Here are a few excerpts from his speech:
"...in a speech in Oak Ridge in May of 2009, I called for America to build 100 new nuclear plants during the next twenty years. Nuclear power produces 70 percent of our pollution-free, carbon-free electricity today. It is the most useful and reliable source of green electricity today because of its tremendous energy density and the small amount of waste that it produces."
> "You didn’t have to drown all of Glen Canyon to produce 1,000 megawatts of electricity.
> Four reactors would equal a row of wind turbines, each one three times as tall as Neyland Stadium skyboxes, strung along the entire length of the 2,178-mile Appalachian Trail.
> One reactor would produce the same amount of electricity that can be produced by continuously foresting an area one-and-a-half times the size of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in order to create biomass.
> Producing electricity with a relatively small number of new reactors, many at the same sites where reactors are already located, would avoid the need to build thousands and thousands of miles of new transmission lines through scenic areas and suburban backyards."
"You can produce a million megawatts of electricity a year from a nuclear reactor sitting on one square mile. That’s enough electricity to power 90,000 homes. They even included uranium mining and the 230 square miles surrounding Yucca Mountain in this calculation and it still comes to only one square mile per million megawatt hours."
> "Coal-fired electricity needs four square miles, because you have to consider all the land required for mining and extraction.
> Solar thermal, where they use the big mirrors to heat a fluid, takes six square miles.
> Natural gas takes eight square miles and petroleum takes 18 square miles – once again, including all the land needed for drilling and refining and storing and sending it through pipelines.
> Solar photovoltaic cells that turn sunlight directly into electricity take 15 square miles and wind is even more dilute, taking 30 square miles to produce that same amount of electricity."
On this issue, I couldn't agree with the Senator anymore. Nuclear power makes so much more sense, on so many levels, than any of the other alternatives being kicked around. You can read the full speech by clicking here.
You can also find more information on nuclear power by clicking here.
Jeff
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