Free Republic

Leadership: Alaska's ex-governor asks a question we'd like answered: Why is California's current governor pushing the same policies in Copenhagen that helped drive his state into record deficits and unemployment? The movie series that made Arnold Schwarzenegger a household name involved cyborgs traveling through time to alternately try to destroy or save one John Connor, who would grow up to be the leader of the resistance against a race of machines that ruled the planet. Prominent in the series was his tough cookie of a mom, Sarah Connor. Another Sarah has taken the lead in another resistance against another group...

California: While Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger worries about rising seas, his state sinks below the waves. Don't mess with Texas, they say. But California and the nation could follow its lead. Last Wednesday, Gov. Schwarzenegger released a new report based on research compiled by the California Energy Commission claiming that by 2100 San Francisco Bay would be more bay than San Francisco, with Fisherman's Wharf and Treasure Island under the rising waters of climate change. His show-and-tell, which included a new Google Earth application the commission spent $150,000 to help develop, goes a long way toward explaining the once-Golden State's slide...

After 40 years of bitter opposition Environmentalists concede that Nuclear Power is essential to avert further harm from Global Warming. The Nuclear Industry has felt itself vilified, constrained and damaged by the ceaseless and sometimes pathological opposition of the environmental movement, this changing attitude is manna from on high. Although very little happened, Nov. 24 was a red letter day for the nation's nuclear power industry. No new nuclear reactors were purchased, no breakthrough in treating nuclear waste was announced, and the Obama administration did not declare that it would pay for new reactors. Instead, the source of the industry's...

Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions Highlight Kazakhstan’s Uranium Potential One bonus of the global recession is that it wiped a lot of incompetent hedge fund managers and energy speculators from the canyons of Wall Street. As the Gordon Gecko sycophants regroup and look for the next Big Thing, maximizing profit while minimizing risk, the landscape looks very different than it did a year ago. In such a climate, it is uranium, not oil and natural gas that would seem to have the brightest future for one simple, overriding capitalist principle – supply and demand. Whatever agreements are reached at December’s global climate...

As oil prices continue to hover in the high $70’s and many market commentators express their beliefs that cheap oil is a thing of the past, we find ourselves looking at the Alternative energy options and if any are a near/mid term replacement for fossil fuels. Solar, Wind and Biofuels have promised so much in the past but really aren’t delivering and will not do so for some time. Even though it’s unpalatable to some the only real alternative we have is Nuclear Energy. But is it safe and have we learned our lessons after Chernobyl? Read the full article...

Nuclear power -- long considered environmentally hazardous -- is emerging as perhaps the world's most unlikely weapon against climate change, with the backing of even some green activists who once campaigned against it. It has been 13 years since the last new nuclear power plant opened in the United States. But around the world, nations under pressure to reduce the production of climate-warming gases are turning to low-emission nuclear energy as never before. The Obama administration and leading Democrats, in an effort to win greater support for climate change legislation, are eyeing federal tax incentives and loan guarantees to fund...

Vilified as a nuclear bomb-seeking threat to world peace before the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein's regime, Iraq now wants access to civilian nuclear power for its economic and energy needs. Science and Technology Minister Raed Fahmi, in an interview with AFP, called for the international community to lift the Saddam-era UN resolutions which still stand in its path. "Our nuclear strategy is for civilian application of atomic energy and we believe we have the right and that certain obstacles contained in Resolution 707 should be lifted," he said. "We have a clear and transparent political strategy in close...

IsraelNN.com) U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns told the Middle East Institute in Washington on Tuesday that the U.S. recognizes the Iranian regime’s “right” to nuclear power, does not seek regime change and is ready for more talks with Iran. "We seek a relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran based upon mutual interest and mutual respect. We do not seek regime change. We have condemned terrorist attacks against Iran.

Britain will face a serious energy crisis unless plans to build new nuclear power plants are speeded through without having obstacles placed in their way, the Government will warn next week. Ed Miliband, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, will give the go-ahead for a new generation of power stations and explain how new planning guidelines will speed up the time it takes for them to come into operation. In a major series of policy statements on Monday Mr Miliband will say that “saying no” to nuclear is no longer an option.The move is certain to arouse opposition in Labour...

Leadership: As Palin jousts with Biden on energy independence, the government reports that we lead the world in energy reserves. From oil to gas to coal, we are sitting on prosperity. So why are we importing anything? One of the interesting sidelights of the NY-23 race was an exchange on energy independence between Vice President Joe Biden and the former governor of energy-rich Alaska, Sarah Palin. Biden, who came in to campaign for Democrat Bill Owens, was reminded of the issue of energy. "The fact of the matter is that Sarah Palin thinks the answer to energy was 'Drill, baby,...

