NEI Nuclear Notes

Alex Flint The following is a guest post by Alex Flint, NEI’s Senior Vice President of Governmental Affairs. For a Q&A with him on the nuclear energy industry’s legislative priorities for 2016, click here . Tonight, President Barack Obama will deliver his eighth State of the Union address. For the first time, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) will sit behind him to his right, thinking “I could do that.” Of course, behind him to his left, Vice President Joseph Biden will be thinking the same thing but with the sorrowful knowledge that his time has passed. Finally, in front of him, at least a dozen U.S. Senators, some of whom are currently running for President , will also be thinking, “I could do that.” The pomp and circumstance is always a bit fun. I always look around to determine which member of the cabinet doesn’t attend — it’s a nasty little Cold War flashback, but at least someone is thinking about these things. Also, some of the Supreme Court justices seem less...

Matt Wald The following is a guest post from Matt Wald, senior director of policy analysis and strategic planning at NEI. It’s so obvious that it shouldn’t bear repeating, but it does: If you’re worried about climate change, one early, easy remedy is to preserve nuclear power plants that are already running. If you are facing limits on carbon emissions, don’t shut down perfectly serviceable merchant nuclear plants, just because cheap natural gas has left them, for now, a few bucks out of the money in the competitive electricity markets. Last Thursday the National Association of Clean Air Agencies , a group made up of officials from 42 states and the District of Columbia, plus 116 metropolitan areas, released its 465-page “ Menu of Options ” for complying with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan  ( Section 111 (d) of the Clean Air Act). We could quibble with some details, like describing nuclear technology as “mature.” It is highly developed, but it ha...