The Candidates on Nuclear Power

  • The two presidential candidates square off on their views about nuclear power (Photo courtesy of the Commission on Presidential Debates)

Both major party candidates for
president are promising a much greener
energy plan than the current administration.
But there are big differences in the ways
each would go about it. In the first part
of our series on shifting the nation’s
energy policy, Julie Grant takes a look
at the candidates’ views on nuclear power:

Thanks to the Public Radio Exchange for providing the audio for this piece.

Transcript

Both major party candidates for
president are promising a much greener
energy plan than the current administration.
But there are big differences in the ways
each would go about it. In the first part
of our series on shifting the nation’s
energy policy, Julie Grant takes a look
at the candidates’ views on nuclear power:

John McCain and Barack Obama both claim to take climate change, and our role in creating it,
seriously. When asked during the second presidential debate about their plans to stem climate
change during their first two years in office, McCain offered ‘straight talk’.

“What’s the best way of fixing it? Nuclear power.”

More nuclear power is the centerpiece of Senator McCain’s energy policy. He’s told audiences
about the power of nuclear to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“Here we have a known, proven energy source that requires exactly zero emissions.”

And he says the 104 nuclear reactors currently operating in the U.S. make a big difference.

“These reactors alone spare the atmosphere from about 700 million metric tons of carbon dioxide
that would otherwise be released every year. That’s the annual equivalent to nearly all the
emissions of all the cars we drive in America.”

John McCain wants to build 45 new nuclear reactors in the U.S.

Barack Obama, meanwhile, has focused more on renewable energy sources – wind, solar, and
on energy efficiency. But he says he’s not opposed to nuclear power.

“I favor nuclear power as one component of our overall energy mix.”

Senator Obama doesn’t have any plans to build new nuclear power plants. Obama doesn’t think
nuclear is he best option. It’s expensive. And he insists its operation and waste disposal must be
safe.

Senator McCain sees Obama’s use of ‘safe’ as a code word.

“Senator Obama will tell you, as the extreme environmentalists do, that it has to be safe. Look
we’ve sailed navy ships around the world for 60 years with nuclear power plants on them. We
can store and reprocess spent nuclear fuel, senator Obama, no problem.”

But safety and radioactive nuclear waste are still unsettled issues for many people.

Andrew Hoffman is professor of sustainable business at the University of Michigan. If the country
is serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions, he says it has to consider nuclear power.
But Hoffman says the issue of radioactive waste has to be resolved.

“And I think this is an area that the government has to step in. We have nuclear waste being
stored at facilities all over the country. That’s just not a smart way to handle this.”

The economics of nuclear are also uncertain. Lots of power companies lost their shirts back in
the 1970s, building nuclear plants.

Travis Miller is a stock analyst with the firm Morningstar.

“The financing costs are extreme. There is quite a bit of risk building new nuclear plants. They
take many years to build, cost billions of dollars to build, and without some kind of backing, I think
there are
Plenty of people in the utility industry who still remember those days when they did get in trouble
with these very expensive, risky project.”

Senator McCain says government subsidies should help build new nuclear power plants. But
Andy Hoffman at the University of Michigan says people and investors will still have concerns.

“The government can just sort of announce, we’re going to support nuclear, but there are other
things that have to come into play to make investments attractive to investors so that they’ll want
to do it.”

Hoffman says the government will have to persuade the American people nuclear power offers
more benefits than problems.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Dirt on the Coal Supply

  • This coal fired power plant sits at the corner of the SIU campus in Carbondale, Illinois. It has sulfur scrubbers and other technology that allow it to burn Illinois coal. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

Presidential candidates John McCain
and Barack Obama are trying to sell us on a
clean energy future. And they’ve got a laundry
list of ideas, including conservation, solar
and wind power, and safer nuclear energy.
But they both want to tweak an old reliable
fuel, too. That would be American coal.
Shawn Allee looks at why McCain
and Obama are gung-ho on coal:

Transcript

Presidential candidates John McCain
and Barack Obama are trying to sell us on a
clean energy future. And they’ve got a laundry
list of ideas, including conservation, solar
and wind power, and safer nuclear energy.
But they both want to tweak an old reliable
fuel, too. That would be American coal.
Shawn Allee looks at why McCain
and Obama are gung-ho on coal:

One reason McCain and Obama tout coal is they’re convinced we have plenty of it.

