In the name of cutting spending – no, that is not a joke – the White House is cutting $17 billion in non-taxpayer funding for the nuclear fuel depository in Yucca Mountain in Nevada. This is important because it cuts the legs from the nuclear energy industry out from underneath, as if it wasn’t already regulated to death, by taking away a national place to store and process nuclear waste.

I don’t want to get Obama Derangement Syndrome. I really don’t. But sometimes, I think Obama checks the BPN Platform in the morning just to see the opposite of what he’ll do that day.

This is a serious blow to nuclear energy. Says American Thinker:

This termination decision was one among several contained in a document titled “Terminations, Reductions, and Savings” which were announced today by the White House to cut $17 Billion from the FY2010 budget.

It seems disingenuous to suggest that canceling the Yucca Mountain project is going to help taxpayers, since the project is funded not by the taxpayer, but by the Nuclear Waste Fund. The Fund has about $30 Billion which is derived from an assessment on nuclear utilities based upon the amount of electricity generated. The cost is passed on to consumers.

The Obama Administration? Disingenuous? Noooo!

If Obama really cared about reining in spending and waste, shouldn’t he think about bigger things? I don’t ask for much, just cut something simple: you know, like Nancy Pelosi’s 1,900 health care bill that is estimated to cost over a trillion dollars over the next decade. The same one the Wall Street Journal calls the worst bill ever. Just a thought.

The statement from the White House says that Obama is committed to nuclear energy, and that he just wants a better solution for nuclear waste. But his solution right now is to ditch the big dump and let the nuclear power plants dump their own waste locally.

As you can see at Bellona.org, Obama’s ridiculous Secretary of Energy, Stephen Chu, seems to believe that the reason not to use Yucca Mountain is that “we can do a better job.”

By that reasoning, can we impeach Obama? I’m sure someone else can do a better job.

John McCain has this right. Says Bellona.org:

Chu’s remarks at the Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing on support for scientific research set off a fractious exchanges with Senator John McCain, the Republican from Arizona who lost the presidency to Obama last year, and underscored that the United States was now on a extraordinarily new tack to deal with its nuclear waste.

McCain’s current defence of Yucca is a direct contradiction of promises he made on the campaign trail in Nevada, where he adopted an anti-Yucca stance in stump speeches.

“What’s wrong with Yucca Mountain, Mr. Chu,” McCain asked in remarks broadcast from the hearing.

“I think we can do a better job,” said Chu.

McCain asked whether it was true that Obama — as well as Chu — view Yucca Mountain as no longer an option.

“That’s true,” replied Chu.

“Now we’re going to have spent fuel sitting around in pools all over America,” McCain retorted, and characterised the Obama position on nuclear waste — and its decision to uphold the rejection of reprocessing spent nuclear fuel — as a reflection of the administration’s opposition to nuclear energy.

Nuclear energy waste is really tough to deal with. My opinion is pretty simple: the Obama administration is naive and thinks there’s some magical solution to solve our energy problems, as if a color (”green”) is going to help everything, when the solution is already waiting in Yucca Mountain. Also, they used something they wanted to cut anyway as a way to say they care about cutting spending.

They’re wrong about nuclear energy, and saying that they like cutting spending is absurd. This whole thing is absurd, and now I’m bitter.

Maybe I should move to France.