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The Los Angeles Times ran an editorial on nuclear energy this past weekend. It’s pretty weak tea. Senate Republicans and many moderate Democrats are seeking to lard up prospective climate and energy bills with billions of dollars in loan guarantees and other subsidies for nuclear power, even though it...

One of the themes – or is that memes – we’ve been following here is the growing support for nuclear energy among Congressional Democrats. We might be expected to consider nuclear energy a post-partisan issue – that is, one where Republicans and Democrats more-or-less agree on its value generally if not...

Continuing on Friday’s critique of Amory Lovins’ latest study , our following post delves into discussing if wind and solar are baseload technologies. Funny enough, Lovins’ rebuttal of this myth completely misinterpreted what Stewart Brand said about baseload in his nuclear chapter and apparently ended...

As opposed to Bob McDonnell above, governor-elect Chris Christie of New Jersey tilts rather away from the national Republican party on energy issues. Might not mean anything: It may just be that he has a genuine desire to move New Jersey to solar energy and will clear away hurdles to make it happen....

We provided you with some of the nuclear energy highlights from last week’s hearings on the Kerry-Boxer climate change bill. Now comes the finagling that makes politics so engaging for those who like to follow it, so frustrating for everyone else. This story from the Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin...

Or, The Senate Moves on Climate Change. Senators Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) have presented the Senate’s version of the climate change bill that will start off in the Environment and Public Works committee chaired by Boxer. As we’ve seen with the health bill, legislation in the...

Yesterday, we noted that Libyan President Muammar el-Qaddafi followed President Obama’s speech at the United Nations with a speech that ran about an hour over its quota. We didn’t mention that it drifted in from Cloud Cuckooland with a pit stop in Madville. It did prove the perfect introduction to Iranian...

Sen. Joe Lieberman [I-Conn.] wants you to know : “I don’t think we’re going to [pass a bill] without bipartisan support,” Lieberman told POLITICO last week. “And without a nuclear title that’s stronger than in the House climate change legislation, we’re not going to be able to get enough votes to pass...

To give a sense of the impact of Sen. Lamar Alexander’s (R-Tenn.)insistence on nuclear energy, as noted below, consider the response of Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) in our Twitter feed to your right. Here’s the whole quote – it ran longer than 140 characters: You are suggesting a command and control...

Yesterday, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) announced at the National Press Club a document he entitled Blueprint for 100 New Nuclear Power Plants in 20 Years. It’s as full an explication of Alexander’s ideas as you could want to see. Here’s the gist of it : Republican United States Senators offer a different...

The Republicans will today introduce an energy bill intended as a replacement for the Waxman-Markey legislation bill now wending its way through the House (and due for a vote sometime near the end of June – a date’s not set yet.) Here’s the Times: The Republican proposal, drafted by a group led by Representative...

Last week, President Obama said during his speech in Cairo that he wanted Iran to be able to pursue nuclear energy while not pursuing nuclear weaponry. The issues here are many, though using a nuclear plant as a stalking horse for building bombs isn’t really one of them. As we’ve noted before, Russia...

Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander called Wednesday for doubling the number of nuclear reactors nationwide, a potentially $700 billion proposal that calls for building 100 more over 20 years. That’s what he said to the Associated Press. Why think small? And he’s got all the right reasons lined up. "I...

Why not? He’s much in the news and now that he’s with the majority party, we’d like to know where he tips the balance. As it turns out : I think there is no doubt that we need to develop nuclear energy in America because of the great problems associated with the dependence on foreign oil. The issues...

Activism should be fun, pro- or anti-whatever, since the rewards of activism are often frustration, lost friends, and learning what it is to be called fanatic. So a bow to the unbending squirrel : A French anti-nuclear activist nicknamed the "unbending squirrel" managed to stop a train carrying...

If a cap and a price are imposed on carbon dioxide emissions, [nuclear] plants could be among the biggest economic winners in the vast economic shifts that would be created by greenhouse gas regulations. That’s from the New York Times , borrowing a story from Climate Wire, which while noting the nuclear...

Among other things (no doubt), House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC) sat down with South Carolina Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Otis Rawl and discussed energy and economic issues. This exchange on CEO Corner jumped out, Rawl : Do you think nuclear, in, from a national level, is a viable alternative...

We wonder if industries will have to affix Surgeon General labels on their plants : Having received White House backing, the Environmental Protection Agency declared Friday that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are a significant threat to human health and thus will be listed as pollutants under...

What to do, what to do? We’d be remiss to say that Yucca Mountain is completely, absolutely dead, because it really isn’t, but the decision to slow the pace on the used fuel repository has led to consequences that could easily have been foreseen : Several legislatures of states with nuclear power plants...

Hat tips to Stephen Dubner's Freakonmics blog post, When Scare Tactics Backfire , and TreeHugger for pointing us to this rather bizarre story out of Ontario. Per the National Post , Toronto police issued an alert today after residents in Rosedale and downtown received an information placard from...

Harvey Wasserman's HuffPo post, Cracking the Corporate Media's Iron Curtain Around Death at Three Mile Island , shows that he knows no bounds in his determination to scare and mislead the public. It is grossly irresponsible for him to claim that the accident at TMI killed people without offering...

Here’s what you get for patting yourself on the back too much, courtesy of the Los Angeles Times : When it comes to highly radioactive nuclear waste, pretty much everybody is a NIMBY. Setting aside the fact that scientists have yet to develop the technology to safely store this waste for the thousands...

Bob McCracken from Nye County in Nevada has kept track for years a list of benefits Nevada could have enjoyed for hosting used nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain. In response to the Obama Administration's recent decision to cut funding to Yucca Mountain, Bob decided to lay it all out on what might have...

Well, we just don’t know. (click on pictures or here to see full size versions): These are ads created in Romania for Greenpeace and, although these are in English, they may be intended for Eastern Europe. Mutations? Really? This went out of style after Universal Pictures grew tired of growing tarantulas...

Yesterday's Reuters story claiming that "economic woes delayed U.S. nuclear power expansion" has a few of its time-lines and facts off. Here's the first paragraph of the story: The sputtering global economy and frozen credit markets have shrunk the first wave of a highly touted U.S...