So I just read the McCain wants to build 45 new nuclear power plants by 2030 which would be a very impressive feat for a 70-something year old, especially as he will be in his early 90s by the time he plans on finishing the project. But I am guessing he probably wants other people to build them, which would make a lot more sense. What doesn't make sense is how someone could claim to be tough on terrorism but want to increase the amount of fissile material out there. 45 new nuclear power plants would produce a lot of waste (which we can't permanently store by the way) which could be used in making a nuclear bomb. The thing that stops terrorists from making nuclear devices isn't the technological complexity (a basic bomb can be made by throwing two pieces of uranium at each other) it's getting the nuclear material. So if we drastically increase the number of nuclear plants we have, we will increase the likelihood of terrorists getting nuclear material (and the likelihood of others getting cancer/radiation poisoning).
Oh, and don't forget that Nuclear power plants need lots of water, an increasingly scarce commodity.
Oh, and the fact that companies are reluctant to make a nuclear power plant without tons of gov't subsidies, which of course we all know is a big tenet of McCain's platform.
I wish I had the numbers on the cost per watt of solar and wind compared to the full cost (including semi-permanent storage) of nuclear power. Also, I wonder how many brownie points solar and wind get since they don't contribute to terrorist threats as nukes do.
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