Following on the House passage of his energy bill, the President is promoting nuclear power:
Speaking at a Small Business Administration conference, Bush hailed nuclear power as part of a long-term solution to the nation’s energy challenge and outlined plans to encourage construction of oil refineries and facilities for storing liquefied natural gas…
The Bush plan also calls for providing a new incentive to build nuclear power plants by reducing the “uncertainty in the licensing process” and providing “federal risk insurance to mitigate the additional cost of unforeseen delays.”
Industry analysts questioned whether this would be enough to spur construction. Investors have been leery of the upfront costs needed to build a nuclear plant compared with other forms of electricity production.
Of course, one has to wonder just how large a share of those offputting up-front costs are due to the licensing process itself, and to nuisance litigation by those opposed to nuclear power as such.
Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to be making the obvious tie-in to the so-called “hydrogen economy”. While I’m personally agnostic on the concept, it is a popular notion/fad, especially among those one would expect to express knee-jerk opposition to nuclear power. Even worse than missing a good marketing opportunity, Bush’s reference to hydrogen in tonight’s press conference described it as a source of energy, rather than an energy storage/delivery medium. Nuclear power would be an excellent means to produce hydrogen for other applications, since it doesn’t rely on the fossil fuels hydrogen is intended to supplant — making this connection (and clearing up what is a common misconception in the process) would do wonders for both ends.
(And another thing…does it make any economic sense at all to bump up tax incentives for people purchasing hybrid cars? It’s a supply rather than a demand problem — the incentives ought to be directed at automakers, to encourage them to increase the production of hybrids to meet market demand.)
Personally, I prefer the consumer tax insentives. Then, after I buy my Accord Hybrid and take the tax deduction, we can talk about supplier incentives.
That’s an excellent point — first the economic self-interest, then the economic sense.