A new poll: California wants less gas, more nukes

A new Field Poll out this morning documents what we've all suspected: two-thirds of Californians are driving less and reducing other spending because of high gasoline prices. Here's the Associated Press story, plus a link to the Field Poll website.

SACRAMENTO (AP) — A new poll shows two-thirds of Californians are cutting their gasoline use and reducing other spending because of soaring fuel prices.

The Field Poll also shows that majorities support building more nuclear power plants and liquid natural gas facilities in California.

Even so, a majority opposes more oil drilling offshore or on public land. And 70 percent oppose lowering air pollution standards as a way to squeeze out slightly higher gas mileage.

The poll found that 78 percent of survey respondents were driving less, 59 percent were using a family’s most fuel-efficient vehicle and 28 percent said they are carpooling more.

Just 17 percent say they have switched to public transit and 27 percent said they had replaced a car or truck with a more fuel-efficient vehicle.

Thursday’s Field Poll of 809 registered voters was conducted July 8-14. The telephone survey has a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.

--Bill Nottingham

Photos: Charles Krupe / Associated Press and Thomas Starke / Getty Images

Comments

[D J]

There is no way to factor in air quality deaths that coal/gas plants have contributed too. There is NO perfect solution. It is also harder to quantify which one is more perfect than others. They all have costs.

[Spokker]

"Incidentally I have family near Three Mile Island with weird medical issues and a friend who was near Chernobyl when the accident occurred and can't help but to think some of her medical problems resulted from the accident."

The radiation released from the accident is less than what you would receive getting a chest x-ray done. There is no evidence to suggest that any medical issues your family suffers can be traced to Three Mile Island.

Chernobyl is completely irrelevant. The thing was a piece of junk. The San Onofre plant (the one between LA and San Diego), has containment structures that Chernobyl didn't even have.

[Jose]

The internet is no place to hold a rational discussion. The impact of Chernobyl goes far beyond the direct deaths cited previously. 56 is a ludicrously low number of the overall impact. From the same report, page 7:

"The projections indicate that, among the most exposed populations (liquidators, evacuees and residents of the so-called ‘strict control zones’), total cancer mortality might increase by up to a few per cent owing to Chernobyl related radiation exposure. Such an increase could mean eventually up to several thousand fatal cancers in addition to perhaps one hundred thousand cancer deaths expected in these populations from all other causes."

This does not address the secondary downwind effects, just the heavily exposed. Nothing scares people more than cancer, except for maybe HP Lovecraft.

And there is no greater proponent of nuclear power than I. I studied it in college, have family members who were involved in the business, and am as current as an educated layman is on the technology. I also used to run nuclear event simulations at work and am fully cognizant of the differences between what in the trade was known as "prompt" effects (i.e. the people directly killed) and the "delayed" or "secondary" effects (i.e. people whose life expectancies are significantly reduced by the fallout effects). Read the DNA handbook, which is the best reference and is based on the effects of the Hiroshima bomb, for more detailed and horrible information.

Nuclear power can be safe and effective, and is one of the few real large scale near term potential reducers of greenhouse gasses. The French model shows how to do it right, as does the post TMI US operating history. However, some of the hard core proponents always poo poo the big and small incidents that the anti's have fully categorized and that are used to scare the crud out of people, and as a result don't contribute any more to the details of the argument than cheerleaders on the sidelines of a high school football game. They are just ignored.

[Tony Fernandez]

Well I guess when Wikipedia sites a source, that source also becomes unreliable, right?

http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Booklets/Chernobyl/chernobyl.pdf

Either way, nuclear is very safe, very clean, and an untapped resource because of irrational fears.

[Jose]

Wikipedia? You take Wikipedia as an authoritative source?

56 people were DIRECTLY killed by the explosion, fire, and massive overdoses of radiation. The dosing of the population of the downwinders is one of those things that will take a long time to sort out.

I can Wikipedia, too. Wiki "downwinders"

[M]

Maybe I don't understand enough about nuclear or understand just enough to be unsure about it, but it can have some very horrible consequences. Incidentally I have family near Three Mile Island with weird medical issues and a friend who was near Chernobyl when the accident occurred and can't help but to think some of her medical problems resulted from the accident. Another of my friends went to school near a nuclear generator in Europe and he was disturbed by all of the propaganda they touted -- like they were safer being onsite at the school than out in the "real world" because they built better protection from nuclear radiation onsite than most normal people had in their homes. So they were saying it was unsafe, but they should feel good about where they were.

