The DFL And The Dark Age

Minnesota, following the national trend by its usual 10-20 years, passed a moratorium on nuclear power plants in the state a decade and a half ago.

With energy prices having zoomed upward in the past few years, and likely set to do it again if the economy ever recovers, a good chunk of the USA – especially the part where it gets cold, and electrical and natural gas heating costs have gotten out of control – started demanding our zombie overlords look again at nuclear power; given advances in the technology that address the very, very few safety concerns that ever existed about non-Soviet nuke plants, the time seems right for a fresh look.

The DFL wants to make sure we don’t:

Last year, the state Senate passed a bill that lifted the state’s moratorium on nuclear power plant construction.

The fate of the same proposal this year is now bogged down in a Senate committee.

The Senate Energy committee this afternoon approved a controversial amendment 9-6 that lead the bill’s author to ask to halt the discussion.

The amendment displays either the DFL’s ‘ignorance about business, or its hostility toward business and efficient energy:

The chief sponsor, Sen. Amy Koch, R-Buffalo, said the amendment, which was offered by Sen. John Doll, DFL-Bloomington, “guts” her bill. The bill as amended now bars utilities from charging ratepayers for construction costs before a plant is completed. Doll’s amendment also requires a federal nuclear waste repository be created to store spent nuclear fuel rods.

Has anyone looked into how much money John Doll gets from wind, solar and biomass interests?

Sen. Ray Vandeveer, R-Forest Lake, said the new requirements in the bill would prevent energy companies from building nuclear power plants in Minnesota.

“The Doll amendment puts us in the dark ages and it keeps us there and condemns us there,” Vandeveer said.

Lifting the nuke moratorium might be bad business – for the DFL.  It’d gut the “renewable energy” market, and make fewer people dependent on the state energy-welfare bureaucracy.

The rest of us, on the other hand?

2 thoughts on “The DFL And The Dark Age

  1. You Minnesota guys are getting as bad as Californians.
    No fossil fuels to speak of & you probably wouldn’t allow them to be mined anyway. No hydropower. Not much sun for six months of the year. Fitful wind resources. And now no nukes. yet Minnesota being a miserably cold and dark place it seems you expect someone else to pollute their locale so you can enjoy living in a warm & well-lit place.

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