During this week's presidential debate, as he has done many times during this campaign, Senator John McCain talked "glowingly" about building 45 nuclear power plants. Citing nuclear power as the answer to free the U.S. from Middle Eastern oil, however, doesn't make much sense.
Saying that adding nuclear power plants will help to make us oil independent is like saying that eating more potato chips will reduce your craving for red wine. The relationship is tenuous at best.
Petroleum was used to generate just 1.5 percent of U.S. electricity in 2006, according to the energy department's
Energy Information Administration, so there's not much petroleum used in power generation that can be directly replaced by nuclear plants.
Adding 45 new nuclear power plants would only contribute about 2 percent to our expected power generation total in the coming decades, according to
Architecture 2030, as quoted by the Huffington Post.
Transportation fuels -- including diesel, gasoline, and aviation fuels -- represents the majority of petroleum use in the U.S. today. Plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles do
show promise in reducing petroleum consumption, but more nuclear power is not required.
According to a
recent MIT study, a mix of 15 percent plug-in hybrids and 40 percent gasoline hybrids could cut petroleum use in vehicle transportation by 18 percent by 2035. However, most of the PHEV electricity demand can be satisfied at night using
non-radioactive wind power or during the day with solar power.
Another place where nuclear power could replace petroleum is in heating homes. Swapping out the oil heaters that are more prevalent in the eastern U.S. with more efficient electric heat would likely require subsidies for cash-strapped home-owners.
Residential fuel oil, however, constitutes just 3.5 percent of our petroleum use, so again, the overall impact on oil imports would be minimal.
The current credit situation might also make it hard to find the financing for $400 billion worth of suggested nuclear power plants, according to the
Associated Press.
Biofuels that don't compete with the food supply are much more likely than nuclear power to replace imported oil. If we want to divest ourselves from Appalachian coal, however, nuclear power could be an answer.