Nuclear energy can have very bad consequences and I am not satisfied by things not being perfect when it is something like this. We have been burning oil for years and still haven't figure out how to make it safe and clean. The current nuclear waste sitting around is a problem. What would happen if the nuclear generator between LA and San Diego were to have an accident, maybe due to an earthquake? How would people and things travel between the two cities?

[Tony Fernandez]

Jose, then why does Wikipedia list that only 56 people died directly from Chernobyl?

And let's face it, we can't exactly use Soviet standards for how safe nuclear power is. The United States actually cares if a large part of its population dies.

[Jose]

These comments are making my brain hurt.

Nuke approaches like fast fission can significantly reduce the volume of waste. These are the things we should be going for.

Chernobyl killed a LOT of people. As would TMI if the containment had breached. No need to sugar coat. However, coal plants put out more natural radiation in a year than non-exploding nukes do in a lifetime, so why aren't the anti nukies up in arms about coal piles, plants, or mine tailings?

Solar and wind won't solve anything by itself. Nor will drilling. There's a great chart showing what a mouse poot ANWR would be if it goes on line as the "Oil is my God" people would have. It won't solve anything. Too bad we can't post images here.

Me, I'm leaning toward Imo Sans idea. Mongo like shiny things!

[ryanman]

There are nuclear fuel reprocessing methods that can be used and greatly reduce the amount of material that needs to be stored. I've seen the DoE presentation on storing wast at Yucca mountain and it's not perfect, but it is pretty sound. Realistically the biggest cost, and where we need the government to be efficient in order for the economics to make since in regard to nuclear power, is in the regulation.

[Tony Fernandez]

Nuclear power is clean and produces a ton of energy, not to mention it is very safe (look up how many people were killed by Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, here some foreshadowing, it's not very many at all, and the technology is much, much safer today).

Nuclear waste can go to Yucca Mountain. It's been put off for years because of people scared that their drinking water is going to be contaminated. Please, you're in a desert. If you wanted water, do you think the desert is the best place to find it? Besides, they'll be monitoring that kind of thing. Nuclear has too great a potential to be wasted because of irrational fears. Let's step it up and stop using coal and oil already! Renewables are great, but show me a renewable that can produce enough of the energy that we need in this country.

[Spokker]

France is over 70% nuclear and they aren't a smoldering crater.

What we really need is more trains, nuclear power, and legalized marijuana. That will fix 90% of the problems in this country.

[Mark]

Most people that want nuclear energy not realize that the U.S. has no depository to dispose of the waste. Yucca Mountain won't happen and it's a danger if it gets finished. There is a fault that runs right through the area where the waste tanks are. People we don't drive our cars on nuclear energy so I don't see the correlation between gas powered cars and nuclear energy. Build and invest in solar. No waste is produced.

[Fred Williams]

Yep, time to fire up those nu-clur plants. Also time to stop messing around on the waste site. Of course those plants are probably 10 years away, but a lot closer than fusion reactors (2050?). All other sources of power (Jackie the physicist) are gonna pump a lot of carbon into the air, starve the people, ruin the forrests, kill the birds, kill the fish. I am willing to donate my back yard for a nuclear power plant.

[KateNonymous]

How do the French handle this issue?

[Kristian Lewis]

Despite what this poll or anyone unschooled on the issue thinks, we need to make maximum use of all energy sources available to us. There is no one option that will solve our energy needs. Yes, clean, renewable energy is ideal but wind and solar and other examples of this type of resource are not enough by themselves. Furhter exploration and exploitation of domestic oil is vital as is nuclear power. A combination of all these efforts is needed to eliminate our dependance on foreign oil and relieve the inflationary pressure that the cost of oil is putting on our economy.

[dave9]

"Nuclear power requires access to massive amounts of water to cool the rods."

