I'm a liberal and I wholeheartedly support nuclear power as the solution to global warming. I understand that there are issues with disposal of nuclear waste, but on balance, I pick nuclear over coal/oil. With nuclear, we can place all the waste in one isolated location. With hydrocarbons, it pollutes the entire planet. Clearly, reducing greenhouse emissions. (and no, solar/wind won't even come close to making a dent in our massively huge demand for power - not yet anyway, and not unless the government steps in and heavily subsidizes solar power for consumers, which I strongly support)

There's a piece in the Times today about how the "drill-drill-drill" approach is pissing off Republicans in red states like Wyoming and New Mexico.

"The word from Washington is drill, drill, drill, and now they've basically destroyed our ranch," said Tweeti Blancett, a coordinator for George Bush's presidential campaign in San Juan County, N.M. "We've been in a firestorm down here. A lot of Republicans are upset."

The 32,000 acres of public land that Ms. Blancett and her husband, Linn, have long used for grazing cattle is now riddled with gas wells and pipelines. Petroleum byproducts have poisoned the water, she said, killing animals and causing the fertility rate to plummet.

The couple has hired Karen Budd-Falen, one of the best-known lawyers in fights over federal land policies. They have sued to try to force the federal Bureau of Land Management to clean up the land. Ms. Budd-Falen got her start working against environmental restrictions with the Mountain States Legal Foundation, an intellectual incubator for such property rights stalwarts as James Watt, the former interior secretary under President Ronald Reagan.

A prominent Republican from Cheyenne, Wyo., Ms. Budd-Falen said the drilling boom had turned the political world upside down in the West, home to the sagebrush rebellion of the 1970's and other later battles against federal government restrictions on development of public land. Now property owners, ranchers and home builders are worried about overdevelopment.

"I'm amazed at the number of calls we're getting from landowners who are really frustrated with what's going on," Ms. Budd-Falen said.

Jonathon, I agree with you on nuclear power. We need to start building nuclear power plants immediately. We know it works. It's the right strategy today. Maybe sometime later in the century, bio-fuels will be more feasible.

There has to be a better option than nuclear energy. I see nuclear energy as a thing of the past. It's time has gone. American ingenuity can come up with better things, I believe.

Also, nuclear power plants destroy property values so no one wants one near their home. And the waste lasts forever.

I'm a liberal and I wholeheartedly support nuclear power as the solution to global warming.

I'm a liberal too, but I can use a calculator. For the cost of one nuclear power plant we can go self-contained photovoltaics on 300,000 homes (at current prices) providing the energy needs for nearly a million people. When the photovoltaics go out you recycle all the components.

And just so you know, if we build all the nuclear they propose we run out of fuel for those plants in 100 years. Some solution.

Give me a low interest loan like businesses get from the Gov and I'll go PV at my own cost, pay it back over ten years, and be off grid. But that's the issue, we must be kept on grid so a corporation can screw us by selling us energy.

We need to start building nuclear power plants immediately. We know it works. It's the right strategy today. Maybe sometime later in the century, bio-fuels will be more feasible.

Item 1a. Republi-con talking points memo.

We'll there is only one point I sorta of agree with. I think we would be better off building a few more nuclear power plants, but mainly only if they were replacing coal and gas plants.

The fact is that even with the waste, Nuclear plants are the cleanest power we currently have. Now while we build a few more now I think we need to research new power methods, differnt kinds of nuclear with the goal of a Nuclear Fusion power plant.

But right now I have what I think is the best way to help with energy. It would be an easy 2 points in the energy bill.

1.Increases minimum fuel efficiency 5 mpg.

2.Give these huge tax breaks and giveaways to homeowners instead of giant energy companies, to use on energy improvements for their home. I bought a house build in the 1950’s and I love it, but the energy cost we really bad. I replaced the furnace and air conditioner(High Efficiency)( I Live in Minnesota so I don’t use the Air much, but the furnace a lot), put more insulation in the attic, and replaced all the windows.

Cost ~= 17,500

But have cut energy costs somewhere from 65 %–70%(My gas bill went from ~$250 a month to $75 – $80, and it was colder outside then before.

