Skip to main content

Liveblogging: NEI's John Kane on C-Span's Washington Journal

John Kane, NEI's Senior Vice President of Government Affairs, is appearing on C-Span's Washington Journal this morning at 9:10 a.m. U.S. EDT. He'll be talking about the Energy Bill. Joining him on the program will be Navin Nayak of U.S. PIRG. I'll be following the interview here in the office, live, and be offering running commentary and supporting documents.

To watch, click here. To listen via C-Span Radio, click here. Be sure to hit refresh in your browser periodically, so you get to see all the latest information that I'll be posting.

UPDATE: Moderator mentions the role of U.S. Senator Pete Domenici in the energy bill. For more information on his book on nuclear energy, click here.

Nayak is brining up the issue of waste -- and for the industry the answer is Yucca Mountain. As to cost, we handled the issue of the cost of new nuclear build a few weeks ago, here. And besides, if nobody wants to invest in nuclear energy, then why is Warren Buffet thinking about it?

Safety and security is now being brought up, and the best place to start with that debate is probably our roundup of posts on Time's article on nuclear power plant security. For our archive on safety, click here.

The moderator just brought up the fact that President Bush is going to give a speech at the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant later today.

Nayak is calling nuclear, "a polluting energy" claiming that it has to leverage other polluting technologies in order to run itself. Unfortunately, the research concerning lifecycle emissions disputes that claim.

Nayak says that energy isn't a "left-right issue". We agree.

Why is nuclear a better bet right now than renewables? This slide deals with something called "capacity factor" -- an important measure of efficiency. As for Nayak's claim about public opinion, those results are disputed by our own research.

The conversation has turned to the Price-Anderson Act. Click here for a fact sheet.

Nayak says that nuclear energy won't have any impact on America's dependence on foreign sources of energy. But what about nuclear-generated hydrogen?

John is now talking about the new licensing process for nuclear power plants.

Segement concludes. Thanks for sticking with us.

Technorati tags: , , , , ,

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Fluor Invests in NuScale

You know, it’s kind of sad that no one is willing to invest in nuclear energy anymore. Wait, what? NuScale Power celebrated the news of its company-saving $30 million investment from Fluor Corp. Thursday morning with a press conference in Washington, D.C. Fluor is a design, engineering and construction company involved with some 20 plants in the 70s and 80s, but it has not held interest in a nuclear energy company until now. Fluor, which has deep roots in the nuclear industry, is betting big on small-scale nuclear energy with its NuScale investment. "It's become a serious contender in the last decade or so," John Hopkins, [Fluor’s group president in charge of new ventures], said. And that brings us to NuScale, which had run into some dark days – maybe not as dark as, say, Solyndra, but dire enough : Earlier this year, the Securities Exchange Commission filed an action against NuScale's lead investor, The Michael Kenwood Group. The firm "misap

An Ohio School Board Is Working to Save Nuclear Plants

Ohio faces a decision soon about its two nuclear reactors, Davis-Besse and Perry, and on Wednesday, neighbors of one of those plants issued a cry for help. The reactors’ problem is that the price of electricity they sell on the high-voltage grid is depressed, mostly because of a surplus of natural gas. And the reactors do not get any revenue for the other benefits they provide. Some of those benefits are regional – emissions-free electricity, reliability with months of fuel on-site, and diversity in case of problems or price spikes with gas or coal, state and federal payroll taxes, and national economic stimulus as the plants buy fuel, supplies and services. Some of the benefits are highly localized, including employment and property taxes. One locality is already feeling the pinch: Oak Harbor on Lake Erie, home to Davis-Besse. The town has a middle school in a building that is 106 years old, and an elementary school from the 1950s, and on May 2 was scheduled to have a referendu

Wednesday Update

From NEI’s Japan micro-site: NRC, Industry Concur on Many Post-Fukushima Actions Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues • There is a “great deal of alignment” between the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the industry on initial steps to take at America’s nuclear energy facilities in response to the nuclear accident in Japan, Charles Pardee, the chief operating officer of Exelon Generation Co., said at an agency briefing today. The briefing gave stakeholders an opportunity to discuss staff recommendations for near-term actions the agency may take at U.S. facilities. PowerPoint slides from the meeting are on the NRC website. • The International Atomic Energy Agency board has approved a plan that calls for inspectors to evaluate reactor safety at nuclear energy facilities every three years. Governments may opt out of having their country’s facilities inspected. Also approved were plans to maintain a rapid response team of experts ready to assist facility operators recoverin