And they even agree on how to make that point.

McCain first.

McCain: “Our coal reserves are larger than Saudi Arabia’s supply of oil.”

Obama: “We’re the Saudi Arabia of coal, we got more coal than just about
everybody else.”

The Saudi Arabia of Coal.

That’s a sexy political metaphor – it sounds like coal’s just waiting to be scooped up.

Where do politicians get this idea?

“It is really based on data published by the Energy Information Administration.”

That’s Mike Mellish. He crunches coal projection numbers for that agency.

Politicians cite a government figure that we have 250 years worth of coal.

Mellish calls that a very rough estimate. Mellish says we get that number by estimating
how much coal we can get out of the ground economically.

Then, analysts compare that to how much we burn in factories and power plants right
now.

“So that’s really the basis of that statement of 250 years.”

Mellish says, if we use more coal, we’d literally burn through the supply faster.

There are critics who pounce on the idea we have plenty of coal. One of them’s Richard
Heinberg.

Heinberg studies energy for the Post-Carbon Institute, a green think tank. He says
politicians should not expect cheap coal for centuries.

“It assumes we can continue extracting this stuff out of the ground at constant rates
until, one day, it all just runs out.”

Heinberg says America does have lots of coal, but the amount under the ground isn’t the
only thing that counts.

“We tend to get the cheap, easy stuff first, then the production peaks and tails off
afterward.”

Heinberg predicts companies will have to invest money to keep finding new coal, and
that will raise coal prices – not in centuries – but in a few decades.

And Heinbergs says there’s another reason Obama and McCain shouldn’t have so much
faith in coal.

Coal plants put loads of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and that makes the global
warming problem worse.

Both candidates want new technologies to put coal’s carbon emissions in the ground.

“But there are a lot of questions as to whether this is really going to work. The cost
of capturing all that carbon dioxide and moving it around and burying it will be
enormous and they will add to the cost of electricity we can make with coal.”

For Heinberg all this talk about the Saudi Arabia of coal, and that 250 year figure, it’s all
a big bet – and it could have a high cost if we’re wrong.

“If we’re going on the assumption that there’s plenty of coal out there for many
decades to come at current prices and we build infrastructure accordingly and then
a couple of decades from now, suddenly coal becomes much more expensive and
scarce we will have gotten ourselves in a very difficult place, sort of like we’d done
with oil.”

A lot of energy experts are more upbeat on coal than Heinberg.

They admit it’s not clear how much coal we have, but it’s a heck of a lot, and we know
how to get it.

They say they don’t blame Obama and McCain for giving clean coal a chance. It’s just
that we should have started testing it a decade ago.

Hmm, a decade ago?

Politicians don’t like to say we’ve missed the mark by a decade.

It’s no wonder we haven’t heard that on the campaign trail.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

GOP ENVIROS FOR McCAIN

  • John McCain is giving Republicans for Environmental Protection a candidate to endorse. (Photo by Vincent Duffy)

The conservation movement started with
Republican president Teddy Roosevelt. But these
days it’s the Democrats who have the environmental
vote. That conventional wisdom might not be as
accurate this year. As Vincent Duffy reports,
Republican presidential candidate John McCain is
sounding like an environmentalist:

Transcript

The conservation movement started with Republican president Teddy
Roosevelt. But these days it’s the Democrats who have the environmental
vote. That conventional wisdom might not be as accurate this year. As
Vincent Duffy reports, Republican presidential candidate John McCain is
sounding like an environmentalist:


The last time we had a presidential election, George Bush was the
Republican candidate. That was a problem for Jim DiPeso. He’s the policy
director for a group called Republicans for Environmental Protection. Given
Bush’s track record on the environment, DiPeso and his group could not endorse
him. And with a name like Republicans for Environmental Protection, there was
no way they were going to endorse a Democrat.


