Skip to main content

Obama's Cabinet Picks: Energy Secretary

By
Obama's Cabinet Energy SecretaryWith the announcement of the new Secretary of Energy possibly occurring this week, two more names have been scratched off the shortlist. Per The Kansas City Star, Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius has removed her name from consideration.
“Given the extraordinary budget challenges facing our state and my commitment to continuing the progress we’ve made in Kansas, I believe it is important to continue my service as governor of the great state of Kansas,” Sebelius said.
And in a succinctly titled Washington Post piece up at The Fix, Chris Cillizza reports that "Dorgan Won't Be Energy Secretary."
Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) is no longer under consideration to be secretary of energy in President-elect Barack Obama's administration, according to transition officials. The decision was arrived at based on a belief within the former Illinois senator's inner circle that the plains state Democrat is more valuable to them where he is.

"Senator Dorgan would be a fantastic energy secretary but, because he is too important as a red state senator and a powerful ally, he is best suited to help advance President-elect Obama's agenda in the Senate," said a transition official granted anonymity to speak candidly about internal deliberations.

According to Cillizza, candidates still being considered include three Governors: Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA), Bill Ritter (D-CO), and Jennifer Granholm (D-MI). Several from the private sector are also in the mix: Google's Dan Reicher, Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers, former Edison International CEO John Bryson, Federal Express Chairman Fred Smith and Steve Chu, the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Meanwhile, Craig Gordon and Ben Smith over at The Politico float a name not heard in a few weeks: former EPA Administrator Carol Browner.

Click here for more NNN coverage on who will be in the Obama Cabinet.

Labels:

Comments

Ondrej Chvala said…
Dr. Steve Chu would be my dream pick. He is extremely sharp and actually understands the energy issue...
December 8, 2008 at 12:34 PM
carol said…
Anyone hearing anything more about Ernie Moniz? (I'm biased, I know.)
December 8, 2008 at 4:53 PM
Jason Ribeiro said…
Dan Reicher doesn't get it. He would be a disastrous pick for energy secretary. You might as well appoint Amory Lovins.
December 8, 2008 at 7:55 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How Nanomaterials Can Make Nuclear Reactors Safer and More Efficient

By
The following is a guest post from Matt Wald, senior communications advisor at NEI. Follow Matt on Twitter at @MattLWald.

From the batteries in our cell phones to the clothes on our backs, "nanomaterials" that are designed molecule by molecule are working their way into our economy and our lives. Now there’s some promising work on new materials for nuclear reactors.

Reactors are a tough environment. The sub atomic particles that sustain the chain reaction, neutrons, are great for splitting additional uranium atoms, but not all of them hit a uranium atom; some of them end up in various metal components of the reactor. The metal is usually a crystalline structure, meaning it is as orderly as a ladder or a sheet of graph paper, but the neutrons rearrange the atoms, leaving some infinitesimal voids in the structure and some areas of extra density. The components literally grow, getting longer and thicker. The phenomenon is well understood and designers compensate for it with a …
1 comment
Read more

Missing the Point about Pennsylvania’s Nuclear Plants

By
A group that includes oil and gas companies in Pennsylvania released a study on Monday that argues that twenty years ago, planners underestimated the value of nuclear plants in the electricity market. According to the group, that means the state should now let the plants close.

Huh?

The question confronting the state now isn’t what the companies that owned the reactors at the time of de-regulation got or didn’t get. It’s not a question of whether they were profitable in the '80s, '90s and '00s. It’s about now. Business works by looking at the present and making projections about the future.

Is losing the nuclear plants what’s best for the state going forward?

Pennsylvania needs clean air. It needs jobs. And it needs protection against over-reliance on a single fuel source.


What the reactors need is recognition of all the value they provide. The electricity market is depressed, and if electricity is treated as a simple commodity, with no regard for its benefit to clean air o…
Post a Comment
Read more

Why America Needs the MOX Facility

By
If Isaiah had been a nuclear engineer, he’d have loved this project. And the Trump Administration should too, despite the proposal to eliminate it in the FY 2018 budget.

The project is a massive factory near Aiken, S.C., that will take plutonium from the government’s arsenal and turn it into fuel for civilian power reactors. The plutonium, made by the United States during the Cold War in a competition with the Soviet Union, is now surplus, and the United States and the Russian Federation jointly agreed to reduce their stocks, to reduce the chance of its use in weapons. Over two thousand construction workers, technicians and engineers are at work to enable the transformation.

Carrying Isaiah’s “swords into plowshares” vision into the nuclear field did not originate with plutonium. In 1993, the United States and Russia began a 20-year program to take weapons-grade uranium out of the Russian inventory, dilute it to levels appropriate for civilian power plants, and then use it to produce…
Post a Comment
Read more