NEI Nuclear Notes

Senators Obama and McCain participated in the first of the Presidential debates on Friday night. Although planned to focus on foreign policy, the debate covered a range of topics with significant domestic importance, including energy policy. Nuclear energy was mentioned at three points in the discussion of energy policy. The first mention came from Senator McCain: MCCAIN: Look, we are sending $700 billion a year overseas to countries that don't like us very much. Some of that money ends up in the hands of terrorist organizations. We have to have wind, tide, solar, natural gas, flex fuel cars and all that but we also have to have offshore drilling and we also have to have nuclear power. Senator Obama opposes both storing and reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel. You can't get there from here and the fact is that we can create 700,000 jobs by building constructing 45 new nuclear power plants by the year 2030. Nuclear power is not only important as far as eliminating our dependence ...

First, McCain: You're going to be examining our proposals tonight and in the future, and energy independence is a way to do that, is one of them. And drilling offshore and nuclear power are two vital elements of that. And I've been supporting those and I know how to fix this economy, and eliminate our dependence on foreign oil, and stop sending $700 billion a year overseas. McCain probably needs to stop staying he "knows" how to do something, because it can make people wonder why anyone would think otherwise, but he's on solid ground here. We're still not convinced on the efficacy of offshore drilling, but he is, and who here is a single issue voter anyway? and: We can work on nuclear power plants. Build a whole bunch of them, create millions of new jobs. We have to have all of the above, alternative fuels, wind, tide, solar, natural gas, clean coal technology. All of these things we can do as Americans and we can take on this mission and we ca...

And by an impressively wide margin, too. A new poll from Bisconti Research for NEI interviewed 1000 voters to determine the support for nuclear energy depending on which candidate they were leaning towards - we've always liked the idea, much used by pollsters, of the "leaning" voter. You get an image of a grove of folks, swaying as the political winds move them. Before going through the results, we would have anticipated that John McCain voters would prefer nuclear energy much more than Barack Obama voters; Obama's support has been positive if a bit on the tepid side and we expected his candidacy would attract more environmental no-nuke diehards. But see for yourselves. “Overall, do you strongly favor, somewhat favor, somewhat oppose, or strongly oppose the use of nuclear energy as one of the ways to provide electricity in the United States?” Favor (which combines strongly and somewhat favors): Obama: 72% McCain: 86% That's about what we expect from...

In advance of Senator John McCain's tour of the Fermi 2 nuclear plant this afternoon, the Obama campaign's press office has just released this statement Barack Obama supports safe and secure nuclear energy. Nuclear power represents more than 70 percent of our noncarbon generated electricity. It is unlikely that we can meet our aggressive climate goals if we eliminate nuclear power as an option. However, before an expansion of nuclear power is considered, Obama thinks key issues must be addressed including: security of nuclear fuel and waste, waste storage, and proliferation. Barack Obama introduced legislation in the U.S. Senate to establish guidelines for tracking, controlling and accounting for spent fuel at nuclear power plants. To prevent international nuclear material from falling into terrorist hands abroad, Obama worked closely with Sen. Dick Lugar (R - IN) to strengthen international efforts to identify and stop the smuggling of weapons of mass destruction. As preside...

One of our astute readers noticed that the Obama ad we posted the other day unfairly dinged McCain for not supporting transport of used nuclear fuel through Arizona. Jon Ralston over the the Las Vegas Sun takes up the cudgel. Here’s a fuller context , quoted by Ralston: [Sam] Shad[, host of Nevada Newsmakers]: “Would you be comfortable with nuclear waste coming through Arizona on its way, you know going through Phoenix, on its way to Yucca Mountain?” McCain: “No, I would not. No, I would not. I think it can be made safe.” (We merged Ralston’s version a little to fully contextualize the quote.) The Obama ad doesn’t include that last line, and Ralston assumes McCain misheard the question as asking him whether he would object to fuel being transported through Arizona. Fair enough, though a little ambiguous – one could say the missing line indicates McCain is playing the same “safe” card as does Obama. And there’s more along those line. Ralston notes that McCain might be hedgin...

