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The Energy Spectator
Nuclear’s Dilemma: Few Jobs, Just Energy
Obama defends green energy, Romney coal, because that’s where the jobs are. Nuclear might as well not exist.
Last week, Environmental Entrepreneurs, a trade group, announced that wind and solar projects around the country had created 34,409 new jobs around the country in the second quarter of 2012, with high concentrations in California, Michigan, Ohio, Florida, and Colorado.
GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney immediately countered this by visiting Ohio’s coal country, promising to protect the industry from the Obama Administration’ “War on Coal.” Not to be outdone, President Obama was off to Iowa where he even won the support of Republican Governor Terry Branstad in urging Congress to renew the production tax credit so that the wind industry can create even more jobs.
So the great Presidential battle over the future of energy is shaping up — which can create more jobs, coal or wind? What about nuclear, which might also be said to have a potential role in the nation’s energy future? Well, nuclear energy has one great weakness. It doesn’t create many jobs. All it creates is lots of energy. And in the contest for which form of energy can employ the most people, that doesn’t seem to count for much at all.
Let it be said first that the other players missing in action here are gas and oil. New drilling techniques for shale gas and tight oil are now creating more jobs and useful energy than all the other technologies combined. Production from the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania and Ohio is up 82 percent over last year. North Dakota’s Bakken shale has created the lowest unemployment rate in the nation. Oklahoma gas fields are complaining they can’t find enough workers. Any healthy, working-age male could head for any of these states and find themselves making close to a six-figure income.
But all this is happening in the private sector so it doesn’t draw much attention in presidential campaigns. Most of the Marcellus shale lies under private lands so — blessedly — it can be done without federal interference. Only New York State has stopped the show — which is just another reason why upstate New York, if separated from New York City, ranks as the second-poorest state in the nation behind only Mississippi.
What attracts politicians to coal and wind is that they involve the federal government. The EPA is on a campaign to close down 10 percent of the nation’s coal plants and so Romney can win votes by promising to intervene. The President, on the other hand, continues his efforts to “harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories,” as he put it in his Inaugural Address. Wind’s production tax credit — which makes it profitable to erect windmills even if they never produce a kilowatt of electricity — will be extended into the foreseeable future. Corn ethanol, which now consumes 40 percent of the corn crop, will continue to be mandated, even though it is driving up world food prices and international officials are accusing us of starving the world’s poor. (The EPA showed its defiance last week by announcing that sorghum, the nation’s third largest crop, will also be converted into ethanol.) The military is being instructed to substitute biofuels for jet fuel, even though it will cost $59 a gallon. And with nearly half the land west of the Mississippi still owned by the federal government, the President is able to commission a 350-square-mile wind farm in Wyoming and several 20-square-mile solar plants in the Mojave Desert. All this will create jobs, jobs, jobs.
So how does nuclear stack up against all this? Not very well. Take the matter of coal mining. There are an estimated 88,000 coal miners in this country working 1,300 coal mines, most of them in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, and Kentucky. There are 400 mines in Kentucky alone. More than half a dozen states identify themselves as “coal states,” with Indiana, Illinois, Tennessee, Alabama, Colorado, and Wyoming filling out the list. Montana, the state with the biggest coal reserves, hasn’t really started developing them yet.
To this must be added the jobs in the railroad industry. A 1,000-megawatt (MW) coal plant must be replenished by a 110-car coal train arriving at the plant every 30 hours. A fully loaded coal “unit” train now leaves the Powder River Basin in Wyoming every eight minutes. Coal constitutes almost half the freight aboard the railroads and it is a moot question as to whether the railroads really own the coal companies or the coal companies own the railroads. In any case, there are close to 200,000 railroad workers in the U.S., half of them dedicated to moving coal.
