Originally Posted by faithful_servant

Because the GW alarmists ahve made coal an unviable alternative. Our coal reserves hold enough energy to power this country for a loooong time. We are the world leader in coal reserves, but not in coal production/usage (China's got that locked down). But the GW alarmists and lieing eco-nuts have demonized coal to where no one will touch the idea of expanding it's use. The bottom line is that if we went whole hog on using coal, we'd be telling the Arabs what we'll pay for oil instead of the other way around. Putting our coal reserves to full use would put us in a position of complete dominance in the world energy picture. With coal, we fuel the production of our electricity with our own energy reserves instead of foreign sources. That leaves the petro industry with basically gasoline and diesel as products.

Originally Posted by faithful_servant

Nuclear is far too expensive. The only way it's ever been fiscally viable is by massive gov't subsidies. A lot of the nuclear power supporters like to cook the books on the energy cost for nuclear by ignoring the long term costs of a nuclear power plant and the massive back-end cost of building one. They like to talk about the low cost by only looking at the uranium mining/refining and production costs, but ignore the fact that w/o the gov't pouring money into the building and long term support costs, there's no way nuclear could be a fiscally viable source of power. Take a plant like Trojan in NW Oregon, it's completely shutdown, yet it will require a continual support staff for decades. Here's an article from 1993 when Trojan was being decomissioned:
Trojan Pay attention to the annual cost of a mothballed plant and the number of employees. This cost has gone up substantially (inflation) and the number of employees has remained pretty stable. It will be a continual drain on our tax dollars, since PGE cannot afford to keep support on it. The feds helped PGE build it and they (WE) will continue to help PGE support it.