MAX sCHULZ
Tucker, William
bookS In revIew Nuclear Recovery O ne clear measure of nuclear power’s rising fortunes is that both presidential candidates this year came out in favor of harnessing the power of the atom...
...This can have dangerous possibilities—just one gram of matter was turned into the energy that annihilated Hiroshima...
...More than just filing America’s Energy Odyssey a brief for nuclear power, By William Tucker Terrestrial Energy really offers a first-rate primer on energy...
...If swallowing 100 aspirins will kill 100 out of 100 people,” Tucker notes, “that does not mean taking two aspirin will kill two people...
...bookS In revIew Nuclear Recovery O ne clear measure of nuclear power’s rising fortunes is that both presidential candidates this year came out in favor of harnessing the power of the atom to address our nation’s energy and environmental challenges...
...The author of several bestselling books on global economic trends, Friedman holds con siderable sway on energy and environmental topics...
...Extrapolate from that, and “to get 1,000 MW—an average commercial plant—it would have to cover twenty square miles...
...Wind is hardly better, similarly requiring large tracts of land...
...It wasn’t too long ago that politicians avoided talking about nuclear energy, or if they did, it was to call for shutting down the nation’s fleet of reactors...
...Or we can reviewed by max Schulz max Schulz is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute...
...And while this highly readable trip back to the clause’s roots doesn’t necessarily resolve the conundrum that religion presents in our civic life, it can help us to discern and more fully grasp the rev...
...The public (and our politicians) is slowly coming to the conclusion that we should build new nuclear power plants to address our energy and climate change challenges...
...Despite the evident benefits of nuclear power, it’s the downside that has made Americans hesitant since Three Mile Island (TMI) and Chernobyl...
...A thorough Journalist, Tucker travels the globe to get to the bottom of the 21st-century energy story...
...On the other hand, proponents of a dynamic Constitution contend that what the phrase really means is that a strict separation must be maintained between the state and all religion in any form...
...In Founding Faith, Steven Waldman, editor in chief of the popular online religion journal Beliefnet...
...This is where Terrestrial Energy takes on a “Roger and Me” quality, as Lovins won’t talk to him and is conveniently absent when Tucker treks all the way to his Snowmass, Colorado, home...
...Still, that’s a big concession from the nominee of a party that largely takes its cues from decidedly anti-nuke environmental organizations such as Greenpeace...
...michael orsi preting the Establishment Clause of the U.S...
...It has been a flash point of debate between liberals and conservatives on a wide range of issues—such as aid to parochial schools, prayer at civic gathFounding Faith: Providence, erings, nativity scenes on Politics, and the Birth of public property, governReligious Freedom in America ment assistance to faithBy Steven Waldman based organizations, and (random House, 205 pages, $26) many other concerns...
...Powerfully written, Terrestrial Energy is a remarkably accessible book that should convert any number of skeptics with its pro-nuclear sermon...
...He also calls out extremist environmentalist claims that any amount of radiation is dangerous...
...John McCain called for building 45 new reactors...
...Wind may be able to play a marginal role in our energy economy—energy expert and Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens says that, in a perfect world, wind might supply as much as 20 percent of our electricity...
...The energy source comes not from the sun, but from deep within the earth (hence the title...
...Nuclear power is different...
...bartLeby press, 420 pages, $27.50) Almost all the conventional energy sources we employ are forms of solar power, Tucker notes, including fossil fuels...
...He presents the religious, philosophical, and political beliefs held by the authors and promoters of In Founding Faith, Steven Waldman presents the religious, philosophical, and political beliefs held by the authors and promoters of the Bill of Rights, when the First Amendment was drafted...
...Tucker has emerged as a true evangelist with his book Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Power Will Lead the Green Revolution and End America’s Energy Odyssey...
...Compare that to the environmental footprint of other “clean” technologies...
...The book’s premise is simple: “The only way we are ever going to supply ourselves with enough energy while reducing our carbon emission is through a revival of nuclear power...
...the Bill of Rights, when the First Amendment was drafted...
...Photovoltaic solar panels are worse...
