Yesterday, Pres. Obama announced new plans for off-shore drilling and environmental groups have weighted in with predictable opposition.
But, that wasn't all that was in his speech, as Ken Ward, Jr. points out, ‘Clean coal’ gets another mention in Obama speech, too:
But we have to do more. We need to make continued investments in clean coal technologies and advanced biofuels. A few weeks ago, I announced loan guarantees to break ground on America’s first new nuclear facility in three decades, a project that will create thousands of jobs.
It's further in the speech that things get really interesting:
So moving towards new energy is about our security. It’s also about our economy. And what I hope is, is the policies that we’ve laid out -- and applying are greatest scientific minds to big problems like coal to nuclear -- underscores the seriousness with which my administration takes this challenge. It’s a challenge that requires us to break out of the old ways of thinking, to think and act anew.
Apparently the DOE proposes pumping a billion dollars into "clean energy" funding to mine uranium from coal ash.
We've known for a while (The Oil Drum, March, 2007) that we're running out of Uranium:
...after about 2020 severe uranium supply shortages become likely which, again will limit the extension of nuclear energy.
The Obama administration has embraced nuclear as an energy of the future. The challenge then, is where do you get the uranium?
Coal + Nuclear = Clean Energy ?!
Now, I'm pretty skeptical about this boondoggle, but the idea is that coal has trace levels of all sorts of elements in it, include several that can be refined to produce uranium. The chemistry and physics get complicated, but no more complicated than coal-to-liquids or coal-to-gas, I'm told, so it just might work in a lab setting at least.