NEI Nuclear Notes

The Supreme Court ruled today that the EPA cannot rewrite law (in this case The Clean Air Act) to accommodate new information without Congressional approval. In this instance, EPA added carbon dioxide to its list of pollutants and most lawsuits raised to challenge this were dismissed. But one made it through and The Supreme Court took it up. This is a good explanation of the issue: The CAA’s [Clean Air Act] Prevention of Significant Deterioration (“PSD”) permitting program was designed to prevent the significant deterioration of air quality in areas that were already complying with the national ambient air quality standards for at least one criteria pollutant. Taking up its charge following the Court's ruling in Mass. v. EPA , EPA introduced new regulations covering greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles.  EPA then extended the PSD permitting program to cover large stationary sources of greenhouse gas, as required by the plain text of the CAA and a three-decades-old interp...

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From Max Schulz : The irony is that the beneficiary of Monday's ruling won't be wind power, solar power, or any of the other renewable technologies favored by the Green establishment. Their economic and technological limitations are too severe for them ever to occupy more than a small niche in the American energy economy. Instead, one of the winners from Massachusetts v. EPA just may be something that many of the environmentalists who brought the suit have long abhorred: nuclear power. Like renewables, nuclear power generates electricity with no pollutants or greenhouse gas emissions. But unlike renewables, nuclear is capable of generating reliable power on a massive scale, which is what our country's future energy demands will require. Nuclear power is on the verge of making a comeback in the United States. Thanks to several favorable provisions in the 2005 Energy Policy Act, as well as a streamlined licensing process, it is possible we could see the construction of new pl...