McCain touts energy plan at nuclear plant

By Matthew Bigg

NEWPORT, Michigan (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate John McCain visited a nuclear power plant on Tuesday to tout his plan to battle rising energy costs by expanding exploration of traditional sources like nuclear power and offshore oil drilling.

With his presidential race against Democrat Barack Obama focused on consumer pain at the gas pumps, McCain also aired a new advertisement stressing his willingness to battle corporate interests and labelling himself "the original maverick."

"Solving our national energy crisis requires an 'all of the above' approach," McCain, a Republican senator from Arizona, said on a visit to the Enrico Fermi nuclear power plant in Michigan, named for a physicist who won the Nobel Prize for his work in splitting the atom.

"Nuclear power alone is not enough. Drilling alone is not enough. We need to do all this and more," he said at the plant, home to an operating reactor and a decommissioned one that suffered a partial meltdown in 1966.

McCain has called for the construction of 45 new nuclear power plants by 2030 and a broad expansion of offshore drilling for oil in an effort to reduce reliance on foreign sources of oil.

Obama, a Democratic senator from Illinois, opposes more nuclear plants and has expressed scepticism about new offshore drilling, although he says he would back a limited drilling increase as part of a broad compromise in Congress that would help rein in gas prices.

Obama is spending the week pushing his plan to develop alternative sources of energy and hybrid vehicles and to help consumers pay for higher prices with a $1,000-per family rebate paid for by a tax on excessive energy-company profits.

On Monday, he called for ending U.S. reliance on oil from the Middle East and Venezuela within 10 years and proposed tapping the strategic oil reserve to help lower gas prices.