The nice thing about Barack Obama's choice of Joe Biden as his running mate is that the latter ran for president himself this cycle and thus piled up a stack of interviews in which he gave his views on - well, everything. If Obama had anything to worry about with Biden on nuclear energy, he may rest easy:
What role do you see for nuclear power?
I see a role for nuclear, but first you've got to deal with the security as well as the safety concerns. I'd be spending a whole hell of a lot of money trying to figure out how to reconfigure the spent fuel into reusable fuel. I would not invest in [growing our nuclear power capacity in its current form], but I would invest in sorting out the storage and waste problems.
Sounds a lot like - Obama.
On other issues, the Indian media seems pleased because Biden has been a major supporter of the agreement allowing nuclear technologies and materials to flow between India and the United States. This is mildly controversial because India has not signed any non-proliferation pacts, mildly so because there is no evidence that India has engaged in any proliferation. Biden is on fairly solid ground here.
Check out this story from the Times of India - there's a lot of Biden love from the subcontinent.
Less love is flowing from the Israelis. This bit from Haaretz explains the uneasiness:
Biden has said more than once that he does not think that isolating Iran is the most efficient way to combat the Islamic republic's nuclear ambitions, and he has even urged sensitivity to Iran's needs. He met with a senior Iranian official in Davos, which led his detractors to say that he was willing to negotiate with an extremist regime that supports terrorism. On the other hand, Biden has proclaimed that a nuclear Iran was "unacceptable."
Well, "an extremist regime that supports terrorism" certainly puts the cork on that bottle. We looked at a few Iranian news sites to see how Biden worked for them, but so far, silence (at least in English).
Well, it's not a nuclear energy love feast on the Democratic side of the fence - it's more than a little frustrating, since more Democratic legislators support nuclear energy these days than hitherto. Part of the reason is no doubt political practicality, but the larger part is simply that time has removed it as a reliable way to get environmentalists under the Democratic tent. Nuclear energy and its "green" benefits make arguments against it sound a little tinny.
We've got a convention in Denver this week, so let's see what comes out of that. And of course, John McCain might well throw a wrench in the Democratic love feast with a VP choice of his own.
Biden himself. "Listen, you, any Republican that thinks they can outpoint me has another think coming." Politicians must really practice their pointing skills in the mirror. You wouldn't want one around a flock of quails or the pointing would get out of control.
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