Now compare this to the mining and transport needed to fuel a nuclear reactor. Because uranium has an energy density almost 3 million times that of coal, not much is required. The Uranium Producers Association reports there are 13 operating uranium mines in the country, employing 1,360 workers. The annual output of uranium mining would fill two railroad cars so no railroad traffic either. Actually, domestic uranium production has been depressed over the last two decades because of the Megatons-to-Megawatts program that has recycled 18,000 former Soviet warheads in the greatest swords-into-plowshares effort in history. (Never heard of it? I wonder why.) But the treaty ends in 2014 and domestic uranium production may increase a little. The Russians are now proposing to supply the entire world with uranium out of one mine in Siberia.
Because uranium mining is such a small-scale operation, there are no “nuclear states.” New Mexico’s Pete Domenici was once the leading advocate in the Senate because of the presence of the Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories. His mantle has been picked up by Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who has Oak Ridge. But nuclear has no real constituency in either state and plays very little in their politics.
Then there is the matter of enriching uranium and preparing it for use in reactors. That is done at the nation’s only plant in Paducah, Kentucky, which employs 1,200 people. The U.S. Enrichment Corporation (USEC) is trying to replace it with a more modern facility in Piketon, Ohio, but that will employ about the same amount. How about transporting the fuel rods to the reactors? That requires a fleet of six trucks making the trip once every 18 months.
Now compare all this with wind, an even bigger vote-getter. Each 45-story windmill produces about 2 MW, which means you need 500 of them to equal the capacity of a nuclear reactor. These have to be manufactured and trucked to remote sites across the country. You’ve probably seen them on the highway. Each windmill blade is half the length of a football field. But wind farms only produce electricity 20 percent of the time so you need five times that number to equal one 1000-MW nuclear plant. That’s 2,500 45-story windmills, which translates into lots of manufacturing jobs, lots of transport, and lots of on-site construction. Wind is nothing if not labor intensive.
The job requirements for solar are on the same scale. Each PV panel or highly polished mirror — several square miles of them — demands extensive manufacturing and high maintenance. If they are located in the desert, solar facilities are going to require constant cleaning and polishing so they do not become covered with dirt and lose their efficiency. We may have to employ half of Mexico to do the job. That means even more votes on the way.
Where nuclear does create jobs is in the construction and operation of reactors. Building a new plant will employ 5,000 construction workers over five years, probably double or triple the number required for coal or wind. Forbes just published an article saying that a 1000-MW reactor creates 500 highly skilled operating positions while coal produces 220 less-skilled jobs, wind 90 and natural gas only 60. But these jobs are highly localized. Bisconti research has found that support for nuclear regularly exceeds 80 percent in towns where reactors are located but the benefits do not spread to neighboring areas. The town of Vernon, population 2,000, which hosts Vermont Yankee, is almost 100 percent in favor of keeping the reactor operating. But its interests are swamped by 323,000 other Vermonters who see no benefits and think they can produce the same amount of energy by covering the Green Mountains with windmills.
The only way in which nuclear really “creates job” is in providing clean, cheap electricity to make other manufacturing operations profitable. Tennessee has refashioned itself into a major auto manufacturing state, hosting both Nissan and Volkswagen’s U.S. headquarters and creating 100,000 ancillary jobs, partly by capitalizing on nuclear electricity from the Tennessee Valley Authority. IBM, Vermont’s largest employer, has threatened to leave the state if it loses the cheap power of Vermont Yankee.
No, when it comes to marshaling the votes of thousands of coal miners or railroad employees or windmill manufacturers, nuclear definitely fails the test. All it produces is lots of clean, cheap energy.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (55) | Leave a comment
More Articles by William Tucker
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http://spectator.org/archives/2012/08/24/nuclears-dilemma-few-jobs-just
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Von Mises Jr| 8.24.12 @ 7:45AM
This is a ludicrous Luddite argument equaled only to Obama's ATM analogy.
Economic improvement is achieved by net production of goods (GDP), not digging and filling in holes in the ground.
Bastiat explained this in the "Broken Window Fallacy" in 1850. You do not get an economic benefit when a vandal breaks a window and the glazer replaces it. You wind up equal.
If the glazer created windows for new buildings or creates glasses to drink from, you have both the baker's window and the new net benefit of something else.
