NEI Nuclear Notes

Nuclear Energy is never going to get an awful lot of love from Mother Jones magazine – unless the tide of support it’s seen from more progressives that way. But not yet. In a small piece, Mariah Blake shows that the nuclear energy industry would really like nuclear energy to be considered amongst other technologies in the energy bills going through Congress – shocking, we know, but true enough – and is even leveraging growing support from Democrats and organized labor to press its cause – doubly shocking, also true. The industry's efforts began to pay off this fall, as nuclear subsidies emerged as the key to wooing Republican votes for a Senate climate bill—votes necessary to offset defections from coal-state Democrats. Since October, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), one of the climate bill's sponsors, has been holding closed-door meetings with Republicans to craft nuclear language. None of this is particularly diabolical – none of it crosses any ethical line or aims to s...

At the risk of engaging in omphaloskepsis (?!), Daily Kos and Mother Jones (?!) have picked up our post on Steven Chu's confirmation hearing for Secretary of Energy. The posts by Markos Moulitsas and Kevin Drum have led to a spirited debate; eliciting supportive comments in two of the least likely, until now, corners of the blogosphere. Just one of the many comments, via Drum : "I should perhaps make it clear that I'm 100% in support of moving to a sustainable economy, and moving our energy production to renewables is absolutely necessary as part of that. That said, we can't yet power our grid entirely from renewables yet, and nuclear energy seems to me better than coal for supplying our needs as we bridge the gap.” Posted by: dob on 01/14/09 at 3:52 PM Respond If you can, stop by Kos and MoJo and weigh in.