More on Nukes -- people are starting to think

Nice thoughtful piece at The American Enterprise:

Global Warming Dilemma � Coal or Nuclear?
In the next few years, New Jersey and Vermont will do the entire country a favor by resolving the dilemma as to whether we can stop global warming without nuclear power.

The two states have joined Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, and Delaware in a remarkably innovative pact to cut carbon dioxide emissions�the prime suspect in what now appears to be serious evidence of climate change.

The Northeastern Pact will set a cap of 150 million tons of carbon dioxide per year until 2015 and then allow states to start trading emissions permits to lower the figure. Since first introduced in the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, this �cap-and-trade� model has already proved stunningly successful in lowering sulfur dioxide emissions. In only fifteen years, sulfur dioxide emissions have been reduced 50 percent at a cost of about 1/10th of what the Environmental Protection Agency originally predicted. Now the Northeastern states are taking the lead by applying the same strategy to carbon dioxide.

But New Jersey and Vermont have a problem: Environmentalists are jockeying to close down the two nuclear plants that serve as prime sources of energy for the two states. The 635-megawatt Oyster Creek Nuclear Station in Monmouth County provides 9 percent of New Jersey�s electricity. It comes up for re-licensing in 2009. Vermont Yankee, near Brattleboro, generates 535 MW, one-third the state�s energy and 70 percent of what the state doesn�t have to import. Without these two nuclear stations, coal or natural gas will have to be substituted and carbon emissions will rise considerably.

As usual, environmentalists are assuring everyone it can be done with "renewables" � wind, solar, and other "alternative" energies.

But there is no myth more damaging in diverting the nation�s attention from its energy problems. The universe has been pretty well explored by now�there aren�t any "alternative energies" sitting around waiting to be discovered. We know all about solar radiation, about the winds that are driven by its heat (in conjunction with the earth�s rotation), about rivers and streams and how they can be harnessed to produce electricity. We also know about the chemical energy that is stored in the electrons at the periphery of the atom and can be tapped by "burning" organic compounds. And we know about the much more powerful energies that lie at the nucleus of the atom.

Game Set Match. The author explores Hydro, Wind and Solar, finds them coming up short and closes with this:

So the choice is the same as it was in 1979: coal or nuclear. And ever since Three Mile Island, we have chosen coal. We now burn three times as much coal as we did in 1980, and the trend is still moving upward. This is almost certainly one of the prime causes of global warming.

The time is coming when the nation is going to have to give nuclear power a second look.

And considering that it will take about ten to fifteen years to get the plant from design stage to commissioning, we really need to start now...