Romney knows this and I am sure he does not want to dig coal just so someone can run a machine or use a shovel. Obama, not so much.
chuck| 8.24.12 @ 7:58AM
Absolutely. Nuclear energy produces cheap energy, and uses less workers, thus freeing up the work to produce other goods and services. 95% of the population used to work on farms, just to produce enough food for everyone. Now with machines, 2% can produce more, freeing up the rest to produce cars, appliances, etc.
It only makes economic sense to produce energy as inexpensively as possible, and in a way that uses the least amount of labor.
No wonder "the One" can't figure that out.
DTOM| 8.24.12 @ 10:52AM
Spain lost 2.2 jobs for every renewable energy job they created in the 2002-2006 time frame. So Obama's efforts have created 34,409 jobs and destroyed 75,700 jobs in other areas, resulting in a net loss of 41,291 US jobs. Sounds like a good week's work for the greenie socialists!
There is a really hilarious report trying to debunking the Spanish job loss figures. You paid for the debunking malarkey (Except, of course, the Canadian Appleby.) The waste of your tax dollars can be seen here:
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy09osti/46261.pdf
I didn't read the whole thing, but I did manage to spew half a cup of coffee through my nose when I got to the part where the de-bunkers said that it is not necessarily true that government investments are less productive than private investments. US Post Office! Social Security! Medicare - you know the litany!
How soon is November 2nd, Oops, sorry Moochelle- I mean November 6 any way.
Is there any doubt that America will not stand up and do the right thing and throw these thieving liars (or are they lying thieves) off of our backs and into high-priced prisons where they belong?
Don't Tread On Me!!!
Indy| 8.24.12 @ 7:59AM
Ah, time for the Broken Window Fallacy video
http://www.learnliberty.org/co.....ow-fallacy
Harry the Horrible| 8.24.12 @ 9:07AM
Deliver the power cheap, and the jobs will be created in other sectors.
Alan Obama Fan Brooks | 8.24.12 @ 2:21PM
Mining asteroids is the ultimate energy source.
Von Mises Jr| 8.24.12 @ 3:03PM
Did you mean hemorrhoids?
Alan Obama Fan Brooks | 8.27.12 @ 12:31AM
Why is there a photo of Vt. of all places?
There's a half million or so population there.
Stan Redmond| 8.25.12 @ 7:14PM
I think William Tucker is trying to explain the lack of lobbying and political power with nuclear power. Politicians aren't going to waste their efforts pointing out the benefits of nuclear power when there are way more votes to be had subsidizing windpower or expanding coal.
JimH| 8.24.12 @ 8:59AM
On the other hand, we could get clean energy, make Michelle happy by improving fitness and reduce unemployment by hooking up treadmills to generators and telling the jobless that they will get benefits in proportion to the miles they walk.
Mike G| 8.24.12 @ 11:41AM
Yeah, but I can't see the emperor going back to the workfare law that he just killed by edict.
TLP| 8.24.12 @ 9:26AM
First of all - As far as the assumption that Green Energy, and Coal are "Where the Jobs are" I'm confused. Where are the JOBS in Green Energy? Or were counting the Chinese Jobs?
I'm not a big fan of Nuclear. I like it in my Aircraft Carriers, and I like it in my Submarines. In my City or Town?
Not so much.
A Reactor sure makes one Helluva Fat Target if you're a Member of The Religion of Peace and you wanna Kill Everybody.
I mean, who needs to sneak in a Dirtybomb when there's one right over there?
We go fishing in The Sound sometimes. The Boat goes right past the Nuclear Power Plant so close, you could almost hit it with a rock. I've never seen a Guard, or any kind of Security there. Hello?
I have a problem with Radioative Waste Storage. Short of dumping it in the Marianas Trench or blasting it into Space, where does one put such things for the next Thousand Years?
I think that Cold Fusion is the way to go. I think that if we spent enough time on that as we do on Gay Rights, Free Condoms, Abortion on Demand and Freeing that Cop Killing Scumbag - Mumia Kareem Abdul Jabaar - we'd already have it done.
