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This is appalling — only McCains advisor spoke up for nuclear power. He is Douglas Holtz-Eakin, policy director for Sen. McCain, widely respected former head of CBO, and current senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations:

The conventional wisdom among the boys on the bus – including us – has been that there’s essentially no difference among the three presidential contenders on climate-change policy. It turns out there is.

Tonight at the “ECO:nomics” conference, top advisers to all three senators gathered on stage to drill deep into the subject of energy and climate policy. (See a video of highlights from the panel discussion.)

Given how little attention this issue has gotten on the trail, or in the umpteen debates, this hour-long exchange could be as hot as it gets. The most explosive issue: nuclear power. It may have zero emissions of greenhouse gases, but it’s apparently toxic for politicians.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, policy director for Sen. McCain, said nukes can’t be left out. ‘The Senate Majority leader is the problem—we have Yucca Mountain [storage facility], we have the technology. I can’t see why we don’t take advantage of that,” he said.

Gene Sperling, chief economic adviser for Sen. Clinton and a veteran of the other Clinton White House, made it clear that New York’s junior senator “does not embrace nuclear power,” for a host of reasons ranging from Yucca Mountain’s uncertain storage to worries over nuclear proliferation. She doesn’t want to take nuclear power—which accounts for 20% of U.S. electricity—“off the table,” she just doesn’t want to see any more of the stuff until it dies of natural causes, he said.

Jason Grumet, Sen. Obama’s energy adviser, appeared to leave the door cracked open—at first. “We have to overcome the problem, which is that renewable energy alone won’t do it,” he said. But, ticking off nuclear’s worries on his fingers—like safety, storage, and proliferation—he rushed to disavow “current nuclear” technology.

The debate that’s more-often discussed may prove less important: whether, assuming the U.S. does impose a carbon constraint, it should come through “carbon taxes” or “cap-and-trade

Mr. Holtz-Eakin rejected the notion that a carbon tax would be more efficient and less subject to special-interest loopholes. “Economists would rather be right than useful,” arguing that even a carbon tax would become an appropriations-committee nightmare.

But make no mistake: Even the “market” solution of a cap-and-trade solution is still a hidden tax, admitted Mr. Grumet. But that’s what it will take to, erm, bring order to the island.

“You can have the Lord of the Flies, or you can have a government,” he said.

More coverage of the conference here.

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