feats of the 21st century. it would be like adding a power drill to our tool box in bulding this clean energy economy. so you hear that. not as a panacea, not that we stop doing wind and solar and geothermal and cleaner forms of energy. but this is a tool that could play a significant role going forward in weaning us off fossil fuels. professor, you call @ holy grail. it was an engineering marvel beyond beliefs. how big of a deal is this? it s the holy grail of putting the sun in a bottle. think about it. the universe uing fusion. why does the sunshine? the sun is a fusion reactor. in california they took 200 laser beams, shot them on to a tiny pelt of lithium, heated it up to a temperature of a star and they extracted more energy
economic battery storage to store the power from renewables and nuclear has a 3 million to 1 energy density advantage over fossil fuels. the amount of nuclear fuel to power one entire lifetime in the western world is about the size of a can of coca cola. this is something that really is necessary to wean us off fossil fuels and also stop dumping carbon into the atmosphere. what about, seth, the reliance on russia in this nuclear power world? i mean, again, these are the numbers i ve got. russia owns something like 40% of the world s uranium conversion infrastructure. that s what you need, of course, to turn uranium or what we dig out of the ground into nuclear fuel. can this really be done without russia and also currently the largest?
investment in new energy capacity over the past year was in wind, solar and battery storage. we have our auto manufacturers announcing that the future is electric vehicles. had we made these investments sooner, we would not be held hostage to these rising volatile international prices we are seeing as a nation. so in terms of wind, but especially electric, i feel like we ve been talking we have been talking about this for decades. what will it take to actually wean the u.s. off fossil fuels or at least significantly enough that there isn t a dependence that still exists on russian fuel? we have to do two things. the first is we have to respond basically to what industry is asking this administration to do and the epa to do, which is provide clear rules of engagement so that they can make long-term investments in our automobile and our power sector. but the other thing we need in
because they want to reward their investors by buying back more shares or shoring up their balance sheets, but the reality is nothing the president has done has really stopped it. now the biden administration s rhetoric suggests they would like to get us off fossil fuels at some point in the next decade or so and oil and gas companies aren t necessarily exploiting the assets because of that. but let me tell you with these prices and having a rendezvous with $120 or so, it s going to be very seductive, and we re going to see more crude oil coming out west texas, north dakota and new mexico, and as long as we don t start a war with canada we ll be getting 4 million barrels a day of canadian oil regardless of whether the keystone pipeline xl is restarted or not. a potential sign of good news today oil prices tumbling double digits after the uae s ambassador told washington they are in fafvor of increasing
and what is the likelihood, do you think, that because we re going to pass this in short order, that we re going to see the light of day on the freedom to vote act? if people are disenfranchised because of the redistricting we re witnessing in state-run legislation, that we re not going to be able to do that. i tell you i think we should have an exception to the filibuster for voting rights because it s so fundamental to our democracy and our rights. if you don t have the right to vote, you don t have a democracy. and efforts to hold it back, to weaken it, this is very serious. we re going we have to win the next election. that s my top priority. we need to re-elect president biden. we re thinking ahead but i can tell you it was a historic week passing this important bill and the investment and attacking climate change was historic. and my committee, we passed the electrification of the federal fleet and post office moving us off fossil fuels.