We beat AIDS in less than One Generation once we got serious about it and went at it for what it was - A Mass Killer of Human Beings.
We built The Bomb in the Blink of an eye because WE HAD TO.
We landed on the Moon. Landed on Mars. Landed on Asteroids, Sent Craft to gather Comet Material, and Star Dust from our Sun.
We can't figure out Cold Fusion?
I don't believe it.
fmm| 8.24.12 @ 10:03AM
You need to take a course or two in physics.
PolishKnight| 8.24.12 @ 10:36AM
Although the cold fusion rant at the end undermines his thesis, he has a point. Fukushima changed _everything_. If the Japanese who build some of the most cost effective, reliable cars in the world can't run their own atomic plants safely, then what guarantee do we have that our modern oligarchy will pull it off? Not much. I wouldn't want one next to me now.
And his rant has a point. The WTC took a few years to put up in the 70's. It took them a decade in the present just to make a few holes. The 747 was a classic put into operation in a short time. The 787 "dreamliner" is plagued by production problems. You get the idea. What happened?
As someone who works in modern industry, I see it all the time: H1B's with fake resumes and academic credentials beloved by Republicans looking to "save" money and Democrats getting votes from another new special interest racial "minority". Millions of women hired via quota. That doesn't mean all of them are bad, but we live in an era where hiring decisions are often as political as they are based upon the bottom line.
DTOM| 8.24.12 @ 11:01AM
Hey, Polish!
So you are saying the problem is Women in the work place? Foreigners in the workplace?
Are you goofy?
Compare the accident rates of the initial 747's with the 757's, 777's, 787's. Especially when you consider passenger miles.
American kids don't want to study hard to be engineers and scientists. Schools won't teach science unless it concludes with "Children, that's why America is destroying the planet!"
And if you are working with fake H1B's and fake degrees, wander over to the risk managment side of the business and ask a few pointed questions. Modern industry knows about risk and they will do something about it when they recognize it. Are you just silently collaborating with what you are complaining about?
Well, are you doing your damn duty, or aren't you?
PolishKnight| 8.24.12 @ 11:20AM
No, I'm not goofy. Keep in mind that overall technological progress has made flying safer such as better air traffic control computers, etc. (also, banning smoking on flights was an added bonus!) Seriously though, comparing accident rates doesn't take into account the fact that the planes and a lot of other stuff just got built faster back then compared to now it seems with everything taken into consideration.
Regarding you defense of the H1B's. Did you ever see the commercial with capital one and "Peggy" working the call center? Look it up on youtube. And yes, modern industry often overlooks risk hoping that their legal department can stave off lawsuits from people whose pets died from poison cat and dog food from China, etc. or bad service long enough to cash their artificially inflated stock bonuses and jump out with the golden parachute. If the H1B's tend to vote Democrat, perhaps they are worth it after all! As Karl Marx put it: Sell them the rope to hang them with except Republican crony capitalists seem to like to have a cheap rope made elsewhere or with fake labor. Good for them. As long as it gets the job done!
And I wouldn't call it collaboration, but I know when to keep my mouth shut if I want to survive.
DTOM| 8.24.12 @ 12:13PM
First they came for the gays;
then they came for the Jews;
then they came for the Catholics;
Sound familiar? If nobody does anything to fight wrongs, then the wrongs become the norm.
I'm not crazy- I do support and endorse careful selection of battles. But walking away and bitching to nobody only let's them win!
Kwitcherbitchin!
DTOM| 8.24.12 @ 12:19PM
Do you really think that banning smoking made air travel safer?
Please show us some sourcing on that laugh!
Do you believe in second hand smoke?
Second hand unsafe sex?
Second hand football?
Second hand incandescent light bulbs?
TLP| 8.24.12 @ 6:54PM
I don't know WTF you just said, but in Defence of the Japanese - Nobody ever saw a 9.whatever Earthquake, and the Monster Tsunami that accompanied it.
And, as far as my Rants?
I don't Rant, pal.
I speak The Truth.
We can do Cold Fusion.
