NEI Nuclear Notes

Here's a funny clip from late last week where CNN's Glenn Beck weighs in on the return of the musicians from the "No Nukes" era :

Kyle Woodlock, the grad student at Georgia Tech who kicked off his YouTube career with a rebuttal to Harvey Wasserman and his "No Nukes" compatriots , has just published a new video where he makes a fair comparison between nuclear energy and renewables : I'm anxious to see the next video.

In today's edition of the Washington Times , Jack Spencer of the Heritage Foundation takes on Bonnie Raitt and friends over their new music video .

If there's one media outlet that's gotten the story right over the online battle over nuclear energy and loan guarantees, it's Salon and reporter Katharine Mieszkowski. Go there right now to read, Nuclear War on YouTube . And be sure to watch the companion video that cuts all of the videos together in such a way that none of the anti-nuke charges goes unanswered. I hope the folks at our member companies are taking notice of this. If our industry is going to fight and win online the fight over this music video ought to serve as a blueprint for how we go forward. UPDATE : More from Rod Adams .

I was just taking a quick look around the Web when I found a USA Today piece on the "No Nukes" revival that arrived in Washington today. If the comments that are getting left there are any indication, the aging rockers aren't having much of an effect on the younger generation: Second Coming wrote: 46m ago hahahahahahahaha rofl "we will unite people who have never heard of us by screaming kumbaya to improvised riffs at concerts we expect a bunch of 60 year old's to show up at" Madd Maxx wrote: 1h 28m ago Baby boomers just hate to retire don't they? Their energy would be better spent holding a concert for . . . for . . . for anything else. Several things need fixing in this country. Hopped Up Harry wrote: 2h 24m ago These guys are idiots. Message to self important washed up rockers: Your fight was against OLD technology with your OLD music. The world has moved on. And so should you. More later. UPDATE: More of the same at the Treehugger Video Smackdo...

Today on Morning Edition, NPR has picked up on the "No Nukes" music video that a group of aging rockers released a little more than a week ago. To the credit of reporter Elizabeth Shogren, she took plenty of time to feature an audio clip from NEI's rebuttal . Elsewhere here in Washington, Bonnie Raitt will appear at a press conference on Capitol Hill this morning with Congressman Ed Markey. We should have a report later. More details, here .

Back at YouTube this weekend, anti-nuke activist Harvey Wasserman posted a video rebuttal to Elizabeth King's debut on YouTube last week . I was thinking about getting some folks together to rebut Wasserman, but as it turns out, someone else beat us to it . I'm guessing you might be familiar with his previous work : It's good to know the nuclear energy business has so many friends out there. Thanks for the assist. One final note: In the video, Wasserman charges that NEI "has lots of money" to produce video rebuttals, which gave me a pretty good laugh. For the record, our original video was shot with a Casio digital camera that you could fit in your pants pocket and a $50 tripod. We did our post-production -- if you could call it that -- on a Dell laptop using Windows Movie Maker. Altogether, the process took about 4.5 hours from start to finish. Which makes me wonder: Just how much money did Wasserman and his friends spend on their original video? Something...

University of Wisconsin student Nathan Braun watched last week's "No Nukes" video and came away less than impressed : While it is admirable to see celebrities and potential role models passionate about a cause, these statements demonstrate what’s wrong with anti-nuclear sentiment in America. They could be described as misinformed at best, fear-mongering at worst. Nuclear power is not perfect, but under the right circumstances it can be not only clean and safe, but also practical — the United States already gets 20 percent of its electricity from nuclear power; France gets 80 percent, mostly because political opposition isn’t as strong. Be sure to read the rest, as they say, right now.

Shortly after we posted a video response by Elizabeth King to a new appeal from the "No Nukes" crew , we saw a number of other folks hop onto YouTube to post their own responses. One person posted the audio of a Dennis Miller interview with Dr. Patrick Moore . Someone else posted a clip from Penn & Teller's Showtime program on nuclear energy . But best of all, a computer science student posted a point by point counter to the original video : It's always good to find out that you're not alone out there. In the meantime, be sure to stop by the YouTube page where the original "No Nukes" video is hosted and be sure to leave a comment. UPDATE : Rod Adams recorded a video of his own .

I'm sure by now many of you have seen the video produced by NukeFree.org , starring Bonnie Raitt, Graham Nash and Jackson Browne -- some original no-nukers -- asking Congress to alter language in legislation that makes provisions for loan guarantees supporting new nuclear plant construction. Click here for a CNN op-ed. Here at NEI we had a good laugh over some of their claims and decided to do something about it. So I got together with Elizabeth King, NEI's manager for economic policy -- it's safe to say she's a loan guarantee expert -- to record the following video response : Perhaps we should be cheered that others have seen the video, and are less than impressed . UPDATE : More folks who are less than impressed with what they've seen: The Fourth Checkraise The Pajamahadin Instapundit We should probably note that it was Rod Adams who had us pegged first. Click here too. ANOTHER UPDATE : Here's an interesting wrinkle: The CNN.com commentary that the musi...