It's a Green Kind of Planet, uh, Dude!

One of the complaints that those who like old movies have about newer specimens is that they suffer too much from visual ADD, unable to settle on an image long enough for it to register or on a dialogue long enough to create a character in depth. Everything gets hyped until nothing carries any meaning aside from nervous excitation.

So it is with considerable delight that the environmentally conscious, not to mention the culturally self-conscious, can look forward to a channel where actually focusing on an issue, any issue, might be considered taxing: Planet Green. The AP's David Bauder previews tomorrow's debut:

"The network is not only not finger-wagging, it's sexy, it's interesting, it's irreverent," [network president Eileen] O'Neill, said.

Planet Green doesn't want to be a network that appeals only to tree huggers and will always resist a heavy-handed approach, she said. Instead of scolding people not to waste paper by using juice boxes, the network will profile a person who built a business upon recycling them.

Thus you don't have to worry about whether or not to get your juice from a box, you just have to admire a guy who got rich turning them into paper towels. Okay.

The programming aims to mix lite celebrities with lite eco-friendly messages.

HBO "Entourage" star [Adrien] Grenier is host of "Alter Eco," where he and a team of experts show celebrities and ordinary people "the way to a hip green lifestyle."

Since leading a square green lifestyle would be, like, death, you know?

But there's more!

[Tommy] Lee and Ludacris will star, beginning in August, in "Battleground Earth," a series of competitions between the rocker and rapper to determine who's the greenest.

If there's one thing we know for sure, it's that the one who's the greenest will also be the hippest. (If we're lucky, John Travolta will drop by in full Cyclon drag and call them both rat-brains.)

While we're doubtful about the approach The Discovery Channel has chosen for this new outlet - available wherever Discovery Home was, as Plant Green takes its place - we've been wrong before and are reasonably sure we will be again.

Discovery, after all, has put up some good shows and if their initial approach to Planet Green doesn't quite work out, they can always tweak it to something perhaps a little less hip and just a touch more substantive. We might then tune in to see what's what even if Adrien Grenier were the host.

A little break from Lieberman-Warner. We'll be back on the beat tomorrow.

Adrien Grenier and Paris Hilton. Picture from Trendhunter. The text fills us in on the couple: The pair attended the 11th Hour ForestEthics premier together, and have been spotted zooming around in a Toyoto Prius hybrid, “scoping out a new eco-friendly home for Paris.” That's almost too much eco-hipness for one sentence to contain.

A little more on Grenier's bona fides, also from Trendhunter: For him, it’s no publicity stunt; it’s a way of life. “I try to eat free range organic foods. I try and walk if I can, which is why I love New York. Take a train. My home is a green home. To me I look at it as an investment and the things may cost a little bit more but ultimately it pays for itself. And then it gives you low emissions and its good for the environment. So people invest in all sorts of bizarre things. Why not invest in the quality of life?” Why not indeed?

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...

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...

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

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...

NEI Nuclear Notes

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