National Energy Policy Suicide
By FrankNatoli Posted in Energy — Comments (29) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
The dominant media is delighted to report that the U.S. House of Representatives has passed by a 241 to 172 vote a national energy policy bill that can only rationally be regarded as economic suicide. See “House OKs clean-energy legislation” in the L.A. Times at http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-congress5aug05,0,54..., “Energy bill adopted by House Requires Utilities to Use Renewable Power Sources” in the N.Y. Times at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/05/washington/05energy.html and “House Passes Bill to Support Renewable Energy” in the Washington Post at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/04/AR200708....
To put the bill in political context, 26 of the 241 yea votes were from Republicans. Simple arithmetic thus indicates that the bill would have passed with zero Republicans joining the majority. This is a Democrat bill.
How many ways have elected Democrats strained to implement a suicidal national energy policy?
Start with electricity. 54% of U.S. electricity is generated by coal fired plants. The reason why 54% of U.S. electricity is generated by coal fired plants is because the environmental Left, perhaps the single most important constituency in the Democratic Party, successfully strangled the U.S. nuclear power industry. Nuclear power was born in America, made in America. The first successful self sustaining nuclear chain reaction was conducted on December 2, 1942, in Chicago, by a group of scientists led by Enrico Fermi, a native Italian, driven from his home to America by Mussolini’s Fascists. The code words for the success, “the Italian navigator has landed in the new world”, was immediately relayed to President Roosevelt. Nobody knew at the time that speaking in a positive allegorical sense about Christopher Columbus would someday be beyond the pale politically incorrect, as would everything Fermi had been involved with. Early proponents of electricity generated by nuclear power optimistically suggested that it would be so cheap that it would be uneconomical to meter! But an intentional crippling of the U.S. nuclear power industry has minimized the role that nuclear power plays and conversely maximized the use of fossil fuel plants with their inevitable massive CO2 emissions. Today, electricity generated by the fossil fuel plants of Jersey Central Power and Light costs $0.16/kwh for the first 600 monthly kwh, and $0.21/kwh for any additional kwh. These are some of the highest rates in the entire country.
How do Americans “learn” the truths about nuclear power? This writer started his college years as a physics major, so the differences between fissionable and non-fissionable uranium, the role of cadmium control rods, the difference between a nuclear reactor and a nuclear weapon, are matters of knowledge and not rumor. But most of the public “knows” nuclear power from the aggressively oppositional dominant media and Hollywood, typified by the for all intents and purposes science fiction movie “The China Syndrome”. Rather than enumerate the intentional falsehoods in the movie, it should be far more convincing to let actress Jane Fonda articulate its objectives. It was Academy Award day in 1979, and “The Deer Hunter” had been nominated for best picture. A TV reporter asked Ms. Fonda what was her opinion of the film, and Ms. Fonda described her objection to the Russian roulette scenes, which Ms. Fonda insisted had never occurred and gave a false impression of how the Viet Cong treated American POWs. In the next clip, another TV reporter asked Ms. Fonda if she was aware that numerous physicists had noted that her movie “The China Syndrome” had a plot that contradicted the laws of physics. Without blinking an eye, Ms. Fonda replied “I wasn’t making a documentary”.
What about the disposal of nuclear waste? As anyone even incidentally aware of the facts should know, the Yucca Mountains of south-central Nevada provide extraordinarily geologically stable caverns to store high-level radioactive waste. The use of the Yucca Mountain site has been “studied” since 1978. In classic NIMBY fashion, residents of the state of Nevada, together with environmental opponents of nuclear power throughout the country, have successfully stymied efforts to use the caverns. One cannot run a nuclear power plant without a safe and economical method of disposing of the waste. Block disposal at Yucca Mountains, block operation of nuclear power plants. By contrast, consider the attitude of Alaskans toward exploiting oil reserves. Residents of Alaska get a “taste” of the oil revenues. As a result, not only is there no income tax in Alaska, there is effectively a negative tax, paid to all state residents in cash. In all likelihood, a similar financial inducement would convince anyone living anywhere near Yucca Mountains that the storage facility was a “good” idea. Perhaps the only problem with this idea is finding anyone who lives anywhere near the storage facility. With the exception of greater Las Vegas, over one hundred miles away, and Reno, at the northwest corner of the state, Nevada is sparsely populated.
