Energy 104-O'Reilly on Nuclear Power

O'Reilly said on his show, Tuesday, December 8, 2009 that "we [USA] have not advanced nuclear power in this country."


I'm not sure if he meant "politically" or "technically" or something else.

Politically O'Reilly is correct. President Carter halted research and development on new nuclear technology when he was in office. We are still in the Carter "dark-ages." We have not built a new nuclear power plant in the US in decades. We have no nuclear reprocessing capability in the US, and we have no active safe nuclear waste storage facility in the US. We have a cumbersome, slow, and expensive permitting process which adds years to the construction of nuclear facilities.

To President Bush's credit, he tried to open the nuclear waste storage facility at Yucca Mountain, NV. But President Obama has indicated his intention to close the Yucca Mountain facility, http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=f2cbe309-802a-23ad-4925-643845f220b5. President Bush began to streamline the permit process at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but President Obama put all the roadblocks back into place upon taking office.

Technically, O'Reilly is dead wrong. The US is on par with the rest of the world. We have the capability to build new nuclear power plants, although the number of trained nuclear professionals in the US is dwindling. And the longer we delay in restarting a comprehensive nuclear program, the fewer technical resources we will have in this country.

The US taxpayer has been "taxed" for this facility for many years, and even thought President Obama has decided not to open Yucca Mountain, the tax is still being levied.

By changing some political decisions, nuclear power could represent nearly all of the US energy needs in less than 20 years (see France for proof). Every year of political delay moves that possibility out years.

Nuclear power is a zero carbon energy source, and we would never run out of nuclear energy. Nuclear plants work when the wind isn't blowing, and when the sun isn't shinning. The latter energy sources will always be secondary or backup energy; never our primary source of energy. Using nuclear power in the US combined with developing our on fossil fuel resources (natural gas, and off-shore and Alaskan oil) would make us independent of foreign oil.