{"id":9056,"date":"2010-03-05T08:01:30","date_gmt":"2010-03-05T13:01:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=9056"},"modified":"2010-03-05T08:01:30","modified_gmt":"2010-03-05T13:01:30","slug":"the-dfl-and-the-dark-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=9056","title":{"rendered":"The DFL And The Dark Age"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The DFL wants to make sure we don’t:<\/a><\/p>\n

Last year, the state Senate passed a bill that lifted the state\u2019s moratorium on nuclear power plant construction.<\/p>\n

The fate of the same proposal this year is now bogged down in a Senate committee.<\/p>\n

The Senate Energy committee this afternoon approved a controversial amendment 9-6 that lead the bill\u2019s author to ask to halt the discussion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The amendment displays either the DFL’s ‘ignorance about business, or its hostility toward business and efficient energy:<\/p>\n

The chief sponsor, Sen. Amy Koch, R-Buffalo, said the amendment, which was offered by Sen. John Doll, DFL-Bloomington, \u201cguts\u201d her bill. The bill as amended now bars utilities from charging ratepayers for construction costs before a plant is completed. Doll\u2019s amendment also requires a federal nuclear waste repository be created to store spent nuclear fuel rods.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Has anyone looked into how much money John Doll gets from wind, solar and biomass interests?<\/p>\n

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

\u201cThe Doll amendment puts us in the dark ages and it keeps us there and condemns us there,\u201d Vandeveer said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Lifting the nuke moratorium might <\/em>be bad business – for the DFL.\u00a0 It’d gut the “renewable energy” market, and make fewer people dependent on the state energy-welfare bureaucracy.<\/p>\n

The rest of us, on the other hand?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-democrats","category-minnesota-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9056"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9067,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9056\/revisions\/9067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}