The U.S. Energy Plan at Work

For a long time all we knew about the Bush energy plan was that Dick Cheney had disappeared into an undisclosed location with some undisclosed energy honchos and cooked up an energy policy for all of us.

Now we are beginning to see the fruits of that policy hanging on the trees.

That big bunch a juicy red grapes hanging over there are the 300 new jobs available at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission which is expecting lots of new business as the nuclear energy industry ramps up behind all the new tax breaks in the new policy. NRC is expecting lots of upgrading of existing plants (adding 3000 megawatts) and as many as 27 new plants (adding an additional 6000 mw).

Nagging problems include anti-nuclear activists and the continuing and intractable problem of disposing of the radioactive waste from the plants. Since the dawn of the nuclear age in 1945 we have succeeded in dealing with approximately none of the waste that has been generated by energy and weapons production. The "final solution", the depository at Yucca Mountain, keeps slipping into the future, presently "scheduled" (don't snicker, these are serious people) for 2017 ( with some speculating 2020) against its original 1998 planned opening.

Then we have, for the alternative energy minded, one of our principal solar energy companies announcing a great big ripe melon of an investment of $150,000,000, in a state-of-the-art photovoltaic cell manufacturing plant that will also generate 400 highly desirable high-tech jobs . . . in the former East Germany.
Apparently the incentives for solar energy are better in the former Communist police state than they are here under the Bush energy policy. We suspect that Amory Lovins was not in with the Cheney in-crowd.

You may join in our suspicions or not, but in any case
StayNaked
jd