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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Valley Girl who wrote (135520)	6/3/2004 8:35:05 PM
From: dumbmoney	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

You didn't tackle France and Japan - are you saying they're losing money on every plant but making it up in big volume? Nobody is questioning whether nuclear is a reasonable way to generate power. It is. But it does not seem to have a cost advantage, at this moment in time, in the U.S. You are correct in pointing out that the anti-nuclear activists can raise the cost, but not to infinity, and not uniformally everywhere. On the other side, dirty power plants are subject to ever more expensive pollution regulations.

To: Valley Girl who wrote (135520)	6/4/2004 11:11:22 AM
From: carranza2	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Perhaps you saw ExxonMobil's CEO on Charlie Rose a few weeks ago. It was what he said about the sheer enormity of the oil business, coupled with the facts I'm starting to understand concerning future demand and production for oil and energy, that have opened my eyes to these issues, though I frankly am looking at them from a purely selfish (investments) standpoint. A simply amazing statistic the CEO mentioned is that it would take a huge number of square miles [more than 50, but I don't recall the exact number] of solar panels to produce the energy equivalent that an Exxon gas station sells as gasoline in a single day. Exxon has about 3,000 gas stations in the US and is only about 13% of the national retail gasoline market. I haven't worked it out, but it seems that a significant portion of the Western US would have to be covered in solar panels in order to make an oil replacement with solar panels strategy remotely effective. And we know that isn't going to happen. I would urge all interested individuals to listen to the Exxon CEO interview, then read Hubbert's Peak, then start thinking about feasible replacement strategies for petroleum. It's a big deal, perhaps bigger than the terrorists. Scroll down to May 6, 2004, for an audio link. Requires RealPlayer. charlierose.com