McCain touts energy plan at nuclear plant

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 labeling 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 skepticism 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.

Obama said McCain was more interested in greasing the skids for oil company profits than in reining in costs. He linked McCain not only with President George W. Bush's energy policies, but also Vice President Dick Cheney.

"John McCain has taken a page out of the Bush-Cheney playbook," Obama said at a campaign stop in Youngstown, Ohio. "He's offered a plan with no significant investments in alternative energy."

ECONOMY, ENERGY PRICES TOP VOTER CONCERN

Polls show the struggling U.S. economy, and high gasoline prices, are the top issue by far among American voters ahead of the November 4 presidential election.

Obama, frequently asks crowds if they are better off now than they were four years ago under the policies of Bush's Republican administration in an effort to link Bush and McCain, but McCain's new ad says he is an independent-minded Republican willing to battle entrenched corporate interests.

"Washington's broken. John McCain knows it. We're worse off than we were four years ago," the McCain campaign ad says.

"Only McCain has taken on big tobacco, drug companies, fought corruption in both parties. He'll reform Wall Street, battle Big Oil, make America prosper again. He's the original maverick. One is ready to lead -- McCain," it says.

The Obama campaign pointed out McCain's campaign contributions from the oil industry and the prominent roles in his campaign for some former high-profile Washington lobbyists.

"Being a maverick isn't practicing the same kind of politics we have seen from Washington for decades, it isn't having a campaign run by Washington lobbyists, and it's certainly not promoting the same policies that have led America down the wrong path these past eight years," Obama spokesman Bill Burton said.

Obama said in Ohio there was little to McCain's energy plan beyond its emphasis on expanded offshore oil drilling.

"This plan will not lower prices today. It will not lower prices during the next administration. The truth is we wouldn't see a drop of oil from John McCain's plan for at least the next seven years," he said.

McCain criticized Obama for his refusal to consider expanding U.S. nuclear energy industry and mocked his call for 1 million plug-in hybrid calls on U.S. roads by 2015.

"If we want to enable the technologies of tomorrow like plug-in electric cars, we need electricity to plug into," he said.

"Senator Obama has said that expanding our nuclear power plants doesn't make sense for America. He also says no to nuclear storage and reprocessing. I couldn't disagree more," he said. "I have proposed a plan to build additional nuclear plants. That means new jobs, and that means new energy."

(Additional reporting by Caren Bohan, writing by John Whitesides; Editing by David Wiessler)