So what does the House bill do about nuclear power, the cleanest and most compact source of electricity in existence? The L.A. Time article states: “They still faced a steady barrage of criticism from House Republicans — and some Democrats — who complained that the legislation did not support the domestic coal, oil and nuclear industries.” The N.Y. Times article does not even contain with word “nuclear”. And the Washington Post article states: “Republicans challenged Democrats for doing nothing to promote nuclear power, coal-to-liquid plants or new oil offshore drilling in federal waters.”
What about oil that remains available on American land and offshore waters? As the articles clearly state, the bill does nothing to promote the necessary drilling and refining. In ANWR alone, government estimates that anywhere from two to fourteen billion barrels of oil can be economically extracted. Environmental Leftists have halted not only all new drilling in Pacific and Atlantic coastal waters, but have even halted all new exploration in Pacific and Atlantic coastal waters, see “Senate Rejects Virginia Offshore Drilling” in the Washington Post at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/14/AR200706.... The key point is that environmental Leftists do not even want anyone to know how much oil and natural gas is available offshore. On the other hand, enormous reserves off the shores of many countries around the world are aggressively drilled, including by U.S. oil companies!
All of this contributes to a steadily increasing reliance by U.S. consumers on foreign oil and natural gas. And that results in a huge shift in wealth from U.S. consumers to nations such as Venezuela and countries in the Middle East. Wealth sent to the latter often results in contributions to terrorist groups who make war on America. America is paying to make war on itself.
It is often reported that ANWR reserves and even offshore reserves represent a small fraction of U.S. consumption. This out of context fact fails to take into consideration that very small changes in supply can result in very large changes in price. A demand of one more barrel than the world produces results in price increases for all barrels totally out of proportion to the shortage. Conversely, a supply of one more barrel than the world needs results in price decreases for all barrels again totally out of proportion to the excess. Thus production from ANWR and/or offshore can result in major savings for U.S. consumers.
Americans are reputed to vote their pocketbooks with a higher priority than virtually any other issue. It is a tribute to the power of the dominant media and the Democratic Party that the facts of energy reserves and electric power generation are so completely withheld from the public that three dollar per gallon gasoline can be explained as a conspiracy of oil companies. It is not. It is a conspiracy of environmental Leftists, who dominate the Democratic Party, and for whom unaffordable gasoline, natural gas and electricity is a good thing.
I noticed that almost to the day after the last Huey lifted off from the rooftop in Saigon, the very same individuals who bitterly protested that war began bitterly protesting nuclear power. I recall asking myself, "how the Hell did these people learn so much about the nuclear industry in so little time".
You know the great line from the Godfather "it's not personal; it's just business"?
I realized that for the environmental Left, "it's not science; it's just religion". It has nothing to do with rational analysis. Nothing to do with critical reasoning.
In living memory, most Americans had faith in God, and demanded proof of everything else. Today, that appears to be reversed. They demand proof of God, but have faith in all manners of beliefs that cannot survive rational analysis.
That is proving to be an extremely expensive switch.
The USA still has by far the most atomic reactors of any nation, but we would need to build a lot more to become energy independent.
If we are serious about using nuclear fission as a long term energy supply, we should be investing in plutonium and thorium breeder reactors. This would increaes the fuel supply a hundred fold. Consuming only the rare U-235 isotope is wasteful, and we are throwing away the common U 238 isotope on things like artillary shells (which is another whole controversy). Thorium, which is as plentiful as uranium, is just being left in the ground.
Uranium and also very plentiful if you want to go after expensive low-yield sources. The DOE estimates there is a US reserve of 265 million pounds of yellow oxide at $30/pound, but as much as 1,414 million pounds obtainable for $100/pound. Even common granite stone contains uranium, for example.
