Being reasonable...

...which is to say, they agree with me. As I am, of course, the epitome of wisdom and truthfulness - HEY! Stop laughing at me! - this obviously makes them quite the savants...

What? Oh, sorry. 'They' are Mark A R Kleiman and Matthew Yglesias, and they're agreeing with me on the subject of nuclear power. Matthew writes:

What I have to add here is that I think any serious effort to reduce oil use is going to need to have a nuclear component. The basic fact is that any strategy to burn less gasoline -- electric cars, the "hydrogen economy," more mass transit, some combination of the three -- is going to require the production of more electricity, either in order to directly power vehicles or else to manufacture the alternative fuel. At the same time, using less oil to make gasoline and more oil to make electricity clearly isn't going to achieve anything.

Mark agrees, and lists:

So what's wrong with nukes? Three things.

1. The idiotic regulatory process in the U.S., combined with the decentralized nature of power generation, makes it almost impossible to site a new nuke, and makes nuclear power much more expensive than it needs to be.

(snip of expansion of this point - I'm trying to stick with 'fair use' - ed.)

2. The Naderites are experts at stirring up terror among the locals.

3. Nuclear waste. This is a problem only if you think that we need to plan waste disposal that will (no, I'm not making this up) survive the end of civilization and be safe for the ignorant primitive nomads who will wander the earth 10,000 years from now. Actually, the solution isn't technically very hard.

Readers of Tacitus.org might remember that I pontificated discussed my own views on this earlier:

2). Energy independence. This is mostly a domestic issue, although having a supply of Iraqi oil to counterbalance Saudi machinations certainly won't hurt. This will be a fairly bitter domestic issue, however, because the most obvious alternate power choice has been fought, tooth and nail, for the last thirty years - but make no mistake, ladies and gentlemen, we have a choice. We can have a policy that sets the USA, however nonviolently, against the Saudis, or we can have a policy that limits the use of nuclear power in this country. We cannot have both.

The aforementioned Tacitus thread was a seriously useful corrective, by the way: I was personally expecting a good deal more resistance from the other end of the spectrum to the idea of promoting nuclear power. That should teach me to assume - no, it won't, because I'm going to do it again: I have the working hypothesis that large swathes of the Democratic rank and file are growing intolerant to the idea of even giving the time of day to Ralph Nader and his chums, given that the latter's plan of emulating the breeding cycle of the digger wasp on the Democratic Party* has become fairly obvious to most observers. I don't know whether Matthew would agree with me, but I suspect that Mark might.

Moe

*And, just to remind my fellow VRWC Death Beasts, replacing the Democrats with, say, the Greens would be a bad thing.

Comments

[Katherine]

They're unquestionably better than coal as far as environmental effects, assuming they're run well and protected from terrorists, etc. Coal plants are awful, especially the older ones.

I think they require more government subsidies than some renewables (i.e. wind), but part of that is probably regulation and siting. Then again, some of the regulation is quite necessary--I can easily believe some of it isn't but I've no idea what the % is--and I'd be a bit uneasy living near one myself.

I'm not necessarily opposed to more nuclear power as a supplement to conservation and renewables, but we're doing so little of the latter that right now that increased nuclear subsidies would be instead of renewables* and conservation, not a supplement.

I took an environmental engineering class in college, and this is how he ranked power sources in their environmental impact, from worst to best. (disclaimer: circa 1999--the technology may have changed, my prof may be weird, and I may be mis-remembering):

HIGH IMPACT
poorly-run nuclear
coal
hydroelectric (but most of the damage is done when the dam is first built; once it is, it's often best to keep it operating)

MEDIUM IMPACT
well-run nuclear
biomass (i.e. wood)
oil
solar (some heavy metals in the cells)

LOW IMPACT
natural gas
wind

most people would move solar below natural gas now, owing to increased concern about CO2 emissions & improved design of the solar cells. And I forget where things like geothermal and tidal and other more obscure or location-specific renewables went, but they were definitely in the low impact category. Ditto for fuel cells.

*uranium is not renewable, says the EPA.

[mac]

Moe, I'm always amused when VWRC-ers are surprised that mainline Democrats are moderately in favor of nuclear power. We've just got a few preconditions:

1) no government subsidy
2) tough regulations to maintain reliability and confidence, both.
3) prove that you can dispose of the crap in a reasonably responsible way
4) get over the idiotic resistance (on the left!) to recycling nuclear waste. It's gotta be done. The current model is to use some 5%-10% of available fissionable material.

Apparently, there's some very hopeful research in steam-regulated nuclear power at
Ceasar (U Maryland)

Looking back, the effective moratorium on nuclear power construction isn't the worst thing to happen. Let the French and the Russians make the mistakes and trials & errors. Now we can get it right the 3rd time around.

[Moe Lane]

"Moe, I'm always amused when VWRC-ers are surprised that mainline Democrats are moderately in favor of nuclear power."

Fair enough. :)

Moe

PS: Your point on getting it right the third time around is an interesting one, but I dunno that it was the optimal solution...