Saturday, February 02, 2008
US Kills Clean Coal Project, Pushes Nuclear Power
Carbon World News....Amid reports that the world's rainforests are being destroyed at an alarming rate, adding to the dangers of global warming, the United States on Wednesday betrayed the cause of producing clean coal. The stunning setback for clean coal came just hours after US President George W. Bush extolled the technology in his last State of the Union speech.
The US Department of Energy pulled the financial plug on a giant, breakthrough clean coal power plant that would been the first of its kind to use carbon capture and sequestration technologies.
Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman announced the Bush administration was withdrawing support for the $1. 8 billion FutureGen project. Energy Department officials cited the project's high cost--nearly double original estimates--as the main reason for the decision.
Spokesmen for FutureGen, a consortium of about a dozen domestic and foreign coal companies and utilities that includes China's largest coal-burning utility, China Huaneng Group, vowed to appeal to the US Congress.
Gift for Nuclear Power
Analysts describe the administration's move as a gift to the nuclear power and oil industries. For all its rhetorical backing for energy security and green energy, the Bush administration is creating conditions that will make it difficult, if not impossible, for the US to expedite a transition from oil and gas unless the country gets behind nuclear power, which remains controversial because of the risk of radiation escaping as a result of accidents or terrorist attacks.
The administration, working in concert with the nuclear industry, is trying to paint it green on the grounds that nuclear energy can replace fossil-fuel power plants for generating electricity, thereby reducing the carbon dioxide emissions that contribute heavily to global warming.
But that's only part of the story. The overall nuclear cycle—which includes uranium mining and milling, enrichment, fuel fabrication and disposal of radioactive waste—actually has significant greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming.
