While I was reading about the increase in federal funds promised by President Barack Obama to help facilitate the construction of new nuclear power plants, I was stunned to read something I thought was a game changer. I’ll post the paragraphs below, and see if you can see what I saw:

Nuclear plants accounted for 20 percent of U.S. power generation in 2008, according to the Energy Department. Generation was off 13 percent through October of 2009 compared to the same period in 2007, before the worst economic slump since the Great Depression hit the U.S. economy.

Industry groups such as the Washington-based Nuclear Energy Institute have said the loan guarantees are critical to reviving the industry because most companies can’t afford the capital investment in a facility that can take a decade to complete. The institute in a December report put the cost of a reactor at as much as $9 billion.   

Did you see it?

Here’s what gave me pause:

Industry groups such as the Washington-based Nuclear Energy Institute have said the loan guarantees are critical to reviving the industry because most companies can’t afford the capital investment in a facility that can take a decade to complete.

When I read that, I thought, “That’s the reason the liberals gave to squash the idea of drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge.”

That ’s what the Natural Resource Defense Council said:

It would take 10 years for any Arctic Refuge oil to reach the market, and even when production peaks — in the distant year of 2027 — the refuge would produce a paltry 3 percent of Americans’ daily consumption.

That’s what Democrat Matthew Littman said during the ‘08 campaign:

Well, what good would it do? We wouldn’t get that gasoline from ANWR for 10 years, even if we started drilling tomorrow. So for the next 10 years, what are we going to do?

That’s what CBS News said:

While ANWR has substantial oil, none would flow for 10 years.

That’s not what I said:

Tell a liberal that you think there should be drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and you can expect to hear that it will take 10 years to get that oil out of the ground. TEN years! Which is far too long of course, because in ten years, crude oil will be useless to the world. Right?

That’s the mantra from the left, though. Ten years will pass before we see anything from ANWR. It’s hard to believe when you consider the following ten things were done in less than ten years…

So, if a decade is a reason to forego any consideration of drilling for oil in ANWR, why is it not a reason to forget about building nuclear power plants?

In the words of President Obama, let me be clear. I am not opposed to the construction of new nuclear power plants. I am very much for them. But I think the duplicity here by the president in promoting an exercise that will take just as long as a process he and his leftist brethren rejected needs to be highlighted. We need oil just as much as we need electricity from nuclear power.

In reality, this is very easy for him to promote. He knows that any new proposed nuclear power plants would be smothered in red tape, eco-Marxist protests and the usual NIMBY push back.

He loses nothing by pushing it. He knows it will never happen but can position himself as being for it.

Related posts:

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• Pelosi: “Drilling is a Hoax” But More Oil Would Drop the Price of Gas
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