Electric Cars and the Bail Out

There aren't going to be any electric cars! It would add at least $10,000 to the price of a car and, without nuclear power, there is no cheap way to charge them. Our government, especially Congress, is suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder. I've been in the energy business enough years to see Federal energy plans come and go; none stay around long enough to solve any problems.

It takes about 22 mills to make a kilowatt from coal and 8 mills to make a kilowatt from nuclear power. I sat at meetings in the White House and watched the nuclear industry distroyed. I was also involved in the Breeder Reactor Corporation. We were $1.4 billion into the program and a new President of the United States decided to kill the project. The head of the USDOE said, "the President feels we can buy that technology from the French." When Three Mile Island failed and indeed had a "melt down," the safe guards worked. A British executive from a UK nuclear utility told me they vent more radioactivity during maintence than escaped from Three Mile Island and yet the environmentalist in the USA used the incident as an example of why we shouldn't build nuclear plants.

It isn't just nuclear. I was Chairman of a Federal coal gasification program in the late 70's. The Federal government was going to reduce our dependance on foreign oil. Somewhere along the line that basket of kittens we call the Congress saw something more shiny and forgot about energy independence... again.