Question:

With gasoline prices so high and a large part of the cost going into the hands of America's enemies, why are we not legislating incentives to build nuclear electric generating plants to reduce our dependence on oil?

Asked by: Brian Schwartz from Weston, FL

Asked of All U.S. Congress on Mar 10th, 2008
Categories: Energy · Homeland Security · Technology. Tags: National Security.
7
votes
Answer:

Answer from: U.S. Rep. Lee Terry (R-NE)

We aren’t doing enough to incent nuclear energy and there’s two major road blocks to nuclear energy. One’s just the high cost. It takes several, I think 5 billion dollars to build a new plant, whereas it’s a third of that to build a coal plant. So the government has to step up and provide some kind of grant or loan fund to be able to offset some of the costs. The second thing is a big thing, and that’s what do we do with the waste. And we can’t get Yucca Mountain through the Senate. So even if we came up with a grant or loan fund they still don’t have anyplace to store it. And being able to recycle the rods, we can do that to some extent now but you still have to deal with the totally spent rod. So until we resolve the waste issue you’re going to have very few people that are going to put up the cash to build a nuclear plant.

Answered on Apr 23rd, 2008

Answer:

Answer from: U.S. Rep. Nathan Deal (R-GA)

In the last Congress nuclear energy was one of those parts of the package we had as a part as an energy package. I certainly think it is one that needs to have greater emphasis. When you look at countries like France that have 75 to 80% of their power supplied by nuclear plants, you have to ask why we don’t do that in this country. We do have some that are in the early stages of coming in the planning part of it. We have at least one in my state of George that is planned come on line. But those take a long time so delays in getting them implemented in the beginning means the whole process slows down. We did have language in the last energy bill under Republican leadership that did speed up the process of getting those approved. However it’s one of those real clean energy sources that we all are looking for.

Answered on Apr 23rd, 2008

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