Over at The Huffington Post , Greenpeace 's Jim Riccio offers up some red meat in his provocatively titled guest post, President Obama and Nuclear Power's Spin Campaign . Riccio accuses NEI of mischaracterizing President-elect Obama's support for nuclear power and dismisses the work done by the industry association as "propagandist." Back in July, at the start of the presidential campaign, another claim of mischaracterization was made; this time by the nonpartisan Factcheck.org in their article, A False Accusation About Energy . We’ve been through this. Obama has not said a flat-out "no" to nuclear, as the ad claims. Instead he has said he is in favor of nuclear energy if it is clean and safe, saying in his energy plan that "it is unlikely that we can meet our aggressive climate goals if we eliminate nuclear power from the table." In October, The New York Times , in its presidential candidate Check Point series, had this to say, ...And contr...

A couple of major editorials take a look at President Obama’s energy-related nominations to his cabinet: Ernest Moniz for Energy Secretary and Gina McCarthy for EPA Administrator. These are not specific to energy generation or even to the nominees, really, zeroing in on climate change mostly, but it never hurts to see if nuclear energy gets a shout out – or just shouted at. Here’s the Times’ view. It opines that Congress is unlikely to move on climate change legislation and continues: This means that his second-term agenda on climate change will run through Ms. McCarthy’s and Mr. Moniz’s agencies, and will depend almost entirely on executive actions that do not require Congressional approval. Here are three strategies that could make a big dent in carbon emissions.  Just three? You’ve got to start somewhere. They are: Use the Clean Air Act to limit pollution (good for nuclear); Make natural gas safer (neutral); Improve energy efficiency across the board (also neutral). A...

As you may have heard, President Barack Obama gave a speech at the United Nations about climate change yesterday. Now, just to get it out of the way, he had nothing or next to nothing to say about nuclear energy. If nuclear is there, it is there implicitly only. --- We can assume Obama would like to have come with more to offer – above all, an energy bill that addresses climate change. If the tea leaf readings about cryptic statements from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (R-Nev.) are correct, there will be no bill this year. Much of the speech echoed the health care speech Obama gave last week in that it focused on the need for action. But I'm here today to say that difficulty is no excuse for complacency.  Unease is no excuse for inaction.  And we must not allow the perfect to become the enemy of progress.  That does sound more directed to Congress than the U.N., but Obama talked to the international community as well. But those rapidly growing de...

Stan Jakuba at Energy Tribune wrote a piece titled " Obama’s Stumble: Wind Power " in which he explains the limits of President Obama's renewable goals and what the President should promote as well (I'm copying the whole thing because I think it's that good): I like Barack Obama but I have doubts about his presidency when I hear him saying that the US will “double the amount of energy that comes from renewable sources by the end of my first term." He should know that that’s not possible. But instead, during his State of the Union speech, he proclaimed that we’ll reach that goal in three years, not four. Most anyone who has studied the energy situation must wonder about Obama's, or his advisors', energy experience. Presented with the numbers from the table (see below) he would realize that the majority of the renewable power comes from hydro and from wood, about 154 gigawatts. Readily available data show that the 6 percent for hydro and bio is pretty m...

We already knew from the Democratic debate in Nevada that Barack Obama had no use for Yucca Mountain, but despite this, and John McCain’s support of the brown mound, McCain and Obama are within a couple points of each other. Now, Obama is trying to close the deal, using Yucca Mountain as the wedge. Well, what can we say? We either leave use nuclear fuel scattered around the country – it’s mostly held at the individual plants – or we put it in a similarly remote locale that’s not in a battleground state. Yucca Mountain may well come to represent the dangers of any long-term project subject to the hot winds of political fortune – no matter the overall good it represents. Much the same argument could be made for humming windmill farms or solar panel arrays that mar the fine landscape of some state no matter how far away from people they are. But Obama’s position has been consistent – it’s certainly legitimate to show how it differs from McCain’s, and the ad is admittedly effecti...