This election, DiPeso says his job is easier. His group is endorsing John
McCain:


“He clearly is the one with the best environmental record. He is the one who has done the most serious thinking
about the issue. He has offered serious proposals and we think that with John
McCain as President, our country’s environment would be in very good
hands.”


John McCain: “Now, my dear friends, I believe that climate change is real…”


That’s John McCain on the campaign trail. He was talking to voters in
Michigan where cars are still a big part of the economy. Cars that emit
greenhouse gasses. Cars that are blamed for global warming:


“And I’ll be glad to argue that with you, and discuss it, and debate it more.
But let’s suppose that I am wrong, so we mover forward with these green
technologies and all we’ve done is given our young people a cleaner planet.
But suppose we are right and do nothing, then what kind of a planet are we
going to hand these young people?”


Tailoring his speech a bit for a Michigan audience, McCain said there’s still
a future for the auto industry. But he says that future needs to use the green
technology on display at this year’s auto shows:


“You’ll see that there are hybrid cars. You’ll see that there are battery driven
cars. You’ll see that we can develop ethanol-driven automobiles. It can begin
here in Michigan and it can begin with green technologies.”


And McCain isn’t getting endorsements from environmental groups just
because he mentions global warming and green technologies on the
campaign trail. Allan Lichtman is a history professor at American University
and writes books on American politics. He says McCain’s legislative record
backs up his speeches about the environment:


“John McCain, at least since 2000, has been one of the strongest advocates
of action on global warming and action on the environment. Indeed, a few
years ago he teamed up with Senator Joe Lieberman, then a democrat, for a
bipartisan proposal, a modest proposal, on global warming that didn’t pass,
but certainly put John McCain at the forefront.”


Republicans for Environmental Protection want to point out that while
McCain might share the Democrats’ concern for the environment, his
solutions are Republican solutions. For instance, here’s an example of what
McCain calls green technology:


“And by the way one of them is nuclear power. Uh, I believe we have to go
back to nuclear power and my friends, it’s safe. We’ve sailed navy ships
(interrupted by applause). We have sailed navy ships around the world for
sixty years with nuclear power plants on them and we’ve never had an
accident.”


McCain says nuclear power is better for the environment because it doesn’t
produce the greenhouse gasses believed to cause global warming. Professor
Lichtman says the issue of nuclear power is still a major disagreement
between the parties:


“Uh, Republican environmentalists pretty much strongly come down on the
side of nuclear power which obviously helps cement their alliance with at
least an important industry. While those on the Democratic side and
traditional organizations tend to be much more leery of nuclear power and
favor putting emphasis on things like solar energy, geothermal energy,
biomass energy and wind energy.”


Nuclear power is not the only issue where McCain and many environmental
activists disagree. McCain says he would repeal President Clinton’s ban on
building roads in national forest preserves. He also opposes a carbon tax on
polluters. But for Jim DiPeso and his colleagues at Republicans For
Environmental Protection, McCain does solve a problem. It gives them
someone they can endorse.


For the Environment Report, I’m Vincent Duffy.

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Feasting on Backyard Weeds

  • Peter Gail holds his favorite weed: the spinach-like lamb's quarters.

Your barbeque grill isn’t the only place to find food in your backyard. There are lots of plants out there to eat, but most of us call
them weeds. The GLRC’s Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

Your barbeque grill isn’t the only place to find food in your backyard.
There are lots of plants out there to eat, but most of us call
them weeds. The GLRC’s Julie Grant reports:


Peter Gail of Cleveland loves food. He’s got a lot of meat on his bones.


