De-Engerized

President Obama's new energy policy is out of gas on arrival.

G.E. Brings Troubling Things To Light

Tom Zeller Jr., writing in the New York Times:

[T]he type of containment vessel and pressure suppression system used in the failing reactors at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant — and in 23 American reactors at 16 plants — is physically less robust [than most reactors in the world], and it has long been thought to be more susceptible to failure in an emergency than competing designs.

G.E. began making the Mark 1 boiling water reactors in the 1960s, marketing them as cheaper and easier to build — in part because they used a comparatively smaller and less expensive containment structure.

American regulators began identifying weaknesses very early on.

Nukes Melting Down But Not Out

Matthew Yglesias doesn't use the Japan emergencies to pile on nuclear power:

[W]hile nuclear looks bad on safety grounds versus clean energy or efficiency, I don’t see any particular reason to see these safety concerns as more pressing than concerns around the fossil fuels that provide the majority of our energy.

How Much Would You Pay For Free Energy?

Many activists and politicians who say greenhouse gases pose an existential crisis to earthlings oppose the relatively quick and easy fix of building more nuclear power plants. Maybe the third way is a massive investment in fusion power, which Glen Wurden at the Los Alamos National Laboratory says he could bring on line immediately -- if:

Wurden says the biggest impediment to controlled fusion has been a lack of resources. “If you gave me an infinite amount of money, I [could] produce a fusion reactor tomorrow. On the other hand, if you gave me a billion dollars a year for 20 years, that’s the other extreme. Is there a way to do it faster? Yeah, I think there is. Somewhere between one day and 20 years is the right number.”

Nixon Was Mean To Big o-i-l Oil!

Or so says the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, which may be difficult to please if you're to the left of Attila the Hun.

Having Your Coal And Burning It, Too

The article's in "Newsweek." It says that our nation's energy crisis is artificially induced, that the government has chosen to cut off sources of supply that could keep prices low while reducing our dependence on foreign suppliers. It opposes cap and trade. It strikes this Nixonian note:

What America needs is a rational energy policy that utilizes all our homegrown energy resources while protecting the environment.

The author is Newt Gingrich. Go here if you're interested.