economic impact. Other alternative electric power sources will come along. But the needed energy storage technology is lagging."

This is exactly backwards.

Wind, solar, geothermal and biomass electricity generation can be built up faster and cheaper than nuclear power, by far. Wind and solar are growing at record-breaking, double-digit rates every year, and attracting tens of billions of dollars of private venture capital every year. Wind power accounted for 42 percent of all new electricity generation in the USA in 2008, and within a couple of years will account for the majority of all new electrical generation capacity. Hundreds of gigawatts of utility-scale concentrating solar thermal power plants are contracted and/or under construction. Renewables are booming.

Meanwhile, investors are not interested in nuclear power because it is a proven economic failure -- unless of course, the taxpayers and ratepayers are forced to absorb all the costs and all the risks up front. At present, there are not even enough new nuclear power plants under construction worldwide to replace existing, aging power plants that are nearing the end of their lives and due to be shut down and decommissioned.

As for energy storage, I suggest you read up on the technology. It is not "lagging". Multiple energy storage technologies are already available, both for centralized utility-scale application and for distributed, residential and commercial applications. These include not only batteries and fuel cells, but flywheels and compressed air and pumped hydro. Of particular interest is the use of thermal storage with concentrating solar thermal power plants. It is much cheaper and easier and more efficient to store energy as heat than to store it in chemical batteries. Concentrating solar thermal power plants with thermal storage are 24x7 baseload power.

Nor is storage as important as some suggest. Multiple studies in Europe and the USA have demonstrated that a diversified, integrated regional portfolio of renewable energy sources, including wind, solar, geothermal, biomass and hydro, can provide 24x7 baseload generation that is at least as reliable as coal or nuclear.

I support the movement to use more nuclear power generation.

Okay -- as long as we bury the waste in your backyard.

Deal?

As I understand it the Fins have hired novices to build the Olkiluoto plant. They have screwed things up royally.

Look, there is simply no comparison between the number of people injured and killed as a result of pollution from traditional coal plants and the number killed or injured by nukes of comparable output. Coal powered generators are far more destructive than nuclear. Their belches just don't make the news. Given the reality the sun doesn't shine 24 hours a day and the wind doesn't always blow on cue, we are going to have to maintain some non-green power generation for the foreseeable future. To rule out nuclear because of some still fresh memory of battles against first generation plants fought and won in our youth is to condemn hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, to premature death.

Animist, you clearly have made up your mind for all time. You are not alone. Millions rightly opposed the old nukes, me included, but that was back in the days before we understood the very real costs of coal. Now we know better. We owe it to our kids and to ourselves to propose better solutions. Just saying "HELL NO" might feel good, but it doesn't really solve the problem.

Maybe our children don't have a future until our generation has died and they can look afresh for solutions free of our prejudice.

By the way, I have read at least some of the literature. The kinds of storage solutions proposed (superheated salts etc) bring their own industrial scale hazards. Most utilities will opt for king coal if given a choice.

Actually the nuclear proposals of the Republican energy plans are things I support.

As I understand it, they want the NRC to streamline the approval process for several off the shelf nuclear power plant designs. I think that makes sense.

And they want a commission to recommend a plan for storage of nuclear waste that has some political authority to overcome NIMBY objections.

As I understand it, I think both those proposals are sound.

I know it would only take a handful of Republican votes for the energy bill to get those provisions included. Probably not likely.

In general, the energy proposal does seem like coherent public policy. It is not ridiculous like a budget with no numbers. So, I give thanks just for Republicans trying to be constructive.

@mark

The first commenter wonders how many of the nuclear power plants would be built in the red states.

Most of them probably. In the south, NIMBY objections to nuclear power are weakest. Many southern towns look at a nuclear power plant and see economic development rather than environmental hazard.

Ron Byers:

"Given the reality the sun doesn't shine 24 hours a day and the wind doesn't always blow on cue, we are going to have to maintain some non-green power generation for the foreseeable future."

You have made good points, although I disagree that nuclear is the way to go, given long start-up times and the problem of waste disposal.

Your point above is weak. True, sun isn't always shining and wind is always blowing. In a particular area. However, the sun DOES shine 24/7, just on different places at different times. Same with wind blowing.