UBL and Iran would have paid them to do since 1978, ie suicide necessitaing we fund the terror states.
Mike Gamecock DeVine @ The Charlotte Observer
www.race42008.com
www.hinzsightreport.com
www.theminorityreportblog.com
"One man with courage makes a majority" - Andrew Jackson
are underneath the frozen tundra in Northern Alaska.
If the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge is compared to a dinner table, the amount of area needed for drilling these 11 billion barrels of oil out of the ground is a dime-sized speck.
11 billion barrels of oil. Enough oil to make the U.S. completely independent of foreign oil for 10 years.
11 billion barrels of oil.
John McCain and a nearly unified host of Democrat senators kept this oil in the ground.
Neither McCain, nor Hillary, nor Edwards, nor any of the other senators who voted to keep this oil in the ground are fit to lead.
They are responsible for our dependence on foreign oil.
Romney/Thompson 2008
I think that's an exageration. I'm in favor of drilling in Alaska, but it's not going to make us energy independent. The USA consumes 7 billion barrels of oil per year. The Alaska reserves hold about 5 billion barrels and could realistically be pumped at a rate that would supply 5% of our needs for 10 or 20 years.
I've noted before to Blackhedd that in my role as Vice President of a new startup, one of the things that I take seriously is the likelihood that electricity prices are going to increase precipitously over the next ten years, particularly if the Democrats and their anti-nuke supporters remain in the majority in Congress.
Recently here in Massachusetts (a state in which our electricity is distributed by foreign-owned National Grid, and where the cost is higher than 42 other states in the U.S.) our governor, Clinton apparatchik Deval Patrick, has recently said that he doesn't favor constructing new power plants but instead will focus on "conservation." In Massachusetts, "conservation" means "taxes and fees." Back in January, Patrick and his friends socked it to the power-generating companies in Massachusetts and he recently stated that he doesn't favor building any new power plants, of any kind, at all, ever.
Hoping to make Massachusetts a national showcase for energy conservation, Governor Deval Patrick will announce plans today to offset the state's annual increases in electricity demand with equivalent energy-efficiency and conservation measures by 2010.
As the economy has grown and as many homeowners have added electronics and air-conditioning, the state's total electric usage has been increasing at about 1 percent annually, the equivalent of adding about 170,000 new average-sized houses every year, US Energy Department data show.
But Patrick contends that the state can conserve at least that much more electricity every year and keep overall demand frozen
indefinitely, for much less than the cost of building new power plants.
So there you have it. Deval Patrick is going to make Massachusetts into a "showcase" by forcing everyone in the state to conserve energy rather than build new power plants to meet demand. And some people here thought that I was being alarmist when I said that I take these measures very seriously when it comes to the long-term viability of my business.
If you read the article at the first link, I think you can reasonably infer that most of the real liberals/leftists in Massachusetts *did not like* Governor Mitt Romney at all. It has long been my contention that a loosely-organized coalition of these folks have been supplying a lot of the anti-Romney agitprop extant in the media. I hope I'm not spitting into the wind when I continue to tell people:
"Don't be fooled."
"What a breath of fresh air to switch from our previous governor who walked away from the climate crisis altogether," said Brian Thurber of Clean Water Action, one of many environmental groups that sang Patrick's praises yesterday. "Massachusetts is usually a regional and national leader on air pollution and energy issues. It's nice to be back in the game."
The leftists and enviromentalists in this state absolutely *hated* Mitt Romney and they *do not* want to see him elected President. Why? Because Mitt Romney governed as as conservatively as he could here, and they couldn't stand him, and elected Deval Patrick. My parents live next to a former librarian tree-hugger who recoils violently at the mention of Mitt Romney's name. They're trying to poison the well of his Presidential aspirations. Don't be fooled.
One of the big reasons that National Grid is jumping on board this plan is that they are a distribution company, not a generation company. They don't want to see generation capacity and usage increase, because it will mean they have to make substantial improvements to their distribution network, which sucks.
