President Bush Reinforces His Support for Nuclear Energy

Earlier this week, President Bush sat down with two reporters from the Times (U.K.) ahead of the G8 Summit. At one point, the conversation turned to energy policy, global warming and climate change:

I believe that greenhouse gases are creating a problem, a long-term problem that we got to deal with. And step one of dealing with it is to fully understand the nature of the problem so that the solutions that follow make sense.

There's an interesting confluence now between dependency upon fossil fuels from a national economic security perspective, as well as the consequences of burning fossil fuels for greenhouse gases. And that's why it's important for our country to do two things.

One is to diversify away from fossil fuels, which we're trying to do. I think we're spending more money than any collection of nations when it comes to not only research and development of new technologies, but of the science of global warming. You know, laid out an initiative for hydrogen fuel cells. We're doing a lot of work on carbon sequestration. We hope to have zero emissions coal-fired electricity plants available for the United States as well as neighbours and friends and developing nations.

I'm a big believer that the newest generation of nuclear power ought to be a source of energy and we ought to be sharing these technologies with developing countries.

It's probably important to note that sharing U.S. nuclear technology with India is a major pillar of the new strategic relationship between the two countries.

UPDATE: Russ Steele has some related thoughts.

Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy, Environment, Energy, Politics, Technology, Economics