Michael Collins reports that when it comes to alternative energy, U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander prefers nuclear plants over windmills. Nuclear power, and whether delivered in large scale or in the form of Small Modular Reactors - SMRs, is clean, cheap and dependable. Wind power, he argues, is unreliable and does not produce a lot of energy. Besides, he says, wind turbines are ugly.\n\nAlexander took Gina McCarthy, Administrator of the U.S. EPA, to task last week because the Obama Administration is treating nuclear power differently and in his view, unfair, that wind and solar energy in its proposed rules to cut carbon emissions.\n\nSixty percent or more of the carbon-free electricity, emission-free electricity, comes from nuclear power, Alexander told McCarthy during a budget hearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee Subcommittee on the Interior and Environment. Wind produces 13 per cent. Solar produces 1 per cent today.\n\nIf you are really serious about climate change, if you are really serious about clean air, then why would you disadvantage nuclear power and treat wind and solar better?, he asked.\n\nAlexander, who has called for the construction of more nuclear plants, is upset that Tennessee will have to make a 38.9 per cent cut in carbon emissions under the EPA proposed Clean Power Plan but will not get credit for meeting emissions standards through the new Watts Bar nuclear reactor near Spring City, Tenn.\n\nUnder the Administration proposal, the EPA will let states take 100 per cent of their existing solar and wind generation and credit it toward the emissions reduction goals regulators have set for them. But only 6 per cent of the existing nuclear generation can count toward those goals.\n\nIn addition, Tennessee and other states where new nuclear plants already are under construction are given higher reduction targets because power from those plants is already counted as on the books.
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