I live in a semirural area of Massachusetts and until I sent a scathing letter to my state Senator and Representative, the power was going out in this town on the average of *once a week* because National Grid was so poorly managing its distribution network. And that didn't entirely come from me: I was corroborated by a National Grid worker who told me point blank that their company was "horribly managed."
They don't want to build out the network and supply more power: they want to make increasing amounts of money delivering less power to people with their old, decrepit hardware.
Grumman, the maker of front line U.S. Navy aircraft for decades, ultimately decided to leave Long Island and move to Georgia more than anything else because of out of control electricity prices, courtesy of LILCO, Long Island Lighting Company. Thousands of Long Islanders were thrown out of work as a result. Nobody in Albany blinked.
That was an example of a corporate relocation that remained in-country. But many more jobs are lost because companies relocate outside the country, where governments understand the need to balance environmental interests with business and employment interests.
I have news for Governor Patrick. You cannot be perfectly environmentally clean and still breath. There has got to be a balance.
Governor Patrick can float this plan and win support from National Grid largely because people are leaving the State of Massachusetts because it's a terribly unfavorable climate in which to do business, and he wants to make it moreso.
If you read the articles in the Globe, the entire plan revolves around "decoupling" distribution from generation to eliminate "perverse incentives" -- which in Deval Patrick and National Grid's mind mean "people using more electricity."
National Grid is very happy to charge more for electricity distribution without building any new infrastructure, and the University of Massachusetts and most of the environmentalists in this state are more than happy to see the prices continue to rise while the network remains unimproved. That's their "remedy" to the "perverse incentive."
If Americans don't wake up soon, the entire country will be this way before long.
BTW this should be a front-page story here at RedState. If I had the power to make it a front-page story, I would do so.
I've noticed reports of online companies building data centers near the hydroelectric dams in Washington state. It's a significant issue.
Of course, some power is just lost when you transmit it very large distances. I knew an engineer years ago who built a high voltage DC line across Canada. This was in the 1970s, and the interesting thing was that he got permission from the Soviet government to study their pioneering DC high-tension lines that carried power from Siberia to Moscow. Sending power over long distances as 60 Hz AC is a bad idea, because of inductive reactance loss, but it's still used quite a bit here.
One of the biggest problems of Nuclear Power (or any new power plant, refinery, or well, anything these days) is the NIMBY problem. Yet, as you mention above, you lose more power the farther the plant is from the user.
Could several individual or one large (meaning multiple reactors) nuclear power plants be built in the Nevada desert to power the West Coast, or at least CA? It would seem that would help a large portion of the U.S. population while keeping the nuclear waste near its ultimate resting place.
"Democrats propose increasing utility costs to consumers"
Since that's what this bill will do.
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"Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm." -- James Madison
like this bill is full of government regulation, government interference, and government mandates. I guess the dems really are snake oil salesmen. The government hasn't been able to fix many problems in a long time and now they are touting a bill in which we are supposed to believe the government will solve our energy crisis. Hmm, my favorite Reagan quote applies...
"The nine most dangerous words in the English language are 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help'"
Ronald Reagan
this pig in a poke. Let's hope he follows through.
I am personally very much a pro-nuclear person. My father was a mechanical engineer and built nuclear power plants. I would love to see nuclear power leveraged further.
But I just don't see how it is possible.
Let's assume that Congress passes a bill that gives some sort of credit to energy producers that build nuclear power plants. It would need to be a pretty massive subsidy because the utilities see nuclear power plants as hideously expensive investments that take decades to recoup their investments.
One of the reasons why nuclear power plants are so expensive because the NIMBYS fight nuclear power plants to the death. No one wants one near them. So the utilities wind up fighting their customers plus municipal and state governments. This is why nuclear power plants simply aren't built anymore and no new plants have been order in 30 years.
So until we can overcome the NIMBYS and convince the utilities to invest in power plants, I just don't see nuclear power going anywhere.
Your diary doesn't seem to speak to any of the actual details of the bill. Seems your diary is mostly a polemic against Green Lefties.
