Posted by
Playful Walrus on Wednesday, December 30, 2009 4:00:00 PM
A French nuclear engineering firm and a group of investors announced yesterday that they want to build one or two nuclear power plants near Fresno, California. They haven't selected an exact site yet, nor do they have the financing lined up. But the "environmentalists-of-no" appear ready to obstruct any momentum the group builds. Marc Lifsher reports in the Los Angeles Times.
Environmentalists were skeptical that the agreement would go anywhere. They point out that California has a 3-decade-old law that bans the construction of nuclear power plants unless the state can certify that the federal government has come up with a plan for the permanent storage of spent nuclear fuel, which is highly radioactive.
No such facility exists in the country, and plans to open one at Yucca Mountain in Nevada have been put on hold by the Obama administration.
So - the environmentalists say you can't do it unless you have a place to put the waste, and then they do everything they can to make sure you don't have a place to put the waste.
The investors think the law won't prevent them, though.
The group anticipates using treated waste water from local municipalities to cool the reactors, Hutson sad.
Recycling water!
Nuclear waste could be sent to France for reprocessing into new fuel, he said.
So there is a place to send the waste - just not here.
Fossil fuels are supposedly about to destroy the planet with their enormous carbon footprint. Nuclear energy avoids the kind of carbon footprint fossil fuels create. But environmentalists are afraid of what the radiation might do - if it leaks. Isn't what something might do much preferable to the certain impending catastrophe fossil fuels are creating? Global warming alarmists should be clamoring for nuclear energy.
According to some environmentalists, wind turbines threaten birds and are a visual blight. Damns threaten fish. Is solar power efficient and reliable enough for our needs? What exactly to the environmentalists propose? Magic crystals?
Furthermore, this involves a partnership with France. The Left should be happy about that!