I listed all of the things we've accomplished, once we set our minds to accomplishing them.
As Captain Picard, so Famously put it: "It's only Impossible, until it Isn't.
That goes for Cold Fusion, as well.
Go through my list, and tell me How Many of those things were deemed IMPOSSIBLE, until they Weren't.
We can do Anything.
I'll wait.
derfel cadarn| 8.24.12 @ 9:31AM
The issue here primarily is not nuclear energy but the type of reactors and processes. The system presently in use has far to many drawbacks to be further encouraged. I suggest one look into thorium/molten salt reactors and their scalability as a far superior answer the nuclear industry. Unfortunately it is this ability to down size that will be the reason they will never be employed. Energy independence is not something totalitarian governments wish to encourage. This technology is not new, being around nearly 50 years. It is certainly a better alternative to uranium reactors but the best ideas rarely get fair play. Thorium/molten salt reactors look it up you will be surprised.
fmm| 8.24.12 @ 10:04AM
This article and many of the comments illustrate why we are in such big trouble, as all the deficiencies can be laid at the feet of big government and politics. Truth be damned in the world today.
JD| 8.24.12 @ 10:19AM
What a stark presentation of the foolishness of Obama. He wants us to truly believe that the purpose of business is to employ people, not to produce.
"Jobs" are not the real goal. Prosperity is the goal.
Von Mises Jr| 8.24.12 @ 10:47AM
Thomas Edison would not have invented the light bulb and dictation machine if he was working the farm fields. Bill Gates would not have designed Microsoft applications and Steve Jobs the I Pad and I Phone if they were hunting for rabbits.
Innovation that made America Exceptional happened by continually freeing more men from existence living. But Obama would argue that the farmers and rabbit hunters had a job and he should be King.
DTOM| 8.24.12 @ 11:04AM
Uh, no - the market provided rewards for risks taken successfully. If it was just a question of excess food, subsistence then it would stand to reason that more temperate climates would have considerably more innovation - which ain't how it happened. Consider the South and the North in the mid 1800's...
Guess again.
DTOM
JD| 8.24.12 @ 11:33AM
DTOM, your point is off target. Food distribution in America is national - New York City never grew its own food. America as a whole benefited from labor capacity freed by farming advances. That the benefit happened most in certain areas is due to other factors.
Actually, one of the benefits of improved food storage and transportation is that all the farming could be done in the best climates, so it makes sense that those in the worst climates had the most freed up labor.
DTOM| 8.24.12 @ 12:16PM
So it's fat people that make for innovation?
Then why isn't America, land of the over-fed, suffering a decline in innovation?
It's not about food - it's about the combination of reward for risk taking, rewards for investments in risky ventures, and individual initiative.
It ain't the food...
JD| 8.24.12 @ 1:06PM
You're painting a false choice. It's not "risk-taking vs labor capacity." It's both.
People slaving for 16 hours a day to put food on the table, with no margin, cannot take a risk on a side venture. They'd starve to death before they succeeded.
Entrepreneurs need to have something to risk before they can risk it. That something - time and money - comes from being efficient enough in sustenance production to accrue savings. One generation's efficiency improvements increase the creative capacity of the next generation!
DTOM| 8.24.12 @ 2:03PM
Sorry,
Your false choice is food vs. innovation.
My 'false choice' is risk vs. reward.
VM, Jr's point was that since Tom Edison didn't have to be out chasing rabbits for dinner he was able to invent the light bulb. I say bologna! He had access to capital markets, intellectual property protections, and he knew that if he invented the light bulb (Which was his specific intention while he was doing it, in which he invested time and money, to do so.) he would be rewarded by the market. It was those selfsame markets for investment capital that made it possible for TAE to focus on incandescent light bulbs, instead of chasing hare tails...Any idea how many dead rabbits TAE could have purchased with the proceeds from his intellectual property? (If he had not squandered them through his own mismanagement and JP Morgan's acquisitive bargaining techniques!)
