NEI Nuclear Notes

Recommendation 1: Recognizing that the combination of incentives and competitive market forces in place in Texas resulted in more rapid investment in wind energy than in any other state, Texas should promote the competitive marketplace by neither increasing nor removing the mandates for renewable energy. That comes from 2008 Texas State Energy Plan (warning: big pdf). The report has 37 recommendations and seems to leave nothing out of its energy mix. Nuclear energy appears at number 4: Recommendation 4: To encourage the development of nuclear power in Texas, the [Texas Commission on Environmental Quality] should expedite necessary water and wastewater permits associated with new nuclear power plants. While all design and site permits reside with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, ensuring that these state permits do not delay development is critical. And there are entries for clean coal, carbon sequestration, solar, and others. (Hydro not so much, but it does earn a tou...

The reason to pay attention to T. Boone Pickens and his plan to replace natural gas with wind energy so as to divert the natural gas to automobiles is two-fold: he’s really rich and has the funds to build a constituency for his ideas; and he aims to cut through a perceived government blockage on energy policy by insisting on an approach – his own - that can be implemented now and has – he says - many positive qualities. He means to short-circuit the larger arguments around energy, cut through competing policy proposals, and get the American people behind a plan that is concrete and reasoned – and his. Put that way, Pickens might seem profoundly undemocratic, depending as he does on droit de seigneur to push to the head of the line while opposition crumbles due to the logic and fineness of his ideas. He still has to get people to buy in to his plan – without actually buying them off, which would be problematic - and government has to cede its role in policy formation to him. Many bi...

The Washington Times editorial board weighs in on the Pickens Plan , At minimum, it is good to see an oil magnate thinking big thoughts about petroleum overdependency. All the real alternatives - nuclear, natural gas, wind and more - should be on the table. For that reason it is disappointing that Mr. Pickens is not beating the drum more loudly on nuclear energy. Mr. Pickens says he is for all the energy options. That is well and good. But why not expend a comparable effort to push this clean and efficient technology? It's a Wash Times nuclear energy twofer today - syndicated columnist Jack Kelly also writes about the Pickens plan in " Right Idea, Wrong Fuel ." Mr. Pickens has the right idea, but the wrong fuel. A tenfold increase in wind power would meet only about 7 percent of our electricity needs. But nuclear power could both supply rising demand for electricity, and substitute for natural gas in its production. (h/t to Notes reader Mitch for passing along the Kelly...

From the Dallas Business Journal (subscribers only): "More recently he (Rudy Guiliani) was speaking on the West Coast, and he said basically what (I) said in the Los Angeles Times: That the fuel of the future of course is going to be nuclear power. Got to have it; got to use it. It's clean. There have been no accidents with it, and you can get rid of the waste. That will be the first question about it. But Giuliani said we're not going to be energy independent; we're going to have to figure a way out of this. I think that's the way the question should be answered. Interesting.