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January 18, 2009

Jimmy Carter, sage

By Ben-Peter Terpstra

Before Al Gore took the glory for inventing the internet, Jimmy Carter liked to pose as an erudite "nuclear engineer."

For example here's what he wrote in his "Three Steps toward Nuclear Responsibility" piece for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (October 1976, v. 32, no.8.): 

I have a deep personal concern with nuclear energy and world order. I had training as a nuclear engineer, working in the United States Navy on our country's early nuclear submarine program. I learned how nuclear power can be used for peaceful purposes - for propelling ships, for generating electric power and for scientific and medical research. I am absolutely aware of its potential - and its dangers.

Question: He doesn't sound like a qualified engineer to me, but what's your take Maud?

Carter continued (page 8):

Once I helped in disassembling a damaged nuclear reactor core in an experimental reactor at Chalk River, Canada.

From my experience in the Navy and more recently as Governor of Georgia, I have come to certain basic conclusions about the energy problem. The world has only enough oil to last about 30 to 40 years at the present rate of consumption. It has large coal reserves - with perhaps 200 years of reserves in the United States alone.  

Then, the Democrat offered this "solution" to America's imaginary crisis:

The United States must shift from oil to coal, taking care about the environmental problems involved in coal and production use. Our country must also maintain strict energy conservation measures, and derive increasing amounts of energy from renewable sources such as the sun.

U.S. dependence on nuclear power should be kept to the minimum necessary to meet our needs.   

And I thought coal was "bad," period.