July, 2010

The Western Governors Association surprised a lot of people last year when it issued strong support for nuclear energy among its energy provisions. You can read Nuclear Notes’ coverage of that here . As I wrote then, the interest isn’t that it was nuclear-friendly, it’s that it focused so intensely on...

Dan Yurman at Idaho Samizdat has the helm this week. For the past few carnivals that we missed, be sure to check out #9 at Atomic Insights , and #10 and #11 at Next Big Future. ...read more

A few quick hits: A US appeals court said Wednesday it would wait until the Nuclear Regulatory Commission rules on the Yucca Mountain appeal before the commission before it hears oral arguments in a lawsuit over the planned termination of the nuclear waste repository project. This story from Platts concerns...

One of the more exciting developments in the nuclear realm over the last couple of years have been been small reactors, those that generate less than 350 megawatts of electricity. While enthusiasm sometimes translates into a business model and sometimes does not, both the Department of Energy and the...

For those of you who tend a bit more to the wonkish end of things, a new joint study from the OECD and IAEA on the world’s supply of uranium could make for some interesting reading.  The biennial OECD “ Red Book ” (officially known as Uranium 2009: Resources, Production and Demand ) on uranium supply...

The current British government is a coalition between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, an awkward marriage considering that the Conservatives favor increased use of nuclear energy and the Liberal Democrats most definitely don’t. As part of the coalition agreement – or compromise – the liberals...

Vietnam has become something like a cheerleader for nuclear energy, having committed itself to a plant there. But it wants everyone to share in the fun: Vietnam has called on South East Asian nations to build nuclear power stations to meet rising energy demands. The proposal came at an energy policy...

Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) this week introduced the Enabling the Nuclear Renaissance Act ( S. 3618 ), which gathers into a single bill many nuclear energy provisions found in previously introduced legislation. Voinovich’s legislation also includes provisions not found in other bills, proposing to...

Apparently pleased with the result of his Facebook page , Energy Secretary has now moved on to blogging and twittering . At the new blog, called Energy Blog, Chu greets his new readers and promises, well, let him tell you: Our goal is to use the Energy Blog and our other social media outlets to show...

The Washington Post weighs in on Yucca Mountain on the editorial page: Technology might temper some opposition; recycling or reprocessing used fuel will not decrease the amount of waste that needs to be stored -- a staggering 57,000 tons -- but it could diminish the number of years that waste remains...

We’ve seen surprisingly little news for it, but maybe it’s a little too inside nuclear baseball. That doesn’t mean the news isn’t good, though: House lawmakers approved a spending bill Thursday that includes $25 billion in loan guarantees for new nuclear reactors, an amount that could enable the expansion...

This is fun:   USA Today’s Greenhouse blog has the story: The ad campaign, which has included TV spots aired in New Mexico and elsewhere, is funded by H. Leighton Steward, a retired oil industry executive and co-author of the Sugar Busters ! dieting books, reports The Post. It's part of a larger...

Good news for solar energy : President Barack Obama today announced that a US government agency is awarding nearly USD 2 billion from a stimulus package to two solar companies, as part of his drive to build a clean energy economy. “Today” was July 3. We’re happy to see some of the stimulus money go this...

Late last year, we made it clear that we were going to ignore Climategate, the release of emails from the University of East Anglia. Some interpreted those emails as indicating that the science behind climate change had been cooked up by scientists looking for grant money. We read the most incriminating...

Yesterday, we told you about a letter sent by 91 legislators to Energy Secretary Steven Chu. In this story about the letter, writer Steve Tetreault uncovers another letter writing effort: Meanwhile, Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., was seeking lawmakers to sign a letter to NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko...

Ever since Energy Secretary Steven Chu set about closing Yucca Mountain, Congress members have been handing DOE staff – and Chu – considerable grief for the decision at virtually every hearing since then. So the recent decision that the used fuel repository’s license application cannot be withdrawn from...

A few weeks ago, we noted a Republican effort led by Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) to put forward an alternative to the Kerry-Lieberman climate change bill. Now, Sen. Richard Burr (R-S.C.) and Saxby Chambliss (R-GA.)  have introduced the Next Generation Energy Security Act. Burr and Chambliss are...

So how has the news about Yucca Mountain springing back to life gone over? Pretty well. Here’s Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.): Today’s decision affirms what I have been saying all along - Yucca Mountain remains the legally designated national repository for spent nuclear fuel and high level defense waste...

Our opinion about Friends of the Earth swings a bit between annoyance and amusement – the former because the environmental group plays so loosely with facts, the latter because they are often quite maladroit even with their loose facts. Consider : This week Congress will vote on whether to take teachers...

It has been an exciting week in loan guarantees. Last Thursday, the U.S. Export-Import Bank decided not to provide loan guarantees to support the sale of $310 million in mining machinery by Bucyrus International, Inc ., to Reliance Power Ltd., of India. The sale was contingent upon the Indian firm receiving...