...However, its strength lies not in the zeal this preacher brings, but in the dispassionate way Terrestrial Energy: How he makes the case for nuclear Nuclear Power Will Lead the in the context of all our energy green Revolution and End options...
...At bottom, writes Tucker, wind “remains a medieval technology...
...Addressing longtime fears about this strange technology, he notes, “Nuclear power is a perfectly natural phenomenon, as natural as the warmth in the ground beneath our feet...
...Someone who does think nuclear power is our optimal energy source, and the answer to all our energy and environmental problems, is veteran journalist (and American Spectator contributor) William Tucker...
...Barack Obama claimed to be for nuclear power as well, though he did say he doesn’t “think it’s our optimal energy source...
...The locus of the problem is inter reviewed by rev...
...For all those Greens who talk of the virtually limitless resources of the sun, Tucker points out that “land, after all, is also a limited resource...
...A particular target is environmental guru Amory Lovins, father of the “soft energy” movement, who thinks we can jettison fossil fuels and nukes and instead power the economy on efficiency 90 THe amerIcan SPecTaTor December 2008/January 2009 bookS In revIew and windmills and solar panels...
...Clearly there are thresholds below which the body’s defenses can deal with an environmental insult...
...The account is hilarious, as is Tucker’s chance meeting with celebrity New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman...
...But it also offers an almost boundless opportunity to provide the energy humanity needs at a time when we are accustomed to think of our resources as limited...
...His journalistic sense of fairness leads him to seek an interview with Lovins...
...Result...
...they would need 50 square miles...
...Tucker addresses those worries, noting the heroic reforms undertaken by the nuclear industry to instill a culture of safety after TMI (a not-very-serious accident that served as a dramatic wake-up call...
...Terrestrial energy is far more concentrated—by a factor of about two million...
...Tiny amounts of material and land can generate enormous volumes of power, without pollution or greenhouse gas emissions...
...But that’s an optimistic assessment, and no one thinks wind is anything more than a partial contributor to our energy solutions...
...michael orsi is chaplain and research fellow in law and religion at the Ave Maria School of Law...
...he is almost singularly responsible for California’s refusal to build any new power plants during the 1990s, even though demand kept rising...
...Plus, it doesn’t always blow, meaning that windmills generate electricity no more than 30 percent of the time...
...com, investigates the genesis of the Establishment Clause...
...You couldn’t power the grid solely on wind, writes Tucker...
...Tucker ably dispatches the fuzzy thinking that has muddied our energy and environmental debates for decades...
...Tucker describes one cutting-edge thermal solar project in Spain as “a remarkably futuristic 30-story structure that looks like a giant carpenter’s level stuck the ground after arriving from outer space...
...The rolling blackouts in 2000 and 2001 that made California a laughingstock and helped bounce governor Gray Davis...
...turn to a variety of technologies that tap the sun’s rays directly or draw on physical processes driven by the sun’s heat,” like solar panels and windmills...
...Lovins’s influence is outsized...
...They contend that when the First Amendment was ratified it simply prohibited the federal government from declaring itself in support of a national religion or acting in favor of a particular faith...
...He visits coal plants in Ohio as well as nuclear reactors in France (a country that produces 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power...
...Faith of Our Fathers T he place of religion in america is a problem as old as our republic...
...Yet Tucker exposes Friedman as fundamentally unserious for his abrupt dismissal of nuclear power...
...December 2008/January 2009 THe amerIcan SPecTaTor 91...
...Constitutional originalists hold to a strict interpretation of this text...
...When we burn coal and oil, we unlock stored solar energy that originally rained down from the sun...
...Kudos to Tucker for showing why we can, and why we should...
...Tucker eviscerates Lovins for peddling a doctrine that conveniently ignores elemental facts about where we get our energy from and what we use it for...
...Times are certainly changing...
...Constitution’s First Amendment (1791), which reads “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion...
...That’s not much power for a lot of land...
...The facility uses 136 acres to generate 11 MW...
...There is one great difference between terrestrial energy and solar energy,” writes Tucker, “and that is the energy density...
Vol. 41 • January 2009 • No. 10