There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why ... I dream of things that never were and ask why not. - Robert Kennedy
After all, you saw (and recommended, thanks) my blog earlier today where I, as a proud Republican, advocated higher gas taxes. We know that had to make you smile.
Part of solving the NIMBY problem, which I acknowledge is huge based on my question above, is siting new reactors at old plants.
In my state, GA, the Southern Company has just requested a permit for a new nuclear reactor at an existing nuclear plant near Augusta. There's been some predictable knee-jerk reaction from the greenie-fringe, but initial indications are mostly supportive, and the decision for construction appears to be up to the company, not various levels of government.
I'd much rather have a few nuclear plants in E. Texas and even in Hope Arkansas than the coal plants being proposed there.
With nuclear energy, there's a risk that something might go wrong, but it hardly ever happens. With coal, by contrast, we know for a fact there is going to be at least some degradation of the air and water, not to mention the environmental harm in transporting and mining the coal.
Retrofitting an existing nuclear plant isn't the same as building a new one. We need to replace the coal plants with nuclear plants but that just isn't going to happen.
I appreciate your efforts and I agree that we need to increase the cost of fuel and try to disincent people from buying massive vehicles with 10 MPG.
We also need to get rid of the subsidies for gas guzzlers like the Hummer and void the CAFE exceptions for SUVs.
I also think that we should be looking to drill in certain areas that we aren't currently, although I don't believe that ANWR has enough upside to make it worthwhile.
But the fact that we can't even get a windfarm built because it lessens the view, doesn't give me much optimism that any new drilling locations are on the horizon.
There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why ... I dream of things that never were and ask why not. - Robert Kennedy
But the fact that we can't even get a windfarm built because it lessens the view
I've seen the windfarms in Europe. The line of windmills off Copenhagen are downright beautiful -- arcing off into the distance.
I disagree about ANWAR though. I believe we should be drilling anywhere and everywhere -- you can drill in my backyard if you like -- if you'll cut me in for a little of the profit, that is.
My dad also helped design powerplants, along the Ohio River Valley. When they first began designing and building them, they were all going to be nuclear plants. Somewhere along the way -- before they came on line, they were all converted to coal.
on prohibiting wind farms has been that they kill migratory birds. Well, whoop-de-freakin'-do...I'll sacrifice some sparrows for electricity, thank you.
And I'm an avid birdwatcher...but I'm not stupid enough to prioritize them ahead of sound energy policy.
...when they see me they'll say, "There goes Loren Wallace,
the greatest thing to ever climb into a race car."
You forgot they block a certain drunk driver's view at his weekend home.
That was snarky. There is nothing like a purported environmentalist arguing against something on NIMBY grounds while asking everyone who didn't inherit their money from their father's illegal activities to sacrifice for the good of the planet.
Plant Votgle was the last Nuclear Plant built by the Southern Company (GA Power, Alabama Power, Gulf Power, Etc.). It's their newest and most modern. It has 2 reactors currently, if I'm not mistaken. I belive their proposing a third, and possibly a forth. Kind of takes the NIMBY argument away if there are already two reactors operating and they want to open a third. The complete nut jobs can try to sell it as increased risk, but so far, no one is buying.
I just don't see how many times the utilities will be able to do an end around on the NIMBYS.
There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why ... I dream of things that never were and ask why not. - Robert Kennedy
Look at the current grid where the Nukes already are. Why do a new end run. They're already there. The example I posted above is probably the best example of a new, non-nuclear site. If technologically possible, let's put a few in Western NV, and power much of the west coast. But let's finally get around to building the nuclear dump in NV that keeps being delayed for no apparent reason.
Congress could short circuit most of the NIMBY/enviromentalist means of attack if they wanted to. That would be preferable to subsidies.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman
I didn't mention nuclear in my piece about energey independence, mainly because I was focused on imported oil. I don't understand why even the dems can't get the nuclear power argument, however, because the French love it, and they want to be French more than anything, (mainly for thier surrender-envy).