NEI Nuclear Notes

When David J. O’Reilly , chairman and CEO of Chevron Corp., sat down to talk (sub. required) with reporters from The Wall Street Journal this week, he had all forms of energy on his mind—including nuclear power. Sitting in his office outside San Francisco, where gasoline prices are flirting with $4.00 per gallon, O’Reilly talked about energy independence. He labeled policymaker talk about oil and energy independence “unrealistic.” When asked if it would ever happen, he responded: “No. Not in the timeframe they talk about. We are actually going steadily in the opposite direction. We are not incentivizing investment in oil and gas exploration in this country. We are turning down coal-fired power plants because of concerns about the environment. We are slow to renew the use of nuclear power, so we are digging ourselves into a deeper hole here, in my view.” And it's not just Big Oil bigwigs who are interested in nuclear energy. Others in the petroleum sector support nuclear energy...

Robert Zubrin says yes.

From ThisIsMoney : Shell and BP will have to go nuclear if they want to remain 'supermajor' leaders of the global energy industry. That is the startling finding of a major report into the energy industry in the age of climate change by JPMorgan. The US investment bank envisages that 'Big Oil' will play a significant role in the future redevelopment of nuclear power. The JPMorgan report suggests that within 10 years, nuclear will be at the top of the agenda for a world preoccupied with clean, green energy and replacing diminishing global stocks of oil and gas. Nuclear is also likely to come to be seen as the only effective future for the socalled 'hydrogen economy', when powercharged fuel cells replace oil in the global automotive industry and elsewhere. This could definitely be great if oil companies get into the nuclear game. They have plenty of market capital to build new reactors in the first place and would be able to fund billion dollar projects without b...