Posted 9/15/2007 02:57:00 PM by Douglas

In case you needed another reason to hate Jane Fonda, now The New York Times, of all places, is blaming her for global warming. No shit, check it out.

What it did produce, stoked by “The China Syndrome,” was a widespread panic. The nuclear industry, already foundering as a result of economic, regulatory and public pressures, halted plans for further expansion. And so, instead of becoming a nation with clean and cheap nuclear energy, as once seemed inevitable, the United States kept building power plants that burned coal and other fossil fuels. Today such plants account for 40 percent of the country’s energy-related carbon-dioxide emissions. Anyone hunting for a global-warming villain can’t help blaming those power plants — and can’t help wondering too about the unintended consequences of Jane Fonda.

Well, maybe that's not fair, but who cares? Anyone going to cry a single tear about the 'unintended consequences' of Jane's political views? Maybe I should ask someone at the local V.F.W. chapter that question.

France, which generates nearly 80 percent of its electricity by nuclear power, seems to think so. So do Belgium (56 percent), Sweden (47 percent) and more than a dozen other countries that generate at least one-fourth of their electricity by nuclear power. And who is the world’s single largest producer of nuclear energy?

Improbably enough, that would be . . . the United States. Even though the development of new nuclear plants stalled by the early 1980s, the country’s 104 reactors today produce nearly 20 percent of the electricity the nation consumes. This share has actually grown over the years along with our consumption, since nuclear technology has become more efficient. While the fixed costs of a new nuclear plant are higher than those of a coal or natural-gas plant, the energy is cheaper to create: Exelon, the largest nuclear company in the United States, claims to produce electricity at 1.3 cents per kilowatt-hour, compared with 2.2 cents for coal.

American reactors could generate the same kind of efficiencies as the European reactors if the idiotic D.O.E policy to shit-can breeder reactors in the late 70s. So is nuclear energy the way to go? It's certainly not without it's drawbacks, but one thing you have to say about it: IT WORKS. Unlike the dual government funded nightmares of wind and ethanol.