IBD:

When he ran for governor in 2003, Gov. Schwarzenegger issued a seven-page compilation of his environmental positions that spoke a great deal about alternative energy sources but said absolutely nothing about nuclear power.

Discussing energy issues recently, he now says nuclear power has “a great future” and warrants examination as a way of achieving energy independence and dealing with his favorite crusade — global warming.

Schwarzenegger said that nuclear technology “has advanced so much,” and also that “we are now seeing that there is such an unbelievable reduction in waste.”

He noted that “there are certain environmentalists out there that put the scare tactics out there” and that nuclear power could “be very beneficial, like in France where they get 82% of their energy through nuclear power, to look at that because there’s no greenhouse gas emissions.”

State Assemblyman Tom DeVore of California’s 70th District, who has touted the benefits of nuclear power on these pages and elsewhere, has submitted two bills that would do more than just look at its potential.

The Irvine Republican says, “I’m delighted to see Gov. Schwarzenegger now out front on this vital issue.”

The irony is that, if global warming is man-made and if global warming is a detriment, the Greenies have much to answer for because they killed nuclear power in the USA. (This same cohort condemns the USA for emitting more than it’s share of CO2.)

Meanwhile, France has been generating 80 percent of its power with nuclear energy. However, the LA Times still hasn’t gotten the message. Yesterday they editorialized:

Nuclear waste remains highly toxic not for a few years but for millenniums; if the ancient Egyptians who built the Great Pyramid had also built nuclear plants, the waste would still be deadly. This material is being stored on-site at nuclear plants, including the two in California (San Onofre and Diablo Canyon) because Congress has been unable to agree on the location for a national repository. As these plants age, the chance of a system failure increases.

“There’s no greenhouse gas emissions” with nuclear plants, Schwarzenegger told the Sacramento Bee. This is a constant refrain of the nuclear power industry, but it isn’t true. Nuclear plants are fueled by uranium, which is becoming harder to find; uranium mining generates a good deal of carbon, which increases as we dig deeper for the radioactive material. Although nuclear power is considerably cleaner from a greenhouse-gas standpoint than alternatives such as coal-generated power, those mining emissions are nonetheless significant.

More compellingly, given the cost and time frame for building nuclear plants, it would be impossible to build them quickly enough to make an impact on global warming. There are safer, quicker, cheaper and cleaner alternatives, such as solar and wind power, greater efficiency measures and decentralized power generators that produce electricity and heat water at the same time. Let’s exhaust them before even considering the nuclear option.

Yeah, windmills and solar will be quicker. Someone needs to slap these clowns silly with a copy of the Whole Earth Catalog.