Skip to main content

The Dallas Morning News Edit Board and Nuclear Energy

By Eric McErlain
Over at the Dallas Morning News' Editorial Board Blog, James Mitchell posed the question of the day about nuclear energy.
The Senate's energy bill strongly advocates nuclear energy as a way to make the United States more energy diversifiied. Past efforts to promote nuclear energy in the 1970s ran into environmental opposition, not-in-my-backyard sentiment, and herky-jerky federal policy that left utlilities and rate payers holding a huge financial bag of costs.

Today's question is really five: Pick any portion

How comfortable are you in making nuclear energy a major component of national energy policy and do you have concerns that government policy will not again pull the rug out from under the industry in the future?

Should the government subsidize its development, which means picking winners and losers in the marketplace and possibly putting wind and solar on the backburner?

Should we aspire to be France, where virtually every KW of electricity comes from nuclear power?

What should be done about the waste issue - long term short term?
It was hard not to sit up and notice right away, as our CEO Skip Bowman was in Dallas just last week to give a speech about the state of the industry.

In any case, here are the responses, keyed off the names of the writers who posted them:

James Mitchell
Keven Ann Willey
Todd Robberson
Mike Hashimoto
Todd Robberson

I'd encourage our readers to stop by and participate in the discussion. And please say thanks to the bloggers on the edit board for giving our issue a little more air.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fluor Invests in NuScale

By
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...
1 comment
Read more

Wednesday Update

By
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...
Post a Comment
Read more

Nuclear Utility Moves Up in Credit Ratings, Bank is "Comfortable with Nuclear Strategy"

By
Some positive signs that nuclear utilities can continue to receive positive ratings even while they finance new nuclear plants for the first time in decades: Wells Fargo upgrades SCANA to Outperform from Market Perform Wells analyst says, "YTD, SCG shares have underperformed the Regulated Electrics (total return +2% vs. +9%). Shares trade at 11.3X our 10E EPS, a modest discount to the peer group median of 11.8X. We view the valuation as attractive given a comparatively constructive regulatory environment and potential for above-average long-term EPS growth prospects ... Comfortable with Nuclear Strategy. SCG plans to participate in the development of two regulated nuclear units at a cost of $6.3B, raising legitimate concerns regarding financing and construction. We have carefully considered the risks and are comfortable with SCG’s strategy based on a highly constructive political & regulatory environment, manageable financing needs stretched out over 10 years, strong partners...
Post a Comment
Read more