Most countries in the world have sufficient food, but few can match us in innovation. Until lately we've had the risk-reward thing figured out so that it was worthwhile to innovate. In the last ten years we (The Federal Government) have been very busy destroying the connection between risk and reward here.
It's NOT about the bologna or the bologna sandwich, it is about the proximity of rewards and risks.
Break that connection and innovation will disappear. A full buffet table does not guarantee innovation - actually, aren't starving artists the best?
DTOM
Von Mises Jr| 8.24.12 @ 3:28PM
Thomas Edison was his own capital market. He risked his own money and said something to the effect that his success was at the expense of thousands of failures.
Most countries do not have sufficient food. They are run by centrally planned statist government or dictators who make decisions without functioning capital markets.
The capital markets are a result of division of labor and free trade, not magical markets or society.
DTOM| 8.24.12 @ 3:58PM
Then how is it that he lost title to all of his patents to JP Morgan, who then turned around and formed the Edison General Electric Company?
Actually TAE borrowed about $500K from Morgan for the commercialization of the electrical generating/lighting business.
His secretary at that time was a guy named Sam Insul who left Edison in the melt down that happened at JP Morgan's hands. Insul moved to Chicago and founded Commonwealth Edison which he built up to a utility plants in 32 states by the early 1930's.
Insul pioneered retail stock sales, selling stock to your customers, and convincing people that utility stocks that provided a steady stream mof dividends was the perfect investment for widows, retirees. In the early 1930's, the feds decided that no one could make as much money as Insul did and still be honest. They prosecuted him because his brother Martin had used some stock in one of his local utility operating companies as collateral for a loan. Later, Sam used the stock of the holding company that held the operating companies for loan collateral. The feds decided that was fraud and prosecuted him, leaving him penniless within a year or two.
During the 1980's, the Chairman of Commonwealth Edison was one Thomas Ayers. You betcha, Bill Ayers's daddy. There was even talk that Tom Ayers's wife helped Barry O financially with college and law school.
This can be a very small, creepy world...
Von Mises Jr| 8.24.12 @ 7:05PM
JD,
I am not sure if DTOM is D'Red Communist or Perppy. I am betting D"Red is now D'Tom. But it rambles like Perp.
Discussion over with the troll.
merlin| 8.26.12 @ 12:04AM
Production is wealth.
Bob K| 8.24.12 @ 10:20AM
The statement in the first sentence that over 34,000 jobs were created in the wind and solar industry is absurd. There must be nearly 100 wind turbines in NE PA and the only jobs there are for security personnel. The electricity generated must, by regulation, be purchased by the closest electrical utility. The utility then expands it's reach and sells it. In our area it is my understanding that it effectively ends up in the Washington DC suburbs. Some people and/or corporations here are making a hell of a lot of money from these contraptions but no one seems to know who or what they are. Since a profit is guaranteed it would be nice to be able to invest in them.
It would be even nicer to own them. They are certainly cheaper to develop than a gas well and the gas industry here in PA employs many people.
DTOM| 8.24.12 @ 11:12AM
Bob K - you Einstein pretender. Every time an unreliable renewable is installed on the grid, it is required that a matching "spinning reserve" generator also be installed -because if the unreliable renewable suddenly stops producing, either load gets shed, or you crash the grid.
The most cost effective form of spinning reserve is currently Natural Gas combined-cycle generators. (It's a jet engine connected to an electrical generator with the heat from the jet exhaust generating low pressure steam which is run through another electrical generator.)
So for every windmill or solar cell there has to be a NG fired generator. Here's a novel idea - just build the reliable NG generator and DON'T build the unreliable, renewable.
This is how STUPID the GREEN energy thing is!
Ever wonder why T. Boone Pickens was pushing wind power so much five or six years ago? Cause he had tons of Natural Gas to sell! HAH! Are we chumps or what?
DTOM
Bob K| 8.24.12 @ 2:14PM
Not pretending to be Einstein at all.
I'm told that the only time these things generate electricity is when the wind is blowing between 15mph and 55mph-faster than that and they shut them down. Regardless of that, when they are running the nearest utility is required to purchase that electricity and there are a number of them nearby. People who have invested in them can't lose money; so I've been told.