My point is that if the government helped everyone with low interest or no interest loans to do the same thing, I don’t think we would need any more power plants. How many houses need this sort of work. We’ll on my street, there is about 20 houses, and 19 of them could use this work. I would guess that is pretty similar around the country. Anyway it is a lot better then giving all the money to big energy.

Hey, unless our cars and houses are suddenly able to go nuclear, this attempt really means nothing. It will be a long time before we are free from the grip of the Saudi oil gods. Don't get me wrong, it's a step in the right direction but not nearly a big enough step. The day we no longer depend on the Middle East for fuel is the day the world will be a much safer place.

With nuclear, we can place all the waste in one isolated location.

Good grief. No one wants the nuclear plant in their neighborhood, you can bet no one wants the waste in their neighborhood either. Maybe muckdog will volunteer to have one next to his home.

What a great site for a terrorist act that would be! They wouldn't even need those non-existant WMDs to wipe us all out.

And let's face it, without the government subsidies, no one will build a nuke. So why not invest those subsidies in safer energy technologies?

Yo Muck,

You are right... Bio-fuels aren't even remotely feasable at this time. I mean 2 years ago, I had to jump through a lot of hoops:

1. Purchased a diesel vehicle.
2. Put Biodiesel in the tank.

I understand how hard that is to do, but I have hopes for the future!

Quit waiting for someone to hand you your solution in a nice marketable package and make a change now.

I like someone to tell me what did king george has ever done for the good of the people?
Crooks & liars have a video of Scott Ritter interview by Tucker Carlson on his site. One of the comments brings an article by Scott that seams to assert that we are in war mode with Iran.

The US war with Iran has already begun by Scott Ritter.

The reality is that the US war with Iran has already begun. As we speak, American over flights of Iranian soil are taking place, using pilotless drones and other, more sophisticated, capabilities.

The violation of a sovereign nation's airspace is an act of war in and of itself. But the war with Iran has gone far beyond the intelligence-gathering phase.

President Bush has taken advantage of the sweeping powers granted to him in the aftermath of 11 September 2001, to wage a global war against terror and to initiate several covert offensive operations inside Iran.

The most visible of these is the CIA-backed actions recently undertaken by the Mujahadeen el-Khalq, or MEK, an Iranian opposition group, once run by Saddam Hussein's dreaded intelligence services, but now working exclusively for the CIA's Directorate of Operations.

It is bitter irony that the CIA is using a group still labelled as a terrorist organisation, a group trained in the art of explosive assassination by the same intelligence units of the former regime of Saddam Hussein, who are slaughtering American soldiers in Iraq today, to carry out remote bombings in Iran of the sort that the Bush administration condemns on a daily basis inside Iraq.

Perhaps the adage of "one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist" has finally been embraced by the White House, exposing as utter hypocrisy the entire underlying notions governing the ongoing global war on terror.

But the CIA-backed campaign of MEK terror bombings in Iran are not the only action ongoing against Iran.

To the north, in neighbouring Azerbaijan, the US military is preparing a base of operations for a massive military presence that will foretell a major land-based campaign designed to capture Tehran.

Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld's interest in Azerbaijan may have escaped the blinkered Western media, but Russia and the Caucasus nations understand only too well that the die has been cast regarding Azerbaijan's role in the upcoming war with Iran.

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/06/319861.shtml

Even CNN mentions it last week.
Seymour Hersh said his information on Iran came from "inside" sources who divulged it in the hope that publicity would force the administration to reconsider.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/01/16/hersh.iran/

With nuclear, we can place all the waste in one isolated location.

You can place the waste in one spot, but unless you can cite all your nuclear plants in the same spot, you need to transport the waste from all corners of the country to that one spot. Transporting high-level nuclear waste regularly on most of the nation's major highways is asking for trouble.

Also, it's nearly impossible to find the perfect spot for all that waste. When the one-disposal-spot idea was first considered, they came up with only three spots in the continental U.S. that were suitable (my grandfather was in the group of scientists that narrowed it down)-- Hanford, a contaminated spot in BFE west Texas and, of course, Yucca Mountain. The other two were ruled out because of seismic or water table contamination concerns. We have nearly enough waste now to fill Yucca Mountain....what then?

Maybe sometime later in the century, bio-fuels will be more feasible.

