With the liberal green energy push, I'm not surprised that the new suggestion from Teh Won's administration is nuclear energy.  With cap-n-tax looking like it will never see the light of day on the Senate floor, Big O has to do something new to maintain his status as Super-Green-Man; nuclear power is as good a way as any to do that, I suppose. 

He used the SOTU to talk about nuclear energy, and now wants a whole new crop of nuclear plants (that's right - crop of plants, how cheese-tastic was that, huh?):

To back that up, he is expected to seek $54 billion in additional loan guarantees for nuclear power in his 2011 budget request to Congress on Monday, according to an administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the request has not been made public.

 White House officials say Obama's actions reflect his long support of nuclear power. But lawmakers from both parties say the speech reflected a new urgency and willingness to reach out to Republicans who have criticized Obama for not talking more about the role nuclear energy can play in slowing global warming.

 The 104 nuclear reactors in operation in 31 states provide only 20 percent of the nation's electricity. But they are responsible for 70 percent of the power from pollution-free sources, including wind, solar and hydroelectric dams.

 Several analyses of the climate bills passed by the House and under consideration in the Senate suggest that the U.S. will have to build many more plants in order to meet the 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2050 called for in the legislation. One of those studies, by the Environmental Protection Agency, assumed 180 new reactors would come on line by 2050.

Something that is being glossed over in the MSM, however, is Obama's decision to close the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste facility.  It merits a whole sentence in the article I quoted above.

This may get a little long, so if you're interested, go below the fold.

Now, as a former Nevadan, I was never a big fan of Yucca Mountain; the site isn't exactly geologically stable, it's above the ground water tables that provide water to Las Vegas, and the state of Nevada doesn't use nuclear power, so why should it be forced to house the waste of other states?  I also never got how the federal government could force Nevada to store the shit, but not force other states to allow the stuff to be transported through them.  I knew it was a losing battle, though; the state should have agreed from the get-go and asked for a metric fuckload of money.  Instead, they fought the good fight and took it up the ass in the end.  But, Big O to the rescue (rather, Dirty Harry's rescue).

Now, I found this article a few months back on Fox (surprising, huh?  the rest of the MSM ignores it, Fox has it up) about the Big O administration's decision to pull the plug on Yucca Mountain. 

The federal government agreed in 1982 to build a permanent storage site for radioactive waste and signed contracts to begin accepting it by 1998. Failure to meet that obligation has already cost the government $565 million in settlements and the Department of Energy estimates it will cost another $11 billion over the next decade in court costs and judgments.

"For every summary judgment, for every litigation, that they lose, for every settlement they have to pay, that is money coming out of the taxpayers pocket," Paige told Fox News.

Many in Congress are also angry with  Obama's decision to close Yucca Mountain. "Many a utility facility across the country is going to have to close down if we don't get a handle on it because waste is piling up in those communities with reactors," said Rep. Jerry Lewis, (R-Calif). Lawmakers like Lewis and Sen. John McCain say with no long term repository for America's nuclear waste, the re-licensing of existing plants and construction of new ones is in jeopardy, just as the nation reconsiders nuclear energy as a clean and dependable source of electricity.

In the meantime, the nation's utilities have asked the federal government to suspend the nuclear waste disposal tax -- now running about $750 million a year -- and may want a refund for the money already spent on the now failed yucca facility. So far, officials representing the department of energy have said no.

Here's the bottom line: nuclear waste has to go somewhere.  You can't wave a magic fucking wand and have that shit just vanish into thin air; it doesn't work like that.  Nuclear waste is nasty, nasty shit, and we've spent fuckloads of money on building a place to store it - namely, Yucca Mountain.  Now, all of a sudden, Pretty Pretty Princess needs to make good on a deal with Dingy Harry, and just so happens to come through on that promise within months of announcing that, since the Senate isn't going to let them tax our energy bills into oblivion, it's time to make even more of this nasty waste.

Meanwhile, we're continuing to tax places to support the defunct facility - good plan, jackass.  And, when those evil utility companies have the gall to say, "Look, dude, the government failed on this one, can we have our money back?" the DoE says, "Fuck off."

This is stupid, stupid mismanagement at best.  It continues to show off Obama's naivete, and his complete and utter lack of regard for the real world.  You can't make more nuclear plants when you've just gotten rid of our only venue for storing nuclear waste.  It's fucking dumbfuckery. 

Not that I expect anything more from Teh Won and his policies.

Posted by: Ember at 09:55 PM | Comments (16) | Add Comment
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