Gory Business

Have you seen former Vice President Al Gore on television lately?  He spoke before Congress Energy and Commerce Committee today, and sparred with Sen. Jim Inhofe in an exchange that was pretty entertaining, about Global Warming.  I am big fan of Al Gore, namely for standing up for his beliefs and using his celebrity power to bring such a critical issue into the light, forcing us to make tough, unpopular decisions.  I also believe in taking action by whatever means necessary, including wind power, solar power, hydropower, hybrid vehicles, and so on and so forth.  However, I must fault him at the same time for turning a blind eye to something I have personally been force-fed for the last year-and-a-half in my occupation:  Nuclear Power.

I understand the safety concerns but don’t want to address the ins-and-outs of reactor protection, operational safety, and the technologies we employ today that separates it from the era of accident.  It’s boring if you don’t care about all of that.  What I want to do is bring up some of the numbers addressed today in Congress to convey the potential and address the advantages of the nuclear power capability we already possess.  It simply needs to be mobilized.

If you saw Al Gore’s movie, you will recall a scene near the end with a line graph that included wedges showing how we can reduce our carbon dioxide output by taking simple little steps.  This graph showed how these emissions could stabilize in fifty years.  Not one of the fifteen wedges represented the nuclear energy possibilities.  One of the wedges was wind and solar power, though.  I’d like to state a couple of facts concerning this. 

A conservative estimate for the increase in electrical energy demand by 2030 is forty percent, or 300,000 megawatts.  This was discussed today by Al Gore and Dennis Hastert in the House Committee, and is based on numbers provided by the Energy Information Administration.  To fill these needs with wind power would require a 50-fold expansion of demands.  In other words, and easier to picture in my mind, is a land demand of 74 million acres, roughly the size of Wyoming.  To fill the same wedge with photovoltaic electricity production would require a 700-fold demand; roughly the area of New Jersey.

The basic outcome to draw from these numbers is that these types of energy supplements will not last, and we will need something else to meet these demands.  More than likely, these demands will initially be met by advanced coal-fired plants, burning up more fossil fuels.  Although he is not avidly opposed to nuclear energy, there are two major arguments Al Gore addressed in Congress today against nuclear power plant construction; cost and time.  However, according to the Nuclear Energy Institution, the construction of coal-fired power plants costs about the same to build as nuclear power plants yielding the same output to the electric grid.  Another argument against nuclear power plants is that they take too long to build; these plants, however, can be built from the ground up in forty-eight months.  Asian companies have proven this.  The future will bring stricter demands on the emissions coal-fired plants, driving their cost of production up and up in order to cap the greenhouse gases released, which is what I’m talking about in the first place. 

With nuclear energy, there are no greenhouse gas emissions; no carbon dioxide being pooped out into the atmosphere.  This is something Al Gore should have flaunted in front of Congress today, with charts and graphics, quotes and pictures.  Somehow, his agenda does not support this shift in our national thought process.  I do not understand why not, though, as he seems relatively unafraid to put his reputation on the line.  I think it has something to do with the mindset of the majority of his supporters, which somehow includes me.  At this point in my manifesto though, I have to represent the South’s forward thinking on these issues.

I know a great amount of support for Al Gore’s movement comes from California, particularly Hollywood.  However, it was pointed out in the House today that fifty-five percent of California’s electrical energy is provided by natural gas, while in South Carolina, fifty-five percent of their energy use is provided by nuclear energy.  I was there last year and was paying attention to the decisions Southern Power and Duke Power made to construct new power plants even though they can’t be brought online until Congress says so.  This doesn’t make sense to me.  Not only should we push nuclear power plant construction, we should be offering huge tax incentives for those companies opting out of the coal industry and moving toward a nuclear-based idea.  Now, on to another state I have to represent:  Texas.

In the Houston Chronicle on 16 March 2007 was an article stating that Texas’ nuclear power capability could triple in the next decade based on several projects underway.  These deals aim at increasing output with new construction at Dallas’Comanche Peak and Bay City’s South Texas Project, two existing nuclear power plants.  TXU Energy and NRG Energy are more than likely going to purchase additional power plants to add to the sites.  Comments were recently made regarding the upcoming potential by the CEO of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, who is also the man who let me in the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program, retired Admiral Skip Bowman, former Commanding Officer of Naval Reactors.  He recently stated that in 2004, the two sites produced 11 percent of Texas’ electricity.  If this energy was to be provided by coal-fired plants, there would be an additional 31.6 million tons of carbon dioxide per year.  This is the equivalent of the emissions from six out of every seven cars in the state.  Now these companies want to put 14,000 additional megawatts of nuclear generated power to the grid, up from a previous 11,000 megawatts, more than doubling their current output.  Regarding this issue, TXU Energy is also on Al Gore’s website for not wanting to comply with proposed emission standards due to the incurred price.

So what do we do?  How do we answer the call?  The answers vary with the level of control.  Nationally, we can augment the electric power grid with nuclear power, and the companies that do should receive substantial tax breaks.  Domestically, home owners who purchase solar panels and windmill turbines for the homes (yes, you can supplement with windmills now) should also receive considerable tax breaks.  On the road, drivers of hybrid and/or flex-fuel vehicles (yes, they should combine the two) should, and do, receive tax breaks.  Not everybody can do everything, but we can all do something.  These issues are too important to ignore, and pushing the technology benefits us as a society in more ways than one.  We can even gain oversight through the advantage we possess on an international level.  Nationally, we only stand to succeed in the realms of education, economy, environment, energy, and employment.