The Hillary to State speculation drew most of the attention this weekend, but there was some Energy news. The AP is reporting that New Jersey Environmental Protection Commissioner Lisa Jackson has been named to the Obama-Biden transition team on Energy . Jackson joins Robert Sussman, a former deputy Environmental Protection Agency administrator, and 11 others. They will conduct a department review to provide Obama and key advisers with information they need to make policy, budgetary and personnel decisions prior to the inauguration. Per the Obama transition site , Jackson has been named a Team Lead for the EPA Review. Other Team Leads include Cecilia V. Estolano , CEO of the Community Redevelopment Agency of Los Angeles , and Robert Sussman , a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress . Some did play the cabinet parlor game this weekend: in the pages of Newsweek , Slate.com 's Jacob Weisberg lobbies for Al Gore to become Energy Secretary . The genius principle should ...

Energy Central has posted a new survey of the Presidential candidates' platform planks about energy issues. Many articles have tired of waiting for the Democrats to select a candidate and have settled for an extra paragraph to handle the extra weight. You'd hardly notice, especially since Obama and Clinton are not very far apart in their respective approaches to energy issues and Obama rarely if ever allows the word "nuclear" to cross his lips. Here's McCain on nuclear: He says that the obstacles that have kept a new nuclear power plant from being constructed for more than 25 years are political, not technological. He asks, rhetorically, whether the United States is less innovative or secure than France, which produces 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power. He suggests providing for the safe storage of spent nuclear fuel by giving host states or localities a proprietary interest so when advanced recycling technologies turn used fuel into a valua...

Well, President Jimmy Carter was one. His panels were taken down by his successor, ronald Reagan, and ended up at Unity college in Maine. An environmental activist, Bill McKibben, decided to take them back to the White House last month to see if the current occupant, Barack Obama, might reinstall them. But he had a problem: As McKibben's party made its way from Maine to Washington, D.C., they had just one "nagging concern": They hadn't heard any confirmation from the White House that Obama would see them. But this has kind of a soft human interest angle, so why not? In the end, McKibben and company did end up with a meeting, with two unnamed "environmental bureaucrats," but the Carter panel and the Sungevity donation were refused. Sungevity was going to donate a “full solar system” – I’m not sure what that means – a system capable of running the entire White House? In any event, no go. The response? Not too good: The Obama administr...

To put it mildly, they differ - in some ways reflecting the general approach of their parties. First, McCain : Sen. McCain argues that many of the steps are little more than subsidies that enrich special interests. He has long called for scrapping the federal ethanol tax credit, saying America's corn-ethanol industry can and should stand on its own. He has also voted against requiring electric utilities to boost their use of renewable energy sources, preferring to let cities and states set their own targets for renewable energy. And Obama: [Obama]'s promising to invest $150 billion over the next decade in alternative fuels such as cellulosic ethanol that can be made from materials such as switchgrass and wood chips. He'd push a requirement that the U.S. by 2025 get at least 25% of its electricity from renewable sources like the wind, the sun and geothermal energy (which together currently account for less than 1% of U.S. electricity supply). Letting the mark...

In what we might call a bid for equal time, we roamed around looking for some stories that took a more critical view of the Vogtle loan guarantees. It must have been irresistible to The New York Times to see how environmentalists reacted and turned up, among others, our favorite group for reliable nuclear trash talk : Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth, whose political arm endorsed Mr. Obama’s candidacy for president, said that Mr. Obama’s recent policy emphasis amounted to “unilateral disarmament.” “We were hopeful last year; he was saying all the right things,” Mr. Pica said. “But now he has become a full-blown nuclear power proponent, a startling change over the last few months.” The Times’ John Broder points out that this really isn’t the case: Mr. Obama has long supported nuclear power, as a senator and as a candidate for president. That is the case. We would agree with Mr. Pica, though, that one might not have expected Obama to make quite such a ...

