The President has called on Congress to enact legislation to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. He has suggested that this legislation is necessary to stop global warming and to transition our nation to “clean” energy. While I support the President’s intentions, I’m concerned that his path to make this happen will have a disastrous impact on our nation’s ability to produce the energy we need to help jumpstart our economy.
I support expanding all forms of American-made energy, including clean coal, renewable energy like wind and solar generation, and nuclear energy, and I support developing the technology to make it cleaner. Right now, we need all the energy we can to help our small businesses thrive.
Nuclear energy produces around 19 percent of our nation’s electricity. It does so without generating any greenhouse gas emissions, and as such, one would assume that the President is a strong supporter of the nuclear industry. Unfortunately, that’s not the case, and his stated desire to terminate the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Disposal program is one example where the President’s actual policies just don’t match up with his stated goals.
In his fiscal year 2010 budget, President Obama announced his intentions to terminate the Yucca Mountain program and to form a Blue Ribbon Panel to figure out other options for dealing with nuclear waste. The Senate passed that budget. Last month, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced that the President would fully terminate the Yucca Mountain program when he releases his fiscal year 2011 budget in February 2010.
For years, deep geological disposal has been recognized as the best method for dealing with hazardous nuclear waste, and so the termination of the Yucca Mountain program calls into question what we will do with the waste. It also calls into question whether we will be able to build more clean nuclear energy plants.
Because of the serious nature of this matter, in April 2009, I joined 16 of my colleagues in sending a letter to U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu asking about the scientific and legal basis behind the Administration’s plans to terminate the Yucca Mountain program. We received a tacit response, which suggests to me that the Administration is choosing politics over sound public policy.
In his campaign, President Obama promised change. He promised politics wouldn’t interfere when sound science spoke. I’m disappointed that his Yucca Mountain policy ignores that campaign promise.
