Will Nuclear Power Be Part Of The Solution?

Posted on September 15, 2009 by Chuck Becker

For years now, environmentalists (and most Democrats) have been lauding the virtues of wind power and solar power as the answer to America’s clean energy problem while refusing to even consider the nuclear (or nucular, depending on your party) option. Never mind that the wind appears to be slowing down and solar energy companies are failing like all other businesses.

Honest discussion of nuclear power on the political front has been nonexistent. Lamar Alexander initiated his 100-new-nuclear-facilities-in-20-years campaign and was quickly relegated to crackpot-of-the-month status. Sometime shortly after August 23, 2009, that seems to have changed. 

On that morning, John McCain appeared on This Week. McCain has long been a proponent of nuclear energy but, since the presidential campaign, he has been fairly quiet on the topic. George Stephanopoulos asked him if nuclear energy should be considered as part of the energy solution. Mr. McCain’s response was that "we can't get there from here" without nuclear power and he added:

We have got to build 100 nuclear power plants in the next 20 years. We can do that. Right now, the administration’s position is against storage and they’re against recycling of spent nuclear fuel. I can’t support a genuine reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, unless nuclear power is a key part of it.

There are a lot of Republicans that the Democrats can ignore, but John McCain isn't one of them.  As is true in most negotiations, it was not a good idea for Democrats (at the insistence of the most vocal environmentalists) to simple take nuclear power off the table.  So when McCain publicly advocated the need for a nuclear discussion, it would have been a mistake to continue to ignore the call.

And they didn’t.

Barbara Boxer, Chair of the Senate’s Committee on Environment and Public Works, has now said “there will be a nuclear title in the bill.” She has not elaborated on the comment yet, but one should expect at least a serious discussion of the nuclear option in the near future. 

Nuclear power has a lot of problems, but so do the alternatives. There is no question that solar and wind power will be part of the discussion for a long time to come.  But taking any option off of the table, particularly to appease an extreme constituency, is a mistake for either party. And give credit where credit is due -- to McCain for his advocacy and to Boxer for listening. It isn’t exactly bi-partisanship at work, but at least it’s a dialog. Now if we can all just agree on how to pronounce it . . . .

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Game Theory and the Environment: We All Want To Win

Posted on June 29, 2009 by Chuck Becker

Bipartisan environmental legislation has long been an oxymoron.  This isn't surprising considering how the parties approach the issues.  However, I think it is safe to say that competition knows no political party. That is, whether we admit it to ourselves or not, we all want to win. Since a competitive spirit is a bipartisan concept, why couldn’t Congress learn to use it to its advantage?


I put this question out there because of a recent post in the Wall Street Journal, “Vroom per Gallon: Toyota Prius vs. VW Clean Diesel.” It is an interesting piece about the relative merits of the Toyota Prius and the VW Jetta TDI Clean Diesel. When I finished the article, I was unimpressed with either car (no matter how you paint boring, it’s still boring), but one comment made by the author, Ana Campoy, did catch my attention. Ana said that the Prius has a monitor that tracks energy use and “makes a game out of getting the highest mileage.” She noted that she watches the diagram whenever she drives and that she and her husband have been “trying to beat our personal best for months: an average of 49 MPG.”  She called it the Prius Effect.


I got to thinking about those statements and I realized that she was right. Not too long ago I bought a car that has the ability to monitor the mileage, and now I do so on a constant basis.   Until I bought that car, the concept of miles per gallon was purely theoretical. Certainly I wanted to save gallons because it meant saving money. Did I really change my driving habits to do so? Not for a minute.  But put a gauge in front of me that can be manipulated to go to a higher number if I’m really “good” at driving, and suddenly I’m all about winning . . . uh, I mean, economy. I think you would be too. And more importantly, I think you would be whether you are a Democrat or a Republican.

I should note that, perhaps not surprisingly, my attention to the gauge has made a difference.  After six months, my average has gone up 2 mpg.  Obviously, if that had been a change from 46 to 48 mpg it would have been more impressive than, say, 17 to 19 mpg.  Still, as far as the environment is concerned, the relative change is significant. Multiply this by a few million cars and you've put a big dent in the air pollution problem. 


The age old maxim “out of sight, out of mind,” is one that our elected representatives should consider. If they want to increase car mileage, which depends to a significant degree on driving habits, then don’t hide the information where it is out of sight.  Maybe Congress could interfere a lot less, and still do a lot more, if it considered passing a law that required these kind of monitors.  Why not harness that competitive spirit that knows no party line?

I’ll let someone else crunch the numbers, but I would guess that a fairly modest expense could result in a substantial increase in actual miles per gallon without getting into the political mess of this trading caps thing.  I can just see the new slogan at General Motors -- GM: You Can Watch The Savings!


 

 

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