Does anyone know who made the following two statements?

“… There’s no reason why technologically we can’t employ nuclear energy in a safe and effective way. Japan does it and France doesn’t (sic) and it doesn’t have greenhouse gas emissions, so it would be stupid for us not to do that in a much more effective way.  …”

“… We are working to develop and deploy technologies like wind and solar power, advanced biofuels, clean coal, and more fuel-efficient cars and trucks built here in the United States. In addition, my Administration is pursuing comprehensive legislation to move toward energy independence and prevent the worst consequences of global warming, while creating incentives to make clean energy profitable in America. …”

The first was made in a speech by President Obama on October 15, 2009 in New Orleans.

The second was in the President’s December 9, 2009 response letter to the following in a personal letter to the President October 25 :

” … we have a major impediment on enabling advanced [nuclear] designs. China has approved and is going forward with US designs while our NRC stalls. China has approved and is building fast spectrum reactor models based on Russian examples. Our needed testing programs formerly using our world class similar technology test reactor are shutdown.  …  Our NRC needs to be renewed with advanced reactor talent and regulations revised in concert with what the rest of the world is accomplishing such as adoption of IAEA standards. …”

The “N” word is absent from the President’s direct response.  Despite the hint of encouragement in his October speech, the response to corporate America’s request for nuclear enablement is continued shunning at nearly all levels of US government as is exemplified at the USA-CARGO.INFO website.  This is in spite of the growth of public acceptance of nuclear power from 50% in 1996 to nearly 70% in 2008 (slide 24).  Is this modern President living in the past?

As is shown by the BPA Balancing Authority wind production charts, the foremost Presidential solution continues to be nothing but a poor supplement in a modern nation hungry for low cost power.  Average wind energy capacity is at best 30% of installed turbine potential and has an availability factor of nearly 0% for any meaningful time period.  The second Presidential supplemental solution (solar) is the most costly and suffers similar capacity problems.  Heck, it’s not even available at night.  The avoided nuclear option has a proven dispatchable/available capacity of 90%.

The President’s focus on non-nuclear ‘green renewable’ energy conflicts with pursuing energy independence.  The solution to the vagaries of the masthead wind power is to use natural gas.    Natural gas is also proposed to compensate for turning away from coal.  Current advertising claims that we have 90 years of inventory available.  What will that become if we convert to this form?  50 years?  30 years?   Definitely a short time compared to the potential of no greenhouse gas emissions nuclear.  In addition, the President’s goal of immediately doubling or tripling wind power will affect only about 2% of our nation’s total energy needs.   Compare this to the 27% of total in foreign petroleum consumption in the transportation sector.  Since there is very little coupling of the electrical sector to transportation, the argument is non-productive.   As wind and solar power are implemented without new nuclear, we become more dependent on compensating fossil fuels and foreign sources.   Electrification of and synthetic fuel for transportation require lots of energy unlikely from wind and solar.

The potential for nuclear power to support modern needs for several millennia requires nuclear fuel re-cycling.  At one time, the US had capacity to reprocess over 18,000 metric tonnes (mt) of used nuclear fuel per year.  The processed uranium was recycled back into production reactors.  Through re-cycling, the current inventory of 70,000 mt at US commercial reactors can be reduced 20 fold.   The cancellation of funding for Yuca Mountain storage is a huge opportunity to revisit the known processes and advances in use in other countries (Obama, Oct. 15).   We need to get on with implementation of Generation III reactors and restart research and implementation of Generation IV to fuel those.  The latter gives us the opportunity to close the fuel cycle and generate new energy and fuel as an expanding resource.

We need to stop the 30 year moratorium that is the current defacto operation mode of the US.  If we start now, we may be able to catch up with the rest of the world in 15 to 20 years.

Making two conflicting statements on energy at the Presidential level does not help us get into command of our energy destiny.