Bolling: How to Solve the Oil Crisis

The only bright spot in a dim U.S. auto industry is the hybrid models. Ford(F Quote) and General Motors' (GM Quote) current and future promised models are in demand and will help reshape the way we buy cars. Chevrolet has promised a pretty hot hybrid to be developed soon. The Volt looks great and sounds great, but our auto guys in Detroit need to move fast. Japan and Korea certainly are.

We also must speed the process for permitting and approving our nuclear power sources. It takes about three years or more just to get approvals and another three to five to build a reactor. It could take 1,000 to 1,500 wind turbines turning full time to produce the power of one nuclear reactor. Can you imagine telling a community (hospitals, trains, offices) that there was going to be a brownout because the wind had died down for a while?

Uranium is the cheapest form of viable, accessible fuel for power production. It also happens that we are very friendly with Canada, Brazil, Australia, and our own western states -- combined, these places produce most of the uranium in the world. Cameco(CCJ Quote) in Canada will eventually get to about 20% of the world's uranium production as soon as its Cigar Lake project is on line.

And, if France can generate 77% of her power from uranium, we should be able to double our current 18%, given the economics of oil and coal. If France can figure out a way to dispose of the spent fuel rods (they use hot fuel rod farms where spent fuel rods sit in water for five to seven years to cool before disposal) so should we.