On Monday afternoon, the Senate Republicans Conference held a hearing on climate-change. The eight speakers (four senators and four participants from outside organizations) gave brief presentations on the energy crisis, the Democrats' proposed national cap-and-trade energy tax, and the damaging effects it would have on our economy. Their unanimous conclusion: nuclear energy is the solution.
The speakers, four U.S. Senators and four participants from outside organizations, were:
Senator Bob Bennet (R-Utah)
Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tennessee)
Senator Jim Bunning (R-Kentucky)
Senator Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi)
Ben Lieberman, Heritage Foundation
Ted Rockwell, American Nuclear Society
Christopher Guith, U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Kevin Book, ClearView Energy Partners
(Click their names to read their prepared statments.)
The panel was chaired by Senator Bob Bennet (R-Utah), who proposed that in order to reduce harming the environment without crippling the economy, the U.S. should build 100 nuclear power plants by 2030, doubling the current number of nuclear plants and providing cheap, sustainable energy. "One of the driving forces behind America's economic growth has been our access to cheap energy. If we're going to survive in the kind of economy we want, we need to have access to cheap energy." Senator Alexander, who has been pushing congress to build nuclear plants, stressed that nuclear energy was the solution to the energy crisis. This was a reiteration of a point he also made last month, when he stated, "We're getting too much lip service and not enough action from the Obama administration on nuclear power, and the impression is being left that we can run this big, complex country on electricity from the wind, the sun and the earth... [but nuclear power] is the only course we have to provide energy independence, good jobs, and clean energy."
Ben Leiberman, a Senior Policy Analyst at the Heritage Institute's Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, stressed the enormous cost the Democrats' proposed energy bill would place on consumers. The costs would begin immediately if the bill was passed, and according to Lieberman's analysis, "costs go up 90 percent by 2035, gasoline by 58 percent, and natural gas by 55...the cumulative costs for a family of four by then will be nearly $20,000." Lieberman stressed that the people who would be hardest hit by the bill would be people living in rural communities.
No one could agree more than Tom Rockwell, a distinguished nuclear scientist. An avid supporter of expanding nuclear technology, Rockwell proceeded to paint nuclear plants as not only extremely cost-effective, but also safe for the environment and people. He said the stigma surrounding nuclear technology is unnecessary, and in his sixty years as a nuclear scientist he has not found anything to raise alarm about this energy source. "Let's get real," he said in his testimony. "It is crazy to fear that one's health and life are threatened by entities known to be harmless, whether those entities are goblins under the bed or trivial levels of radiation from non-existent radiological catastrophes." His recommendation was to proceed as quickly as possible.
The remaining panelists agreed with Rockwell, to a point. However, both Kevin Book of ClearView Energy Partners and Christopher Guith, vice president for policy at the Chamber of Commerce's Institute for 21st Century Energy urged caution. Kevin Book warned against placing too much store in new technologies, as "mass consumption of new technologies can bring unsustainable, short-term spikes that drive prices up." Nuclear technology is certainly expensive, but as the speakers yesterday pointed out, the proposed cap-and-trade system would not be economically feasible even in the short term, let alone over the next twenty years.
While it is clear that nuclear technology is one of the best available options, there are still problems, both in price, as Guith and Book pointed out, but also in safety. Although the question of safety was raised, repeatedly, none of the panelists were able to come up with a reassuring answer or a sure way to store large amounts of nuclear waste. Rockwell said he believed the waste could be recycled, but that it could be one hundred years before we had the technology to do so.
At the moment, the issue is less a problem with nuclear technology and more its cost: the start-up capital for nuclear plants would be huge, and our current economic state is not exactly ideal. Christopher Guith pointed out that while the processes have been in place to build nuclear plants for years, not a single one has been built due to the expense. While in the long run nuclear plants save money, they require a huge starting capital to build, and without government support private companies cannot afford it. He also emphasized the mistake of abandoning other options, adding that, "nuclear power alone is not the answer to our energy challenges. We cannot afford to foreclose technologies that advance our national interests. A balanced portfolio is essential to a secure energy future, as well as a cleaner environment."
Additional reading from the Republican Senate Conference
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