On nuclear power, don't fall for McCain's soundbites

This has been "energy week" for the two political campaigns. Most people could probably tell you that. But if you asked the man/woman on the street what he/she learned about the candidates' positions on energy policy, you'd probably hear about Obama telling people to inflate their car tires ... and maybe about McCain saying very forcefully not one, not two, but three times (while standing inside the National Label Company in eastern Pennsylvania), "We need to drill here and we need to drill now."

But energy policy is one of the most critical issues facing our country, the positions of the two candidates are quite different, and each of us should do what we can to learn the facts and share them with our friends to help combat the silly soundbites.

For example, one of the differences the McCain campaign is touting has to do with the role nuclear energy should play in the U.S. in the future. According to John McCain's website:

John McCain Will Put His Administration On Track To Construct 45 New Nuclear Power Plants By 2030 With The Ultimate Goal Of Eventually Constructing 100 New Plants. Nuclear power is a proven, zero-emission source of energy, and it is time we recommit to advancing our use of nuclear power.

To hear McCain tell it, nuclear power is a no-brainer, yet oddly, Obama opposes it. Brian Rogers, a spokesman for the McCain campaign, accused Obama of being the “Dr. No” of energy policy in a conference call with reporters on Tuesday. Among his charges: "It’s ‘no’ on expanded nuclear power investments that we can make.”

Not surprisingly, this is an over-simplification of a complex issue. Here's a little history:

Obama has been focused on nuclear power and its related benefits and challenges as far back as his days as a Columbia University undergraduate. In 1983, as a student in "an intense, eight-student honors seminar called American Foreign Policy," he wrote a paper about the U.S.'s nuclear negotiations with the Soviet Union. According to Michael Baron, the professor who taught the seminar, in a post on an MSNBC.com blog:

“My recollection is that the paper was an analysis of the evolution of the arms reduction negotiations between the Soviet Union and the United States,” Baron said in an e-mail. “At that time, a hot topic in foreign policy circles was finding a way in which each country could safely reduce the large arsenal of nuclear weapons pointed at the other … For U.S. policy makers in both political parties, the aim was not disarmament, but achieving deep reductions in the Soviet nuclear arsenal and keeping a substantial and permanent American advantage. As I remember it, the paper was about those negotiations, their tactics and chances for success. Barack got an A.”

Twenty-five years later, as a U.S. senator, Obama crossed party lines to work with Republican Senator Richard Lugar to write and win passage of the "Lugar-Obama Proliferation and Threat Reduction Initiative," which President Bush signed into law in January 2007. (Press release announcing the law's signing can be read here.)

Obama understands that nuclear power can be used for evil as well as for good. We can't blithely embark upon a massive program of building nuclear power plants in the U.S. without considering both the safety as well as the political risks.

Steps must be taken to ensure the safe disposal of spent fuel rods, for example. This is not just a matter of environmental safety, but also one of securing fissionable material. According to the wikipedia entry for "radioactive waste:"

Active nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons stockpiles are very carefully safe-guarded and controlled. However, high-level waste from nuclear reactors may contain plutonium. Ordinarily, this plutonium is reactor-grade plutonium, containing a mixture of plutonium-239 (highly suitable for building nuclear weapons), plutonium-240 (an undesirable contaminant and highly radioactive), plutonium-241, and plutonium-238; these isotopes are difficult to separate. Moreover, high-level waste is full of highly radioactive fission products. However, most fission products are relatively short-lived. This is a concern since if the waste is stored, perhaps in deep geological storage, over many years the fission products decay, decreasing the radioactivity of the waste and making the plutonium easier to access. ... Thus, some have argued, as time passes, these deep storage areas have the potential to become "plutonium mines", from which material for nuclear weapons can be acquired with relatively little difficulty.

We also must be aware of the perceived double-standard we seem to allow when we deny Iran the right to develop nuclear energy, while allowing India, ourselves, and other "friendly" nations to do so.

Nuclear must be viewed within this complex framework, which does not lend itself to an easy soundbite.

Earlier this week, the candidates' energy positions were discussed on an excellent episode of The NewsHour, moderated by Judy Woodruff. You can watch the episode or read the transcript by clicking here. Former Clinton Energy Secretary Federico Pena, now an Obama campaign co-chair, explained Obama's position on nuclear this way:

He has said he will keep the nuclear option on the table if we can resolve the challenge of how we deposit the nuclear fuel rods. The idea in the past was Yucca Mountain. There's some issues with Yucca Mountain. We've got to find another solution. And if we can deal with that and deal with the security issues, he is very open to continuing to support nuclear power.

As close to a soundbite as Pena could get, and still make Obama's key points about safety and security.

My point is this. Obama knows quite a bit about nuclear power. He's been studying it for some time. He also recognizes the need to end our dependence on foreign oil as quickly as possible, but knows there is no quick, easy fix. He has issued a comprehensive, ambitious energy plan, which you can read on his website by clicking here - and I hope you will.

Don't let John McCain define Obama's energy policy. Don't buy in to "Dr. NO." Know the facts and share them with your friends. There's too much misinformation going around, and each of us must do our part to help spread the truth.