Come on...this (combined with the current energy "policy") is like saying that maybe if I don't go to class and don't study, I'll pass the class anyway. No alternative fuels will be more feasible any time soon unless we actually put work and funding into making them more feasible.

Ethanol, vegetable oil and bio-diesel are very nearly feasible now, but I don't think they should be the heart of our energy policy, either. The hidden cost of biofuels is water, the blue gold of the coming century...we're going to need every drop for us and the fish we steal it from. (Hat tip to Muck: veganism is very water-friendly; the "16 pounds of grain used to produce 1 pound of meat" figure glosses over the amount of water that would be saved if we ate the grain rather than the cow.)

Solar and tidal/ocean power is where it's at. Almost every spot on earth has enough of one or the other to make ample power. If we also work on battery or hydrogen fuel-cell technology for storage and conveyance, there's hardly a power need we couldn't meet between those two.

Maybe in the future, bio-fuels will be feasible.....maybe in the future, we'll have something to do with nuclear waste other than bury it and run....

At some point, we've got to suck it up, start innovating, and start funding research. No time like the present.

Also Muck,

Commercial Biodiesel production is only at about 25% of current capacity and with new processing plants, capacity should double in the next 12-18 months.

Check out the fact sheet onthis page for details (including current tax incentives).

Commercial Biodiesel production is only at about 25% of current capacity and with new processing plants, capacity should double in the next 12-18 months.

Oui, oui, monsewer. Hi don't zink zee aldernateeve fuels can bee working. Braaazeeel, she purchase, how you say, only 40 perrceent of her alcohol fuels from zee Unigh-ted States. Eet can nevair work hair, mon ami!

Nobody is working on your pipe dream energy alternatives. They might make great talking points at the Sierra Club meeting to lather up the crowd, then everybody leaves the building, hops in their single-occupancy SUV, and drives home and forgets about it.

In 2005, it's either oil, coal, or nuclear.

The message you folks are sending to Washington DC is loud and clear: DRILL MORE OIL!

The message that you, muckdog, and everyone else should be sending to Washington is:

1. Mandate conservation.
2. Invest in alternative energy.

Pretty simple. If we cut the nuclear subsidies and invested in alternative energy, they might actually work. Or would you prefer we continue to invest in energy technologies that won't sustain us for the long haul, muck? We can still have them build a nuclear power plant near your place....and find a nice depository for the waste in your backyard, will that make you happy?

Ah oui, mon chere, eet can nevair work, zee aldernateeve fuels. You must use-uh zee goo-gail to do zee, how you say, surch to find-uh zeez sings. 5 or 6 seconds to find zee sihtes for zee aldernateev energies. Too compleecated. Why bothair, n'est pas?

Ah am zee Boosh lap-uh poodle. Vive le Roi! Vive le Roi!

Hasn't Bu$hCo already sacrificed Nevada to be the nuclear garbage dump? Yucca Mountain is in a great place to become the American Chelyabinsk:

Chernobyl was not the first accident of the Soviet nuclear programme. The secret Mayak bomb-making plant near Chelyabinsk in the Ural mountains was responsible for a whole series, beginning in the early 1950s - although little was known about them until the advent of glasnost ten years ago.

According to some reports more than 1,000 curies of radioactive waste - roughly 20 Chernobyls - was pumped from Mayak into a lake that even today is capable of delivering a fatal dose of radiation within an hour.

Mayak was also the scene of an explosion in a nuclear waste storage tank in 1957, when an estimated 70 to 80 tonnes of radioactive materials was blasted into the air.

A similar explosion was responsible for the worst post-Chernobyl disaster, at Tomsk in Siberia in April 1993. In this case several tonnes of uranium and plutonium salts were scattered over the surrounding countryside.

To all you nuke nuts: Bomb Apetit! Just make sure that you and your Atomic Tea Kettles are a long way downwind from me and mine.

Muck, really I'm just trying to help ya here.

Cargill to build biodiesel plant

Potato chips to help power Northwest cars

Biodiesel plant to start up at former brewery

Proposed biodiesel plant gets state grant

and that is just a sample of the the stories from that last couple of weeks

Oh hell, just go check out Biodiesel at google news.