The Utility which supplies my electricity is currently in the process of converting from coal generation to natural gas despite the fact that they are sitting in the center of the largest concentration of Anthracite coal in the universe and the gas will have to piped into the company from at least 50 miles away.
DTOM| 8.24.12 @ 4:07PM
The price of natural gas was $7/thousand cubic feet in 2006, now it is $2/thousand cubic feet. That's why - oh and Barack Obama has publicly sworn to destroy the coal industry in the United States. Which his EPA , with executive orders blazing, is doing.
Actually, the US has more than doubled NG reserves in the last five years - that's what all the brouhaha-booming economy in North Dakota is all about. There will be another, bigger boom in the next five years in oil from the same areas plus Texas, Colorado, Utah, Montana. The GAO reported on MAy 10, 2012 that ONE deposit in Colorado and Utah is equal to the KNOWN RESERVES ON THE PLANET...
Don't trust me? Lookee here at the GAO's report:
http://science.house.gov/sites...../HHRG-112- SY20-WState-AMittal-20120510.pdf
The short course is this - it's a combination of directional drilling and you betcha, fracking that is producing this wealth oil bonanza. Good ol' yankee ingenuity!
That's why Romney's talking about energy independence in eight years - it would actually be difficult to stop it - so why not get out in front.
This is not a good time to be betting on increased oil prices in the medium and longer term...
DTOM
Yeah, that's Obama's GAO....
DTOM| 8.24.12 @ 4:17PM
Yeah, and no, you were not pretending to be Al Einstein. You're OK. Me, I'm just trying, real trying...HeeHaw!
Bob K| 8.24.12 @ 11:39PM
I trust you. Here in NE PA the gas is almost 99% pure methane and it is selling for $2.00/1000 cubic feet and wells are being closed down while the industry is now concentrating on the fields in Western PA, West Virginia and Ohio, where there are high concentrations of propane, ethanes and benzenes in the gas which is selling for $6.00/1000 cubic feet. Royal Dutch Shell is negotiating with the state to build a 2 Billion dollar Ethane Cracker plant outside Pittsburgh now.
http://stateimpact.npr.org/pen.....ob-claims/
Apparently it is very hard to liquify Methane but rather easy to do it to ethane and propane and some benzenes are already liquified.
But if Royal Dutch Shell is in on this questions are rising about whether the gas will stay in the USA for use or be shipped out. They apparently have lots of cash but not much in the way of resources compared to other energy companies.
Bob K| 8.25.12 @ 1:13AM
As I said, DTOM, I trust you. What I don't trust is Governments: Federal, State or Local. If we get all this Gas Fracking off the ground and get some more oil refineries on line and keep coal viable we can become energy independent easily enough. But it can't be cheap either. All 57 of our states have costs in maintaining their roads and bridges and these costs come mostly from taxes on the energy used to drive vehicles over them. Obama know this because he has been in all 57 of them and sees how improving their infrastructure can create jobs. So he isn't going to try to keep energy taxes down because they are needed to keep people employed and keep commerce flowing and the states which won't get much money from the feds for their own roads will have to increase their own taxes on the energy sold within those states.
Art| 8.24.12 @ 10:29AM
Got it that nuclear is the most efficient means we have at present to produce electricity. Has there been any advancement in spent-fuel-rod disposal technology to silence one of the most salient points against nuclear? (Not being rhetorical; I'm asking.)
JD| 8.24.12 @ 11:34AM
Ask the French about that. Their chief advancement is only considering the dangerous stuff hazardous waste instead of trying to quarantine everything. That's why they get 85% of their power from nuclear and store all their waste in a building, with room to spare.
DTOM| 8.24.12 @ 4:13PM
Actually US nuclear plants are rather inefficient in their usage of the energy in the fuel, i.e. they are not designed to squeeze every kW out of each fuel pellet. They were designed in an era when efficiency was subordinated to, hang on, you won't believe this: safety.
