NEI Nuclear Notes

In what we might call a bid for equal time, we roamed around looking for some stories that took a more critical view of the Vogtle loan guarantees. It must have been irresistible to The New York Times to see how environmentalists reacted and turned up, among others, our favorite group for reliable nuclear trash talk : Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth, whose political arm endorsed Mr. Obama’s candidacy for president, said that Mr. Obama’s recent policy emphasis amounted to “unilateral disarmament.” “We were hopeful last year; he was saying all the right things,” Mr. Pica said. “But now he has become a full-blown nuclear power proponent, a startling change over the last few months.” The Times’ John Broder points out that this really isn’t the case: Mr. Obama has long supported nuclear power, as a senator and as a candidate for president. That is the case. We would agree with Mr. Pica, though, that one might not have expected Obama to make quite such a ...

The National Review has a terrific piece on our old friend Paul Newman and his support for nuclear energy. Here's a taster : “In all the meetings I had with Paul Newman, he struck me as very open-minded and inquisitive,” says [Denis Beller, a professor of engineering at the University of Nevada]. “He came out to Nevada in 2002 and visited the Harry Reid Center for Environmental Studies, where several faculty members showed him research on the transmutation of nuclear waste. They also discussed why ideas like launching nuclear waste into the sun were not really practical. The visit ended with a trip to Yucca Mountain, where Kevin Phillips, the mayor of neighboring Caliente, whose front porch is only 50 yards from the rail line where waste would be transported, told Newman he was not opposed to the project. Later [Newman] told me, ‘That’s the most impressive thing I’ve seen.’” There's also a shout-out to NEI's involvement with Newma...

Peter Robinson from the National Review Online interviewed T. J. Rodgers on the "the promise and pitfalls of the most popular alternative-energy sources." At the end, Robinson asked Rodgers what energy technology he would invest a million dollars of his own money in if they all received zero subsidies and were on an equal footing. Rodgers answered "nuclear, sure." T. J. Rodgers is the founder and CEO of Cypress Semiconductor Corp. (NYSE: CY) and the chairman of SunPower Corp, a manufacturer of solar-power systems.