Edwards on coal and nukes

I originally posted this on the Edwards website as a diary post. I attended an Edwards fundraiser early last week, and he said he wanted no more new coal plants and that (unlike Hillary and Obama) he doesn't support nuclear power.

My diary post attracted some comments and eventually this video - Edwards probably meant to say last week that he would fight to stop any new coal plants that didn't have the potential to sequester carbon, which is much less drastic than no new coal plants and not even as far as Senator Dodd's proposal that new coal plants must sequester carbon. I haven't found any elaboration on his stance over nuclear - I suspect he meant no subsidies for nuclear power, but not a ban on new nuclear power plants. I've no problem with cutting subsidies for nukes, but I'd oppose a ban on new ones.

So his position on coal is better than anything from Obama or Hillary, but not as good as Dodd. My guess is that he reasons that he supports an overall carbon cap and rather than force sequestration on new plants, he'll give them a choice of doing it or buying credits. Understandable, but it would just be safer to require sequestration.

It's interesting that Edwards has one of the most fleshed out position on issues of any presidential candidate, and it still hard to know exactly what he wants to do. The other candidates really are blank slates then in terms of figuring out what they want.