NEI Nuclear Notes

Matt Wald The following is a guest post from Matt Wald, senior director of policy analysis and strategic planning at NEI. Follow Matt on Twitter at @MattLWald . We’ve said it often: nuclear power is a foundation of a reliable power grid, holds down carbon emissions and is a staple of local economies. But it’s nice to hear it from others as well, and earlier this month, all those points were made by the  Washington State Democratic Central Committee . The committee passed a resolution calling for continued operation of the Columbia Generating Station , a publicly-owned reactor that since 1984 has been churning out 1,190 megawatts of power, enough to meet the needs of about a million households, and about 8.2 percent of the electricity generated in the state in 2014. The reactor’s output is “continuously available regardless of weather conditions,” the resolution pointed out, and can help back up the rising levels of intermittent solar and wind power. Shutting it would mea...

Back on September 21, we took note of an article at AOL Energy , where reporter Margaret Ryan spent some time talking to a variety of policy analysts to devise questions about energy policy that reporters ought to ask during the 2012 Presidential debates . The first in the series of four debates -- three featuring the candidates for President and another the candidates for Vice President -- airs tonight from the University of Denver at 9:00 p.m. U.S. EDT. Though I've pointed this out before, I think this proposed question bears repeating: What's the future role of nuclear power? Can the nation have a serious climate policy without a serious nuclear one, including finally confronting the issue of nuclear waste? How should the US deal with nuclear waste? Would the candidate endorse continued research and development work in small modular nuclear reactors ? Here's hoping that question gets asked. For more information on the debates, click here for more from Politico.

Over at AOL Energy , Margaret Ryan spent some time talking to a variety of policy analysts to devise some questions about energy policy that reporters ought to ask during October's Presidential debates . As you might expect, this one caught our attention: What's the future role of nuclear power? Can the nation have a serious climate policy without a serious nuclear one, including finally confronting the issue of nuclear waste? How should the US deal with nuclear waste? Would the candidate endorse continued research and development work in small modular nuclear reactors ? Here's hoping that question gets asked. For more information on the debates, click here for more from Politico.

Senators Obama and McCain participated in the first of the Presidential debates on Friday night. Although planned to focus on foreign policy, the debate covered a range of topics with significant domestic importance, including energy policy. Nuclear energy was mentioned at three points in the discussion of energy policy. The first mention came from Senator McCain: MCCAIN: Look, we are sending $700 billion a year overseas to countries that don't like us very much. Some of that money ends up in the hands of terrorist organizations. We have to have wind, tide, solar, natural gas, flex fuel cars and all that but we also have to have offshore drilling and we also have to have nuclear power. Senator Obama opposes both storing and reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel. You can't get there from here and the fact is that we can create 700,000 jobs by building constructing 45 new nuclear power plants by the year 2030. Nuclear power is not only important as far as eliminating our dependence ...

Save the dates! MSNBC is reporting that the moderators for the upcoming presidential debates have been announced. Something tells me that nuclear energy will be in the mix of questions asked. First presidential debate | Friday, September 26 The University of Mississippi, Oxford, Miss. Jim Lehrer - Executive Editor and Anchor, The NewsHour , PBS Vice presidential debate | Thursday, October 2 Washington University in St. Louis, Mo. Gwen Ifill - Senior Correspondent, The NewsHour, and Moderator and Managing Editor, Washington Week , PBS Second presidential debate (town meeting) | Tuesday, October 7 Belmont University, Nashville, Tenn. Tom Brokaw - Special Correspondent, NBC News Third presidential debate | Wednesday, October 15 Hofstra University, Hempstead, N.Y. Bob Schieffer - CBS News Chief Washington Correspondent, and Host, Face the Nation