President Obama called for “a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants” in his Jan. 27 State of the Union speech. According to the AP, “He wants to use nuclear power and other alternative sources of energy in his effort to shift energy policy.”
Right, and he also wants Iran to quit its nuclear bomb ambitions, and Republicans to participate in health care reform in a bi-partisan fashion from square two instead of square one.
Don’t buy this as a new shift in energy strategy. It is his community organizers way of appeasing his critics, which is everyone to the right of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi.
The other thing that community organizers do to avoid personal responsibility, like voting ‘present,’ is to appoint commissions. It is how he allows the environmentalists to shape America’s energy policy. Which explains why Obama has cut funding for the long-planned nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
The Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository started in 1987, was approved by Congress in 2002, and in 2009 Mr. New Energy Shift cut funding for it. Instead, he has appointed a commission to find a ‘safe’ solution for dealing with nuclear waste, but in the meantime the government has no long-term plan to store commercial radioactive waste. ‘Safe’ for Obama must mean politically safe, not materially safe.
So what’s the end result? There won’t be any new nuclear plant construction unless and until a place to put the waste is operating. That, and higher energy cost, continued dependence on foreign energy sources, and the crippling of our economy on the energy front.
