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The biggest of those emerging nations, China, uses US debt (including the massive 'war' debt) to subsidize their increased oil consumption.

^5
Unregulated trading is forcing prices higher on pure speculation. Not many politicians seem to be speaking up about this.

Speculation isn't the problem.

we listened to the environazis when they protested and demonstrated against nuclear power, and this is the result. this is the dessert. meanwhile france has 77 reactors, doing just fine.

Nuclear's Tangled Economics
June 26, 2008

BUDGET BUSTERS

But McCain may not want to follow the French example too closely. While France's existing 59 atomic plants are relatively trouble-free, its largest nuclear company, Areva, has run into difficulties building next-generation reactors in France and Finland. The Finnish project is two years behind schedule and more than $1.5 billion over budget, while construction of the other plant, in Normandy, was temporarily halted in late May because of quality concerns. And while France has the world's biggest fuel-reprocessing program, it still hasn't found a permanent home for a growing pile of highly radioactive waste that's left over. The waste sits in heavily guarded storage at Areva's La Hague reprocessing plant.

The U.S. nuclear industry believes that delays and cost overruns, which helped kill new plant construction in the late 1970s, are less likely today, thanks to now-standardized reactor designs and a streamlined U.S. government licensing process. That process has yet to be tested, though, and costs for new plants are climbing. Two years ago, the price of a 1,500-megawatt reactor was pegged at $2 billion to $3 billion. Now it's up to $7 billion and rising, as the cost of concrete, steel, and other materials and labor soars. MidAmerican Energy Holdings (BRK), a gas and electric utility owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (BRK), shelved its own nuke plan earlier this year, saying it no longer made economic sense. "The country badly needs new nuclear plants to deal with the climate issue," says John W. Rowe, chief executive officer of Exelon (EXC), currently the largest nuke operator, and chairman of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's trade group. "But they are very expensive, very high-risk projects."

So risky and expensive, in fact, that building new ones won't happen without hefty government support. NRG Energy (NRG), Dominion (D), Duke Energy (DUK), and six other companies have already leaped to file applications to construct and operate new plants largely because of incentives Congress has put in place. The subsidies include a 1.8 cents tax credit for each kilowatt hour of electricity produced, which could be worth more than $140 million per reactor per year; a $500 million payout for each of the first two plants built (and $250 million each for the next four) if there are delays for reasons outside company control; and a total of $18.5 billion in loan guarantees. The latter is crucial, since it shifts the risk onto the federal government, making it possible to raise capital from skittish banks. "Without the loan guarantees, I think it would be very difficult for the first wave of plants to move forward," says David W. Crane, CEO of NRG.

http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080630/OPINION02/806300344/1022/OPINION02

There's downsides to nuclear power

June 30, 2008

Regarding France: France reprocesses spent fuel and receives 79 percent of its electricity from nuclear power. That sounds OK but here's the flip side. Paid for by the citizens, reprocessing is very expensive and not recommended by most experts. It also creates weapons-grade plutonium and radioactive waste liquid which has been released into the ocean and leaked into France's groundwater. Radioactive gas releases into the air, as well as additional solid waste kept at high-level disposal sites, further reveal the untold story. On a recent episode of "60 Minutes," a French official was asked how the country runs such a program. He replied that they run "on perfection."

can you imagine a nuke plant somewhere in the midwest getting hit by a tornado?

Thu Jun 12, 2008 7:32am EDT (Reuters) - A tornado damaged the building housing a nuclear research reactor at Kansas State University, the university told the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in an event report early Thursday.
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN1228437320080612
The tornado caused extensive damage to the building, but no damage to the reactor, which had been shut down properly earlier in the day, the university said.

The reactor, a TRIGA Mark II model, has been operating since 1962, making it one of the oldest operating models of its design in America. One might think a hazardous explosion or a reactor core meltdown would occur if a tornado slammed into a 46 year old nuclear reactor, right? Wrong.

At what point do high oil prices trigger a deep recession?

Crash1967, this new mantra about offshore drilling and nukes.... every single Republican on these threads is pushing that, you notice, too? Its like Borg-speak, isnt it?

Too funny.