The nuclear power president?

What’s up with President Obama and nuclear power? This Christian Science Monitor story talks about what some see as a contradiction. The president wants to triple the funding for new nuclear plants — to a level that would fund up to seven new ones — but he also wants to cut funding for the Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada, which was to house all those spent fuel rods.

This story from USA Today talks about mounting opposition to that plan. The opponents run the field from environmental groups to scientists to taxpayer groups and a conservative at the Heritage Foundation.

The Monitor piece quotes Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, as saying, “It’s ironic, but Obama could end up being the biggest pro-nuclear power president since Dwight Eisenhower.”

I’m not entirely sure what’s going on, but I find it encouraging — sort of. I do worry that the cost of subsidizing nuclear power is just one more thing the nation can’t afford. However, it’s silly to completely reject coal generators on the basis of pollution and global warming, and then to pretend that solar, wind and wave technology can meet our needs.

I’ve spoken with enough experts to know that isn’t going to happen. Not yet, anyway.

Solar, wind and wave generators are wonderful and need to be pursued, but they will do little more than provide a percentage of the nation’s needs for many years to come. In the meantime, Americans are demanding a lot of electricity. And every time another device like the iPad is introduced, it just adds to that load. How many devices do you plug in to charge overnight?

Nuclear power is the only non-coal alternative right now for the nation’s needs. And the plan to dump all the fuel rods in Nevada was never much more than a bad political compromise — one that fell completely to pieces once Nevada’s Sen. Harry Reid became Senate majority leader.

Obama’s next step should be to lift the ban on recycling spent fuel rods, which at least would make disposal a little easier. Then we can hope nuclear power buys us enough time with our toys and air conditioners until renewable technology catches up.