NEI Nuclear Notes

If you want to see where nuclear advocacy can get you, check out this editorial in the Akron (Ohio) Beacon-Journal: Nuclear power accounts for 14 percent of the electricity used in the state. Lose, say, Davis-Besse, and the task of curbing carbon emissions becomes much harder. The situation differs little for the country, with carbon-free nuclear supplying 20 percent of electricity. Ideally, the country would be adding further to its nuclear capacity, something that would become more financially feasible under a carbon tax. Yet even if nuclear is relatively expensive its use promises to be less costly than accelerating climate change. A carbon tax would enhance the competitiveness of wind, solar and other alternative energy sources, too. What distinguishes nuclear power is its capacity, running all day and night. It proved key when the polar vortex arrived last winter and other power sources faltered. Less costly, polar vortex, carbon-free – why, did I write this editori...

Uh-oh : Not too long ago Carol Browner would have sided with the activists clad in white hazmat suits protesting nuclear power outside the City Club's lunch Tuesday in downtown Chicago. Or maybe not so uh-oh: "I can't believe what I believe about climate change, about the dangers of carbon pollution and take off the table a carbon-free form of power," said Browner... That’s an evolution that a lot of environmentalists have experienced in the last decade, as shown in the movie Pandora’s Promise . Browner speaks with great authority, as she is the former EPA administrator under President Clinton and director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy under President Obama. The Chicago Tribune turns over a lot of the article to anti-nuclear activists, so Browner does not get her full say. So is there a fuller way to hear Browner’s views on nuclear energy? Happily, local radio station WBEZ interviewed her and, as expected, she is b...