NEI Nuclear Notes

While President Obama pulled duty in New Orleans the other day, as we reported in the post below, Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu is in Paris speaking to a meeting of the International Energy Agency. You can decide who pulled the better duty. Chu and the energy ministers are all jockeying for position during the run up to Copenhagen. But this Bloomberg article shows him pushing nuclear energy in a notably “aggressive” way. The U.S. government will announce loan guarantees for nuclear plants “very soon,” Chu said. “Nuclear power is an important part of what the U.S. has to do to reduce emissions.” The U.S. is “working aggressively to restart the nuclear industry,” he said. “I believe the nuclear waste problem is solvable on a scientific level and a political level.” We’ll be waiting for those announcements – we do think more loan guarantees will get that aggressive work going even more aggressively, but that may wait to be done in the Senate climate change bill...

Interesting doings in Florida today: The Florida Public Service Commission rejected arguments from environmentalists and clean-energy advocates and voted 3-1 today to approve a request by Progress Energy, and Florida Power & Light, to charge customers for four new nuclear power plants that wouldn't generate any voltage until 2017. It’s a first shot on this story and not completely accurate. True, four new units are involved. Two of them – Progress Energy’s – will be in Levy County – we wrote about them the other day. The other two – FPL’s - will be put in the existing plant at Turkey Point. In addition, FPL won approval to increase capacity at four units, two each at Turkey Point and St. Lucie. Likewise, Progress Energy will be able to increase capacity at one unit at Crystal River. We’d also call the “clean-energy advocates” phrase a bit misleading since nuclear advocates could call themselves that with equal validity. But why filter? We can go straight to the Fl...

For those who may be stuck inside all weekend due to bad weather (it's supposed to continue to be dreary around DC for the next couple days) there are quite a few excellent and fun readings I recommend. First is Dan Yurman's third-party perspective about the push for nuclear in Idaho. His frank descriptions on the actions of the battling parties involved make for an entertaining read : The SRA [Snake River Alliance] describes itself as a "watchdog," but as Idaho’s self-appointed nuclear watchdog, the Snake River Alliance (SRA), has also demonstrated that having one around sometimes results in a lot of barking at the wrong things. ... Unlike most nuclear energy companies, which take over-the-top, anti-nuclear rhetoric in stride, thin-skinned AEHI CEO Don Gillispie threatened to sue the SRA for libel. SRA then exploited the situation it had created by charging AEHI with trying to shut it up with a “slap suit.” But both parties backed down after a cooling-off period. ...

Here are the words : "There's no reason why technologically we can't employ nuclear energy in a safe and effective way. Japan does it and France does it and it doesn't have greenhouse gas emissions, so it would be stupid for us not to do that in a much more effective way." This is from Reuters. Video here . President Obama was speaking at a town hall in New Orleans. Go to the five minute mark for the nuclear comments. Correction: we corrected Obama’s quote based on the video. Reuters did get it wrong.

The bipartisan push for a nuclear title in the Senate’s climate change bill picked up considerably today: Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) is helping to negotiate a nuclear energy amendment that could help bring aboard swing votes who support the industry. Architects and backers of the nuclear effort include Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who are seeking more federal financial backing and other support. Lieberman caucuses with the Democrats and of course he and Sen. McCain had a go at a climate change bill in the last Congress. Sen. Graham penned with Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) the editorial discussed in a post below. You can search for Sen. Carper on this site, too. He’s a pretty reliable advocate for nuclear energy. In other words, this isn’t a remarkably surprising group. What is surprising is that they are crossing the aisle so early and so productively. Carper yesterday declined to endorse the idea that the NRC review proc...

With a record of 2-2-2, the Caps' play so far this season has been inconsistent and somewhat disappointing. Media coverage of NEI's corporate sponsorship with the team, meanwhile, has been steady. Stories about the partnership have appeared on: the AP wire, the Wall Street Journal 's Environmental Capital , The Washington Pos t's Sports Bog , The Toronto Star , Sports Business Daily , E&E News , Idaho Samizdat and NBC4 , the NBC affiliate in Washington, D.C. And we were pleased to learn yesterday that mention of the Caps/NEI deal has made ESPN Magazine 's, much-discussed " Body Issue " [page 44]. Does this mean nuclear energy can now be considered sexy?

Carrington Dillon at Clean Energy Insight wrote a very informative piece on the answer . In the nuclear power industry, an “outage” does not primarily refer to a power outage or blackout. Every Spring and Fall, when power demand is at its lowest, the nuclear industry shuts down some of their plants for maintenance and repair. This could mean packing up and going to a nuclear power plant for the next three months, or staying at their home office and working the night shift. We will try our best to keep you updated on nuclear news and interesting nuclear power facts [while we're away tending to outages]. However, all of our focus will be on our work in order to be as safe as possible and as productive as possible during these critical outages. Plus, working on an outage can help an engineer gain priceless experience in the field and in the industry, which will make Clean Energy Insight better equipped to bring you voices of experience. Be sure to check out the rest, pictures and ...