“Gee, you can’t get me to stop. I start eating this stuff and I can’t stop. It’s terrible, it’s terrible, it’s addictive (laughs).”


But his favorite foods grow right in his backyard, and probably yours. Gail is what’s
known as an ethno-botanist. He’s on a mission to teach more people about how to eat the
plants growing all around their houses. His latest converts are a troop of boy scouts:


“My grandson was one of the boys in this Boy Scout troop. And when I got over to his
house three days after we got back from scout camp, he grabbed the bag, the plastic bag
of weeds that his mother weeded out of the yard that day and dragged it over to me on the
patio and said find the edible plants in here and show me them.”


Gail says the yard becomes more exciting to most kids when they can sit down and
munch. His own love of the backyard snack started when he was just a boy. His family
faced some tough times. They were saved by a common weed known as lamb’s quarters.


“My dad died and left the family with no money. A friend told my mother we could live
off lamb’s quarters. For six months we went out and every day my brother and I would
gather the young tops of lamb’s quarters and then bring them into the house and my
mother would make them into every kind of spinach dish imaginable, until she learned
how to make a living. And then after that she still, we still liked the plant so we still ate it a lot.”


These days you could pay a lot for lamb’s quarters in a gourmet food store. They’re sold
as Belgium spinach. Or, Gail says, you could just take a quick look around your yard.


Today we’re walking around a backyard in suburban Cleveland. We find lamb’s quarters
at the base of a tree. Some say you can recognize the leaves because they look like the
hindquarters of a lamb. Gail thinks they look more like the silhouette of a Christmas tree:


“You’ll notice it has, when you’re looking down on it, it looks like somebody spilled a
little bit of talcum powder on the very top. It has that little dusting of white that is right on the top and on the underside of the leaves you see the same dusting, but taste one leaf, taste a leaf of that.”


And it does taste like spinach, but the USDA reports it’s even more nutritious than
Popeye’s favorite treat.


“It doesn’t take any cooking. It can be eaten raw, or it can be cooked. It will interfere, if you eat too much raw, with the assimilation of both iron and calcium, so you usually want to cook it. It makes a great addition to omelets, great cooked green, great quiches. Any recipe you use spinach in, you can use lamb’s quarters.”


There’s a lot more than just lamb’s quarters in the yard to eat. This time of year, Peter Gail also recommends sautiing the buds or petals from orange and yellow daylilies. He’s also a big fan of dandelions. He suggests looking for the young, tender leaves because they’re less bitter. Gail says he believes dandelions were brought to America by Italian
immigrants. They’re used in lots of Italian recipes:


“80 percent of the things we call weeds were vegetables brought here by immigrants.
That’s one of the reasons most of the things we call weeds in our backyards aren’t
indigenous plants. They aren’t plants that were from America. They’re plants that are
from Europe and Asia and from South America.”


Gail says over time those traditional foods escaped from gardens into the wild. After
World War II, things changed. Most people started buying food at the grocery store and foraging became unpopular. He says only the poor searched the yard for food:


“One by one, as generations went by, the kids didn’t learn as much the second generation,
the third generation they knew nothing. And by the time we reach where we are now,
almost everybody can walk right by the most nutritious plant going, the most commonly eaten
plant back in the 30s and 40s, and not even have a clue what it is.”


Gail is trying to change that. He wants people to become reacquainted with these plants
so we don’t recklessly destroy them. He travels around the country giving workshops,
taking people on neighborhood forages, and teaching cooking classes. Gail believes we
might need these plants again someday.


For the GLRC, I’m Julie Grant.

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Greens Enter Race for Minnesota Governor

A member of the Green Party has joined the crowded field of candidates for Governor of Minnesota. Only two other states – California and New Jersey – have Green candidates on the ballot for the top job. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill profiles the Minnesota race: