Skip to main content

The Day After the Day After

Image
By Trish Conrad
Two days beyond the 2006 midterm elections, what have we learned and what does it mean for the future of nuclear energy?

The Democrats have captured the House of Representatives and are expected to elect the first female Speaker in this country's history, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California.

Nuclear power has enjoyed bipartisan support in the House in the past, witnessed by broad backing of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The industry will continue to work with both sides of the aisle and, with a new crop of legislators coming to the nation's Capitol, there will be new opportunities to share information about the importance of nuclear power in increasing energy independence and supporting economic security.

The makeup of the Senate is essentially assured, as Virginia Democrat Jim Webb -- who supports "properly constructed nuclear power" --leads Republican George Allen by over 7000 votes. Allen is expected to concede at a 3 pm news conference today, so his opponent will pick up this seat and with it the Democrats the Senate.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada is the all but anointed new leader of the upper chamber. Keeping in mind his past support of nuclear energy, the industry is looking forward to building a positive relationship with the expected new Senate Majority Leader and working with him in the future.

As for predictions from the pundits, Democratic strategist and frequent CNN analyst Donna Brazile said she expects the House to pay considerable attention to alternative energy sources during the next session of Congress. At a post-election briefing held in Washington, DC yesterday, she encouraged the industry to actively engage the new Congress and share how nuclear power can play a role in future energy policy.

In the near term, President Bush said today that he would like Congress to act on bipartisan energy legislation before the end of the year.

Technorati tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments

Anonymous said…
If a Democrat Congress legislates for an emissions trading scheme, long-term, that's an enormous fillip for the nuclear industry. It'll mean you're competing against coal and gas on a much fairer basis, because they will finally be financially accountable for their emissions.
November 9, 2006 at 5:50 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Activists' Claims Distort Facts about Advanced Reactor Design

By
Below is from our rapid response team . Yesterday, regional anti-nuclear organizations asked federal nuclear energy regulators to launch an investigation into what it claims are “newly identified flaws” in Westinghouse’s advanced reactor design, the AP1000. During a teleconference releasing a report on the subject, participants urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to suspend license reviews of proposed AP1000 reactors. In its news release, even the groups making these allegations provide conflicting information on its findings. In one instance, the groups cite “dozens of corrosion holes” at reactor vessels and in another says that eight holes have been documented. In all cases, there is another containment mechanism that would provide a barrier to radiation release. Below, we examine why these claims are unwarranted and why the AP1000 design certification process should continue as designated by the NRC. Myth: In the AP1000 reactor design, the gap between the shield bu...
23 comments
Read more

How many nuclear plants does it take to meet the world's energy needs?

By
Several weeks ago Joshua Pearce at Clarion University in Pennsylvania released a study titled “ Thermodynamic limitations to nuclear energy deployment as a greenhouse gas mitigation technology .” In the study he stated... nuclear energy production would have to increase by 10.5% per year from 2010 to 2050 to both replace fossil-fuel-energy use and meet the future energy demands. This line, of course, made the headlines and has been picked up by several outlets and blogs . When looking into his calculations for this statement, he made one assumption error that overstated the above sentence by nearly a factor of three. Page 121, Section 4.1 of the study states: Richard Smalley pointed out that in 2004, the global economy consumed the equivalent of 220 million barrels of oil per day, which converted into electricity terms is the equivalent of 14.5 TeraWatts (TW), or 14,500,000 MegaWatts (MW) (2005). … With a nuclear plant having about 1000 MW (1 GW) of capacity, we would need 14,500...
7 comments
Read more

What Happens During a Refueling Outage?

By
You may have noticed over the past few weeks that a number of nuclear plants are shut down for refueling outages or are resuming operations after just returning from one. This type of routine outage usually occurs in the spring or fall when electricity demand is low so that nuclear reactors can replace about one-third of the spent fuel rods with new fuel and conduct other routine maintenance and repairs at the plant. To get a better sense of how refueling works at a nuclear energy facility, I spoke with Marcus Nichol, NEI’s senior project manager for used fuel storage and transportation, and asked him to explain the basics. Why does a nuclear plant need to replace one-third of its fuel? Nichol: The main purpose of a refueling outage is to replace older fuel that is depleted—meaning it can no longer efficiently produce energy from nuclear fission reactions—with new fuel. This “used fuel” has typically been used in the reactor for four-and-a-half to six years before it is pe...
6 comments
Read more