Nuclear power's problem is that an intervenor can ask a question that costs him nothing to ask: the nuclear power plant operator may have to spend hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars to answer that question.
The intervenor looks at the answer, shrugs her shoulders, and asks another costless question, which then requires another costly, time-consuming answer.
Given that cost imbalance, it's no surprise that investors will not invest in nuclear power plants. Especially when politicians have absolutely no advantage in pursuing cheap power....
Don't Tread On Me
TeaPartyNow| 8.24.12 @ 2:21PM
It's a sick little game that these guys play. I am disgusted that any presidential candidate would have to pander to a very small group of people for votes, the way romney and obama are pandering in the story above. I get it, it is the issue of energy, but why can't they talk to all of us about what they supposedly will do? And I don't believe that if it needs to be paid for by taxpayer money, it should be considered energy. If solar and wind want to be a source, they need to get off of the teat. We are supporting bad behavior, when we refuse to make these things live in the real world with the rest of us. It's like handing money to a bum. If no one gave him money, he'd find a job.
If we stopped supporting supposedly clean energy, it would learn how to compete.
Al Adab| 8.24.12 @ 2:39PM
To The Left, market viability has nothing to do with "doing the right thing". We must have green energy (they believe) so any and every subsidy toward that end is justifiable. Frankly to them, the ends justify the means and how many times have we heard them say, "it's the right thing to do"?
Once we agree that free markets are preferable to central planners we can reclaim our liberty. If, on the other hand, we continue to adhere to professional regulators as decision makers we retain less and less of our Liberty which is what made the nation the most prosperous, innovative and free in human history.
Kingofthenet| 8.24.12 @ 5:24PM
The REAL problem with Nuclear Energy is GREED, OK there is greed in ALL businesses, but the problem is acute in Nuclear Technology. Give you an example, you have TWO power plants, One Nuclear one Natural Gas. You want to get the MOST money out of the plants BEFORE you replace them with a state of the art, new plant. So say you run it 15-20 years past it's normally expected life, with the Gas Plant, maybe you get a few more minor leaks,and increased maintenance costs to keep it going. No Big Deal, same for the Nuclear plant, but now those leaks are leeching radioactive elements into ground water and making for a MONSTER mess.
Al Adab| 8.24.12 @ 5:46PM
For the sake of national security the Dept. of the Navy should immediatly construct and operate about fifty new nuclear plants. The construction of several new refineriens is likewise critical to our energy independance and security. Does it make sense that we export say 100 oil tankers every day while we import 100 oil tankers every day if our goal is energy security? Our Army, Navy and Air Force need to be secure from international interruptions of supply.
To many this will not sound like a Conservative position. However, national security is one of the few enumerated powers and our energy supply is critical to that function.
JD| 8.24.12 @ 7:11PM
That's a slippery slope. They could twist nationalized health care into a "defense" necessity, too.
Cats1cowboy| 8.26.12 @ 9:18AM
You have NO idea what you re talking abt.
Sonderegger | 8.24.12 @ 11:23PM
he only way in which nuclear really "creates job" is in providing clean, cheap electricity to make other manufacturing operations profitable. Tennessee has refashioned itself into a major auto manufacturing state, hosting both Nissan and Volkswagen's U.S. headquarters and creating 100,000 ancillary jobs, partly by capitalizing on nuclear electricity from the Tennessee Valley http://hotsaleairmax.eklablog.com Authority. IBM, Vermont's largest employer, has threatened to leave the state if it loses the cheap power o
The Avenger| 8.26.12 @ 8:29AM
Is it asking too much to have the pols do what is right for the country as opposed to doing what it takes to be elected? Silly me, what a thought.
Cats1cowboy| 8.26.12 @ 9:17AM
RE: "All it produces is lots of clean, cheap energy." Mainenance, spare parts, lower electric bills count, too.
Kingofthenet| 8.26.12 @ 11:09PM
Yup, just them 'eggheads' with their 'Protons', and 'Nuclei' not REAL man stuff like long chain Hydro-carbons.