Actually, any power plant requires a way to reject heat to condense water. It doens't matter whether the initial conversion to steam is from a furnace fueled by gas or oil or if it's a nuclear pile.

"The upsetting thing about nuclear is we don't even know what to do with the waste we now have."

The problem has been that people have been too concerned with stability on the time frame of 10000 years. Will it matter if by consuming oil and coal and emitting greenhouse gases, we kill off everything in the next 1000 years?
As far as the problem of waste from nuclear plants contaminating the environment, current oil shipping nearly guarantees a major oil spill every couple of years. An oil spill is devastating to a marine environment, so pick the lesser of two evils. Or be content to give up your plasma TV.

[Mason]

I don't believe the question on drilling off-shore was properly stated. When you use terminalogy like "drilling Callifornia's tidewater and along seacoast" it paints the picture of oil rigs just off our beaches and inlets. Why not correctly state where the drilling would take place- on the outer continental shelf out of sight of land? Perhap it could be proposed: Would you agree to off shore drilling if it was out of sight and would actually reduce natural oil leakage? It's a fact that 66% of oil washing up on America's shores come from this natural occurance and less than 1% from drilling. Far more spills occur from oil tanker than drilling.

[Ken]

The poll is likely correct, they just didn't call a bunch of leftist pinheads in West LA, hence the outrage here. Wind, solar, biomass power, whatever is all fine, but talk all we want about green-this and green-that, oil, coal and gas power generation is not going away. Nuclear power is extremely safe but the issue is where to put the waste. Outside of the radical environmentalist movement, serious scientists agree you can bury the stuff without worry. But the left raises the red-herring of "What happens in 100,000 years when we're gone and someone stumbles upon the stuff?" Look, in 100,000 years mankind is either long gone, or, hopefully, will have 99,900 years earlier figured out how to generate power without hazardous waste or trashing the air.

[Will]

I see the NIMBY (not in my backyard) crowd is alive and well. Why is it ok to have oil drilling in Texas, Louisiana, etc? For that matter, deserts in the middle east? Oh, that's right we in California have pristine view and land rights because we live on the left coast! Wind and solar power are nice ideas but they are part of an entire package of things that can be done including off-shore drilling. Conservation is part of the package as well. Off-shore drilling is needed including Anwar. Anwar is the size of the state of Indiana. The drilling would take place in an area the size the Indianapolis Football stadium. We are exporting almost a trillion dollars of our monies to dictators and governments that despise us. That money could easily go into revamping our own domestic oil supplies. An oil embargo would cripple the US.

[Bob]

They never asked me. No, we must not succumb to nuclear power. The trouble is we have no way of turning off the poison radioactivity it creates. We cannot leave that to future generations. No to nuclear power!

[jackie]

Wonder who paid for the poll? He who pays the piper calls the tune.

I could engineer a poll to get any answer I wanted. Especially in something like nuclear where most people have no idea of what the technology does or what it's history has been.

Me, I'm a physicist and I say it's a stupid thing to use nuclear when anything else will do.

Yours,
Jackie

[P. Baranco]

Nuclear power requires access to massive amounts of water to cool the rods. If you aren't going to build it on the ocean, it doesn't make any sense to locate near an area that experiences drought (i.e. the entire Southern California region). Focus on renewable resources like solar and wind.

[Ino Sens]

As a child of under 13 years of age, I personally feel that government investment into projects like power plants, transport, etc. is a poorly chosen path. The growth of our great state depends not on infrastructure but rather on the creation and promotion of paper machete cities to be inhabited by adorable rodents. Every time a helpless hamster is cruelly flushed down a toilet or carelessly thrown into a dumpster, an angel loses it's wings. It's a scientific fact. Less talk of reactors and oil dependence and more brightly colored paper cities!

[Eric Kapan]

The upsetting thing about nuclear is we don't even know what to do with the waste we now have. What has been going on with Yucca Mountain in Nevada? Even deep in the middle of the Nevada Desert that have found that is not safe. So where is it? What do we do with the waste?>
It's now time to embrace more wind and solar and make greater strides in that. I certainly was not polled on this issue.

[dan]

I think referring to nuclear energy facilities as "nukes" may be perpetuate American anxiety on Nuclear Energy, a much cleaner alternative to oil.