Storage capabilities are improving all the time.

We already have a huge national electrical grid. Plug in the solar- and wind-generating plants. Continue with hydro. Etc. So, while one area is dark or experiencing little or no wind, another area is light and/or getting lots of wind. Spread the excess generation in one area to another which is not generating at the moment, and vice-versa. The grid is already in place.

We will not continue to have ONE source of power as in the past. It will be a mix, but I believe that the mix can work. I'm just not convinced that nuclear is the way to go.

Ron Byers wrote: "As I understand it the Fins have hired novices to build the Olkiluoto plant. They have screwed things up royally."

The French state-run company AREVA is building the plant, not "novices" hired by the Fins. The identical AREVA-designed nuclear power plant being built by the French in France is mired in similar delays and cost overruns and is encountering similar problems with safety as well.

Ron Byers wrote: "Look, there is simply no comparison between the number of people injured and killed as a result of pollution from traditional coal plants and the number killed or injured by nukes of comparable output."

Since I advocate replacing coal with wind and solar, I don't see the relevance of your point, even if it is true.

Ron Byers wrote: "Given the reality the sun doesn't shine 24 hours a day and the wind doesn't always blow on cue, we are going to have to maintain some non-green power generation for the foreseeable future."

As I wrote above and you either missed or ignored, multiple studies have shown that a diversified regional portfolio of renewable electricity generation, including wind, solar (photovoltaic and/or concentrating solar thermal), geothermal, biomass and hydro can provide 24x7 baseload power that is at least as reliable as coal or nuclear -- without storage. When readily available storage technologies -- batteries, fuel cells, compressed air, flywheels, thermal storage -- are added to such a system, the problem of intermittency basically goes away.

Ron Byers wrote: "To rule out nuclear because of some still fresh memory of battles against first generation plants fought and won in our youth is to condemn hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, to premature death."

That's absurd on two counts.

First, I am not ruling out nuclear power because of memories of the glorious antinuclear battles of youth. Indeed, if I didn't know from reading your comments on this site over a period of time that you are generally a serious and respectful person, I would think that you were saying that as a gratuitous insult.

I am ruling out nuclear power as a useful solution to the problem of global warming because nuclear power is not a useful solution to the problem of global warming.

The lifecycle CO2 emissions from nuclear power plants -- including the mining, processing and transport of fuel and the construction and (enormously expensive) decommissioning of the power plants -- is comparable to that of natual gas fired electricity generation. That's better than coal, true, but not "carbon-free". And in the decades while the nuclear power plants are being built, their construction would be a substantial contributor of CO2 -- for years before they generated a single watt of electricity. And it is simply not possible to build enough nuclear power plants fast enough to make a significant reduction of CO2 emissions from electricity generation within the time frame needed.

A recently updated 2003 MIT study of the future of nuclear power -- a study which advocated a large expansion of nuclear power -- proposed tripling the number of nuclear power plants worldwide by 2050, just to keep nuclear power's share of electricity generation constant, not even to increase it.

Doubling the number of nuclear power plants in the US by 2029 as the Republicans propose isn't going to have a significant impact on the CO2 problem. (Keep in mind that many existing nuclear power plants are aging and their operational life cannot be safely extended indefinitely; some of the Republicans' 100 new power plants will be to replace existing plants that are decommissioned.) We would need a massive worldwide program to far more than triple the number of nuclear power plants worldwide.

Second, your suggestion that not expanding nuclear power will "condemn hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, to premature death" is, with all due respect, ridiculous. In fact, as I consider how to respond to that I have to admit I don't know what you are even talking about. Death from what? Global warming? Even a large expansion of nuclear power won't change the progress of global warming significantly. Death from the toxic pollution of coal? I'm not advocating coal -- I advocate rapidly phasing out coal and replacing it with wind and solar.

And again, my principle objection to an expansion of nuclear power is not its very real dangers and risks, but the fact that it is a costly, time-consuming and ineffective strategy for replacing coal and reducing CO2 emissions from electricity generation, that will hinder rather than help those efforts by sucking up precious resources that would be FAR more effectively used to rapidly deploy today's existing wind, solar, geothermal, biomass and efficiency technologies.

So where you get that hyperbolic nonsense from, I don't know.