McCain needs to go back to math class
Last night, during the second US presidential debate, Senator McCain announced that nuclear power could solve the problem of global warming, “The best way of fixing it? Nuclear power.”
It doesn’t matter how many times I hear it, I’m still frustrated that we are being told nuclear power can ‘fix” global warming. My guess is that Senator McCain has figured out that in order to sell this dangerous and expensive bogus plan, he has to lie, because nobody would buy the idea of nuclear power otherwise.
Staff at the NY Times examined statements made by the candidates as they made them last night. Here is what they had to say about McCain’s claims that nuclear power would save the day.
- Nuclear Power | 10:14 p.m. Senator John McCain said of global warming, “The best way of fixing it? Nuclear power.”
He’s right that, once built, a nuclear power plant emits no carbon dioxide, the main human-generated greenhouse gas linked to recent warming of the global climate.
But many energy experts have run the numbers on just how many nuclear power plants would have to be constructed between now and 2050 just to avert even a tenth or so of the projected increase in emissions of carbon dioxide coming from expanding use of coal in that span.
According to analysis by Professors Stephen Pacala and Robert Socolow of Princeton University, the world, in the end, would need to build about 880 nuclear plants – twice the number operating worldwide today – by 2050 just to avoid that small fraction of projected emissions.
So nuclear power, even in a best case, is only likely to be a small fraction of the long-term effort to curb emissions of carbon dioxide.
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Comments
haha, awesome. i live in aussie, so i really pity the american people faced with this election. how come a person this dumb can be a candidate.
Posted by: Victor Augusteo | October 8, 2008 5:42 PM
OK, how about this, then?
Q: What's the best way of not fixing global warming?
A: Atomkraft - nein danke!
Posted by: Vinny Burgoo | October 8, 2008 7:55 PM
Remember McCain is first and foremost a US veteran soldier.
He grew up in country that many consider a military dictatorship. Americans as smart as they are still don't realize the best solutions are natural... Only the state of Alaska is still semi-natural and wild. All other US states are waste land or void of wildlife. Parks in the US have hotels and are smaller then parking lots compared to Canada. Mr.McCain should stop being a soldier and get a real job!!! And mayb e he should go to garbage dumps or ghettos! Maybe he should try camping without hunting or a gun... I'll bet he'd be scared of animals that are extinct!!!! GO NATURAL... Its the only way...
Posted by: Michael Boltz | October 9, 2008 7:48 AM
Jessica - The 104 nuclear power plants operating in the United States produced 806 million megawatt-hours of electricity with approximately the same emissions per megawatt hour as wind turbines.
Simple math would indicate that 8.8 times as many nuclear plants - each at least 20% larger than the average existing plants based on the designs being submitted for licensing - would produce about 8,500 million megawatt-hours of electricity.
In contrast, total wind, solar and geothermal electricity generation in the US in 2007 was 47 million megawatt-hours. In In order to equal what you seem to think is a trivial amount of low emission electricity from nuclear power we would need to multiply our current wind, solar and geothermal power production by a factor of 181.
That seems like a VERY tall order for power sources that have been growing rapidly for at least a decade already to reach their current production levels.
The other thing to consider is that the 104 plants currently operating in the US were all built during a 20 year period in an age where design was done using paper, T-squares, and pencils while computations were done with slide rules and time share mainframe computers.
We can do a lot better now.
Posted by: Rod Adams | October 9, 2008 11:36 AM
Rob -
The fundamental problems with nuclear power (waste, cost, link to nuclear proliferation, etc) remain.
Jess's point is that there is more than one good solution. Energy efficiency is key, for example.
It's true that we've got a big job ahead of us. Renewables and energy efficiency are up to it.
Please see our blueprint for an energy revolution for details about how we can turn back climate change while creating real economic growth.
Posted by: Andrew | October 10, 2008 11:15 AM