Nuclear Energy Institute

Winning Some, Losing Some

NEI Nuclear Notes — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 21:40:00 GMT

This is the winning one: The Iowa Senate approved a bill that would allow an Iowa energy company to raise fees to pay for a study on the feasibility of building a nuclear power plant in the state. The bill is a stepping stone in what lawmakers called a scramble to turn to carbon-neutral energy sources. In other words, Iowa wants to have a plant if a plant makes sense there. It won handily, too: The...(read more)

Center for American Progress Distorts the Loan Guarantee Program

NEI Nuclear Notes — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:30:00 GMT

On Monday, CAP attempted to provide some facts about DOE’s loan guarantee program that needless to say completely distorted the picture. After spending a few days dissecting their analysis, NEI came out with a 13 page response that rebuts CAP and clarifies the facts . Below the rest of this post are just a few snippets from our response. The Center for American Progress is openly and determinedly anti...(read more)

Lamar Alexander and Natural Nuclear Energy

NEI Nuclear Notes — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:19:00 GMT

We always like to hear what Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) has to say about nuclear energy. Now, obviously, that has something to do with his all-in attitude – in fact, his call for 100 nuclear plants in 20 years shows him to be quite a fan – but does not pitch every other energy source our the window. Well, maybe he does a little, in this op-ed co-written with Health Physics Society’s Theodore Rockwell...(read more)

More Political Than Scientific

NEI Nuclear Notes — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:31:00 GMT

We’re not going to say the cat’s out of the bag or anything like that, be we were surprised to read this in the Wall Street Journal, with the paper’s Robert Thompson listening to Energy Secretary Steven Chu: Well, it's fair to say that the whole history of Yucca Mountain was more political than scientific. But also very truthfully I can say that given what we know today, the repository looks less...(read more)

Friday YouTube Fun: Giving Nuclear Power a Bad Name

NEI Nuclear Notes — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:37:00 GMT

Nuclear Power Pants , a band from Baltimore, MD, has a uniquely awful video up on YouTube that might best be described as GWAR meets Ed Wood . (That's one heckuva high bar for this high camp.) Enjoy. Can the nuclear energy industry sue for defamation of character? Read More......(read more)

FOEs of the Truth

NEI Nuclear Notes — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:23:00 GMT

Further to David’s post below, we thought we’d feature our old friends at FOE, that is, Friends of the Earth, using that discredited several year old default figure to gin up fear over loan guarantees. Frankly, the idea - to link them to bank bailouts - is a good way to make something rather abstract to the public seem really sinister – not to mention the use of music that seems to come from The Shining...(read more)

Why Not Yucca Mountain?

NEI Nuclear Notes — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 22:07:00 GMT

That question reverberated through a couple of hearings about the Department of Energy’s 2011 budget request and, up to now, has not received a very adequate answer. Energy Secretary Steven Chu has took a stab at it this week. At the House Science and Natural Resources committee yesterday and at the Senate Appropriate Committee’s Energy and Water subcommittee today, Chu faced some pretty insistent...(read more)

CBO Director on Loan Guarantees for New Nuclear Plants

NEI Nuclear Notes — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 19:50:00 GMT

The Congressional Budget Office’s Director, Douglas Elmendorf , provided some important insight into how loan guarantees are assessed in the US government’s budget . For those who have been following the 50 percent default rate argument that nuclear critics have been making , CBO makes clear that the assumption of the rate in their 2003 report was for a piece of legislation that was never enacted....(read more)

Investing in Powerhouses

NEI Nuclear Notes — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 21:29:00 GMT

The Washington Post tried a front page story about nuclear energy – and if you develop a higher profile, as nuclear energy has done, then newspapers are going to take a closer look at you. We expect that and in truth the story isn’t bad. For nuclear energy followers, the news isn’t very new at all: In states such as Georgia, Florida and South Carolina, utilities have won permission to charge customers...(read more)

Hitting Pay Dirt in Australia

NEI Nuclear Notes — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:31:00 GMT

We published a sour editorial the other day from Australia to show we had to go down under for a negative view of our loan guarantee. But let’s not sell Australia short – we’ve run enough material over the last couple of years to show the country is grappling seriously with ending its long standing ban against nuclear energy. Our experience is that once the conversation gets going, it’s hard to imagine...(read more)

Lobbyists As Big As a Solar Panel

NEI Nuclear Notes — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 19:07:00 GMT

We generally have no beef with the lobbying class, whether on the federal or state level. Legislators have to deal with a tremendous number of complex issues and lobbyists are one way (admittedly among many ways) to get up to speed on an issue. Politicians are not morons: they know NEI prefers nuclear energy solutions, that Microsoft does not promote WordPerfect and that Sierra Club makes the best...(read more)

Facebook and Small-d Democracy

NEI Nuclear Notes — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 22:13:00 GMT

The internet can be a bit, shall we say, free wheeling, so Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s Facebook page often finds itself awash in ill-considered comment. Or is it so ill-considered? Case in point: [Energy Secretary Steven] Chu posted information about $8 billion in loan guarantees awarded to two new nuclear reactors. The announcement spurred his “fans” to make more than 93 comments on nuclear energy...(read more)

Nuclear Software Off the Shelf

NEI Nuclear Notes — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 15:26:00 GMT

Looking around for software that helps greenify your life, we ran across this . Announced Monday, one of IBM's new partnerships is with Johnson Controls, a manufacturer of products that optimize energy use in buildings. The two plan to combine Johnson's energy-efficient technologies with IBM's Tivoli software to offer customers a way to monitor and manage power usage, which IBM believes...(read more)

Hans Blix, Psychological Tricks, Editorial Picks

NEI Nuclear Notes — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 20:53:00 GMT

Here’s a story we certainly had no reason to expect: The United Arab Emirates said Monday it had appointed former United Nations chief weapons inspector Hans Blix as the head of a new nuclear advisory board of experts. The nine-member advisory board will meet twice a year starting this February and will help the Persian Gulf state develop nuclear energy, the official WAM news agency reports, citing...(read more)

Some Monday Morning Nuclear Blog Clips to Read

NEI Nuclear Notes — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 15:40:00 GMT

The two big posts everyone was raving about over the weekend come from Depleted Cranium’s Steve Packard and Brave New Climate’s Barry Brook. Steve clearly spent a great deal of man-hours providing a number of reasons Why You Can’t Build a Bomb From Spent Fuel . As well, Barry Brook always gets a heavy conversation going, this time by asking if climate sceptics and anti-nukes matter . There’s also been...(read more)