I just came home from taping a show for the KOCE’s Inside OC with Rick Reiff, the Editor of the Orange County Business Journal. We were talking about high gas prices and how they may impact Orange County. I mentioned that we need to drill for our own oil and we need more nuclear power if we expect to electrify our transportation system as the gentleman from the South Coast Air Quality Management District advocated.
Inspired, I went home and mowed my lawn with my nuclear-powered lawn mower. Nuclear powered? Yes, nuclear powered. Some 29 miles south of home sits the twin nuclear reactors of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. These reactors produce about six percent of California’s power. Given my proximity to the plant, I bet that at least a third of the electrons making a trip through my zero-emissions electric lawn mower visited San Onofre shortly before I used their energy to cut my lawn.
Keeping with the nuclear theme, the British press, in the form of The Guardian, a left-leaning newspaper (but then I’m redundant), chronicled my call for more nuclear power to meet California’s otherwise impossible greenhouse gas reduction mandates in an article entitled, “California emissions plan won’t be easy or cheap.” An excerpt of the article is below:
California, which enjoyed widespread praise this week for its ambitious plan to combat global warming, now faces the tough part: making it work.
On Thursday, the most populous U.S. state unveiled a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels over the next 12 years with requirements for cleaner cars, more solar and wind energy and stringent caps on big polluting industries.
Many are skeptical of that claim, saying demands for more renewable power and cleaner transportation fuels — each of which are pricier than traditional fuel sources — are sure to drive up the state’s energy costs.
California Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, in a letter to Nichols, said he was disappointed that the plan did not advocate for more nuclear plants, which produce cheaper electricity with no harmful emissions.
“I see no other physical way we can meet our ambitious goals,” DeVore wrote.
Let’s hear it for the leftwing British press – at least they published my response to California’s plan to bankrupt itself.
All the best,
Chuck DeVore
California State Assemblyman, 70th District
www.ChuckDeVore.com
Tags: greenhouse gas reductions, Nuclear Power
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on Friday, June 27th, 2008 at 6:32 pm and is filed under Environment, Nuclear Power.
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June 27th, 2008 at 8:13 pm
ChuckDeVore, You are making progress. The shame is that we can not imbue the government and the citizens with the urgency that this task demands.
There are approved nuclear power plant designs whose safety would be better than those now in operation. If the government (governator) decided to throw off the shackles and tell industry that our public lands and preserves are for the general welfare of the people of the state and that nuclear power is the only way to future productivity, prosperity, and peace.
If challenged and equitably rewarded, the industry could have a number of GW plants in operation in five years. The task is considerably less daunting than Boulder Dam, the Manhattan Project, or the Apollo Program.
By the time the first spent fuel is removed from those reactors California could have it’s own nuclear fuel reprocessing plant.
June 28th, 2008 at 9:37 pm
My response of June 27, 2008 was too brief and the relevance to the Guardian’s reference to the impossibility of achieving the goal set may not be clear.
California made major contributions to the achievements of Boulder Dam, the Manhattan Project, and the Apollo Moon landings. They were, in their times, much greater science, engineering, and construction tasks than converting California’s stationary energy requirements to nuclear power plant energy. They were successfully carried out on time scales like what will be needed.
As DeVore says, “I see no other physical way we can meet our ambitious goals,” DeVore wrote. Nuclear power is intrinsically clean, it is already less expensive than coal fired power plants. DeVore probably did not take into account the Palo Verde power plants three reactors 300 miles east of his home when calculating his mower power. A study of the local economic benefits of Palo Verde’s operation indicates highly positive results are possible. Even so, it is missing the claim for “carbon ‘credits’” from the operation of its cooling towers as atmospheric carbon dioxide scrubbers.
The Guardian is partly right about the futility of many of the means advocated by global warming paranoids (word choice?). Wind, solar, and biofuels are all counterproductive failures. Nor will ill-considered government regulation help. World economics will continue to increase the cost of our liquid fuels, diesel and gasoline, for which better substitutes have not been found. Some changes in lifestyles and equipment will consequently occur. Individual optimization as the country’s founders designed the Constitution to facilitate, and economists, Hayek and Friedman have taught and explained is the best performing method of dealing with the social and economic complexity of society. Any scheme which decreases productivity will be counterproductive to environmental conditions.
jlk