Skip to main content

Catch the House Hearing on Nuclear Loan Guarantees Today at 2 PM EST

By

If you are in a lull at work or have time this afternoon, click here around 2 PM Eastern time to watch an oversight hearing titled “Nuclear Power’s Federal Loan Guarantees: The Next Multi-Billion Dollar Bailout?” The chair of the subcommittee that is holding the hearing is Mr. Kucinich from Ohio.

NEI’s Leslie Kass will be testifying on the first panel along with former NRC commissioner Peter Bradford, IEER’s Arjun Makhijani, and Heritage Foundation’s Jack Spencer. Panel two includes a few familiar names as well: Mark Cooper and Richard Caperton among others.

Pretty much everyone from all sides will be speaking at this hearing. The Q&A should be quite interesting, especially from the Chairman …

Update 2:15: Well, it looks like we won't be able to watch the webcast after all. We were told that it's not working today and the committee will archive the video for viewing later this week.

Update 4/21, 8:00 am: NEI's Donn Salvosa who was at the hearing said that it was lightly attended with only six of the 15 subcommittee members making an appearance. Below was Donn's observations:

Rep. Kucinich at most times was the only member present on the Democrat side along with Rep. Jordan on the Republican side.

Most of the witnesses on the panel expressed their skepticism on providing loan guarantees for nuclear. Leslie Kass represented NEI and discussed the benefits that loan guarantees for nuclear can provide which includes reducing the cost of capital that lowers the costs to consumers, job creation and increasing demand on manufacturing.

The question period focused on several issues. Kucinich focused on the economics of financing new reactors and expressed concern over the proprietary nature of the credit subsidy fee which most of the panelists agreed should be public.

Rep. Jordan questioned panelists on whether they opposed subsidies for other sources in addition to nuclear. Most of the witnesses agreed that subsidies for other sources including wind and solar should not be given out.

At the end of the hearing, Rep. Kucinich announced plans to hold 1 or 2 more additional hearings on this issue.
Interesting how most of the witnesses agreed that renewables shouldn't receive incentives as well...

Update 4/21, 3:40 pm: You can find Leslie Kass' detailed testimony here.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Design Team Pictures the Future of Nuclear Energy

By
For more than 100 years, the shape and location of human settlements has been defined in large part by energy and water. Cities grew up near natural resources like hydropower, and near water for agricultural, industrial and household use.

So what would the world look like with a new generation of small nuclear reactors that could provide abundant, clean energy for electricity, water pumping and desalination and industrial processes?

Hard to say with precision, but Third Way, the non-partisan think tank, asked the design team at the Washington, D.C. office of Gensler & Associates, an architecture and interior design firm that specializes in sustainable projects like a complex that houses the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys. The talented designers saw a blooming desert and a cozy arctic village, an old urban mill re-purposed as an energy producer, a data center that integrates solar panels on its sprawling flat roofs, a naval base and a humming transit hub.

In the converted mill, high temperat…
Post a Comment
Read more

Sneak Peek

By
There's an invisible force powering and propelling our way of life.
It's all around us. You can't feel it. Smell it. Or taste it.
But it's there all the same. And if you look close enough, you can see all the amazing and wondrous things it does.
It not only powers our cities and towns.
And all the high-tech things we love.
It gives us the power to invent.
To explore.
To discover.
To create advanced technologies.
This invisible force creates jobs out of thin air.
It adds billions to our economy.
It's on even when we're not.
And stays on no matter what Mother Nature throws at it.
This invisible force takes us to the outer reaches of outer space.
And to the very depths of our oceans.
It brings us together. And it makes us better.
And most importantly, it has the power to do all this in our lifetime while barely leaving a trace.
Some people might say it's kind of unbelievable.
They wonder, what is this new power that does all these extraordinary things?
Post a Comment
Read more

Seeing the Light on Nuclear Energy

By
If you think that there is plenty of electricity, that the air is clean enough and that nuclear power is a just one among many options for meeting human needs, then you are probably over-focused on the United States or Western Europe. Even then, you’d be wrong.

That’s the idea at the heart of a new book, “Seeing the Light: The Case for Nuclear Power in the 21st Century,” by Scott L. Montgomery, a geoscientist and energy expert, and Thomas Graham Jr., a retired ambassador and arms control expert.


Billions of people live in energy poverty, they write, and even those who don’t, those who live in places where there is always an electric outlet or a light switch handy, we need to unmake the last 200 years of energy history, and move to non-carbon sources. Energy is integral to our lives but the authors cite a World Health Organization estimate that more than 6.5 million people die each year from air pollution.  In addition, they say, the global climate is heading for ruinous instability. E…
Post a Comment
Read more