Nuclear power would eliminate over half of global warming emissions, I don't know why people who believe in global warming aren't jumping all over it. It could be that they know its not that serious...

Or it could be that they know there are serious risks associated with nuclear power...

Personally, I am in favor of a heavier investment, but there are real unsolved problems, like what to do with the incredibly nasty waste, for starters. But nuclear (fission) is not a long-term replacement for oil. There is only so much Uranium, and if you stick to the (very safe) design of conventional civilian reactors, you depend on another finite fuel for energy.

But all this misses Josh's point. It is incoherent to say that you believe free markets should determine energy use, and then turn around and push a particular alternative through government action.

Republicans forever have managed to cram market memes cheek-by-jowl to subsidy memes in their craniums. This is just one of the latest incarnations of this phenomenon. In psychology, it is called "cognitive dissonance", I believe.

C'mon, libref, like both parties don't do it.  Just a question of emphasis.

Nuclear died because it became nearly impossible to permit a plant. In effect, a negative subsidy was imposed. I think that was what Ponnuru meant to say. If so, I agree completely. Eliminate all subsidies and tax carbon, either directly or indirectly through cap and trade. I believe that most in

the oil, gas and coal industries would prefer to see a direct tax approach rather than cap and trade, because the cost would be more visible to the consumer, but I may be wrong about that.

Above all, do not pick winners and losers.  

The irony of ironies is that if the government eliminated subsidies for energy production it would shake out like this:

Oil and Coal would be the big losers. The real cost of oil would skyrocket because the actual cost still isn't born by the consumer. Same with coal except Coal would last a little longer because we've got proven domestic reserves but extraction and burning of coal will be regulated even more and banks are not financing new plants these days.

Solar and wind would actually shake out and be more competitive on a cost per kW basis. As it is now they operate at a disadvantage to Oil and Coal. Private and public funding would increase as State and Local utilities find that they can generate more quickly and with less regulatory hassle in permitting with wind and solar.

Geothermal will grow but remain very much a regional solution to energy generation.

And the we get to Nuk-u-lar. Nuclear will die and never return again. It's far too expensive to permit, far to expensive to build, waste has been and always will be an ongoing issue since it's radioactive for 250,000 years before it's rendered safe, and uranium sources are controlled by governments. It's not like it's a traded commodity on the stock exchange. Even now with Government backed funding, regulatory and insurance guarantees and government footing the bill for waste disposal the nuclear industry operates in the red.

If you want to make Nuclear a viable part of the energy solution to global warming we need to stop pretending that it can be done by the free market. They can't do it now so what makes people think they'd be able to do it a year from now? Nationalizing it would make it better but then you'd have the anti-commie crowd howling about America becoming Amerika.

But even then we would have to have 4 new nuclear plants come on-line every month for the next 25 years if we don't actually address the demand side of things now.

Butchie b: This time I am the victim of another one of your inane posts. No Democrats don't do it; that is, they aren't market fetishists. They do do subsidies.

"Nuclear power would eliminate over half of global warming emissions."

Nonsense.  If you replaced every coal-fired or gas-fired power plant on the planet with a nuclear plant, it would eliminate only about 20% of greenhouse emissions, and there's good reason to think that it would do so at a greater cost than other forms of clean energy production.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against nukes and I think they're going to be an important part of fixing the global warming problem, but Patashnik's point about the foolishness of talking up carbon emissions markets on the one hand and subsidies for nuclear (and coal!!!) on the other is a good one.  Why should anyone, greenie or not, favor a nuclear plant when, in a particular instance, a wind farm might be able do deliver twice as much value to its investors?