The Auto Industry Can Help Build New Nuclear Plants

..Were the United States to begin to take the necessary steps to electrify its railroads, build new, more advanced urban mass transit systems, move to hybrid cars, or in any way increase demands upon industry for basic materials and capital goods, there would not be sufficient electric generating or distribution capacity. In parts of the country, such as the Northeast and West, there are already threats of shortages, even under current economic depression conditions.

The United States currently has 103 operating nuclear power plants, which provide approximately 20% of the nation’s electricity. Before the sabotage of nuclear power projects in the late 1970s, the plan was to have a thousand plants on line by the year 2000. Even just to maintain nuclear energy’s paltry 20% of U.S. electric power, close to 100 new reactors will have to come on line in the next two decades. To rebuild infrastructure and upgrade U.S. productivity, while shutting down both inefficient, aging plants and those burning precious (and increasingly expensive) natural gas, hundreds more will have to be built.

..There are constant complaints that this country is dependent upon, and can be held hostage to, foreign energy suppliers. All we need do is to electrify much of the transportation that uses liquid petroleum fuels. We must electrify the railroads; replace wasteful short-haul air travel with magnetically levitated, and high-speed rail electric transport systems; replace mind-numbing car commutes with urban mass transit; and develop the next-generation high-temperature nuclear reactor technologies that will make it economical to produce hydrogen from water.

To do this, hundreds of nuclear power plants will have to be built. To do that, the mass production capabilities of the auto industry will be required.

Executive Intelligence Review