We quoted a bit of President Barack Obama’s discussion of the energy bill in the post below, but he had more to say, with nuclear getting a pretty good showing. Here are all his comments referencing nuclear energy from the interview (the nuclear parts neatly bolded), with a fair amount of surrounding context. Do take a look at the whole thing , though. Lots of meat. 1. President Obama: I think this was an extraordinary first step. You know, if you had asked people six months ago -- or six weeks ago, for that matter -- whether we could get a energy bill with the scope of the one that we saw on Friday through the House, people would have told you, no way. You look at the constituent parts of this bill -- not only a framework for cap and trade, but huge significant steps on energy efficiency, a renewable energy standard, huge incentives for research and development in new technologies, incentives for electric cars, incentives for nuclear energy , clean coal technology. This really is a...

President Barack Obama essentially led with nuclear energy while discussing energy last night, a move that surprised many, delighted us (and more besides us) and distressed a few. It may prove to be one of the “discussed” points of the speech. Take this bit from CNET’s coverage: "One surprise that few people would have anticipated only a few years ago: A mention of biofuels and clean coal received moderate applause. What drew the audience to its feet, cheering, was Obama's call for the construction of more nuclear power plants. Wind and solar combined produce less than 5 percent of U.S. electricity; Republicans have been calling on the administration to embrace a goal of authorizing 100 new nuclear reactors over the next 20 years." Well, we wouldn’t say that’s exactly what Republicans have been calling for – Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) definitely – and it wasn’t only Republicans jumping to their feet, unless Democrats were just getting the circulation going...

Here's the opening paragraph of Larry Rohter's story : Contrary to what Democrats may think, there is more to John McCain’s energy program than “drill, baby, drill.” And contrary to what Mr. McCain has been saying on the campaign trail, where he proposes the construction of 45 nuclear plants by 2030, Barack Obama does not “oppose the use of nuclear power.” This pretty well lines up with what we've said as this campaign rolls along (always pleasing), and the story gets Obama's campaign to open up a bit more on what seems to us tepid support: Elgie Holstein, an adviser to Mr. Obama on energy issues, accused the McCain campaign of misrepresenting Mr. Obama’s position on nuclear power. “Some specific proposals that Senator McCain has made are troubling,” Mr. Holstein said, because of the problems of storage and reprocessing, and the issue of non-proliferation of nuclear fuel. Of course, Obama and Holstein could be more forthcoming on how they want to...

The Wheeler News Service, a Wisconsin-based wire service, reports on Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty's appearance at U Dub in Madison on Monday, ...Pawlenty makes the pitch for John McCain, whose focus on energy includes the nuclear option. "It's going to take a federal government and a president that is open to it," Pawlenty said of the possibility of new nuclear plants being built in the U.S. "The outcome of this election will determine that outcome. I believe that if Barack Obama gets elected, he will slam the door shut on these options." But Obama spokesman Phil Walczak says Obama does not oppose nuclear power. Obama supports "safe, secure nuclear energy," says Walczak. "He understands that any longterm energy policy for this country is going to have to include many components, including a nuclear one."

Or was it the 564th? Well, it was the last one anyway. Here are the nuclear quotes and we should note, this is three-for-three in which there were nuclear shout outs. Granted, all eyes are on the economy and associated pocket book issues, so we expected much less about energy policy this time out. First, McCain: Energy -- well, first -- second of all, energy independence. We have to have nuclear power. We have to stop sending $700 billion a year to countries that don't like us very much. It's wind, tide, solar, natural gas, nuclear, off-shore drilling, which Senator Obama has opposed. We've heard this one before, although it oddly came after the candidates were asked what programs they'd cut. McCain had several suggestions: he really doesn't like ethanol: I oppose subsidies for ethanol because I thought it distorted the market and created inflation; Senator Obama supported those subsidies. Answering how to eliminate dependence on foreign oil: ...