FRYAZINO (Moscow Region), October 28 (RIA Novosti) - The Russian Federal Space Agency Roscosmos has developed a design for a piloted spacecraft powered by a nuclear engine, the head of the agency said on Wednesday. "The project is aimed at implementing large-scale space exploration programs," Anatoly Perminov said at a meeting of the commission on the modernization of the Russian economy. He added that the development of Megawatt-class nuclear space power systems (MCNSPS) for manned spacecraft was crucial for Russia if the country wanted to maintain a competitive edge in the space race, including the exploration of the Moon and...

Politics: Move over, John McCain and Olympia Snowe. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is fast becoming the Democrats' favorite Republican as he partners with John Kerry to push cap-and-trade through the Senate. Earlier this year, eight Republican congressmen made it possible for Waxman-Markey, the 1,400-page job- and economy-killing cap-and-trade legislation, to barely pass the House of Representatives. At the time it seemed dead on arrival in the Senate if it was brought up there this year. Once again, as with their medical plan, the Democrats seek to better the odds by putting a GOP hood ornament on a Democratic clunker....

Politics: The senator who called the president a liar and never apologized may have worn out his welcome in his home state. Harry Reid may be riding the liberal agenda into political oblivion.In 2004, Republicans defeated Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle largely on the theme that he neglected his home state in favor of national party interests. The GOP is hoping that in 2010 lightning will strike a second time, and Nevada polls indicate it may be more than wishful thinking. In 1998, Reid beat John Ensign by a hair-thin 428 votes. Ensign would go on to win Nevada's other...

ESTES PARK — Bipartisan political leaders strolled through Rocky Mountain National Park this morning studying beetle-kill trees and changing vegetation patterns — and agreed that nuclear power must be part of any comprehensive climate-change legislation.Sen. Mark Udall, an Eldorado Springs Democrat, and Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona are holding a formal hearing in Estes Park later today concerning global warming and its impact on national parks. McCain called on President Barack Obama to come forward with a climate-change proposal to get the discussion started in Congress.

SERIOUS splits have emerged within the Coalition on nuclear power, with outspoken Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce yesterday calling for a referendum on the issue, while Liberal senate leader Nick Minchin declared any discussion "utterly futile". Senator Joyce demanded Australia abandon its Cold War mindset and end its ban on nuclear power, telling the Nationals federal council meeting it made no sense to continue to take the "peculiar" position of selling uranium overseas, while pretending domestic nuclear energy generation was immoral. "We either say it's immoral and we won't use it at all or, quite obviously, we should be trying to...

With the world seemingly unable to stop Iran's nuclear march, other countries in the region are now pushing forward with their own plans to build nuclear power plants. The Saudi newspaper Al-Watan reported on Thursday that the Saudi minister of water and electricity, Abdullah al-Hosain, said the kingdom was working on plans for its first nuclear power plant. The US inked civil nuclear power deals with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates last year.

For more than 20 years, the government's plan to dispose of highly radioactive spent fuel piling up at U.S. nuclear power reactors has been to haul it to Yucca Mountain and entomb it in a maze of tunnels. But this year, more than a decade before the first shipment was ever expected to arrive at the mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, and years before a license could have been approved for the project, the Obama administration halted funding, saying the Nevada site was "not an option."

Conservation: The Chevy Volt is said to be able to get 230 miles per gallon. That's if it's continually plugged into a fragile and overburdened power grid. Where will you be when the lights go out? Since most U.S. electricity generation is not carbon-free, the Congressional Research Service agrees. The "widespread adoption of plug-in hybrid vehicles through 2030 may have only a small effect on, and might actually increase, carbon emissions," it observes. "If you are using coal-fired power plants and half the country's electricity comes from coal powered plants, are you just trading one greenhouse gas emitter for another?"...

Cap-And-Trade: The administration likes to defend bad policies with analogies to the post office. New studies from a business group and the administration itself confirm that cap-and-trade belongs in the dead-letter bin.Along with Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Rep. Ed Markey likens the cost of the Waxman-Markey cap-and trade bill to "about a postage stamp a day," based on estimates made by the Congressional Budget Office and the EPA. But as we and others have shown, they arrive at this magical number in part by ignoring the hit on gross domestic product and employment that will occur. As Garret Vaughan, economist...

One can measure the dedication of the climate-change crowd in how they approach the zero-emissions technology of nuclear power. Some have realized that the only practical way to replace coal as a source for electricity is to invest heavily in nuclear power. Others, such as Harry Reid and his allies in the Senate, have done their best to shut the door on that path away from coal, which calls into question their motives in forcing cap-and-trade schemes onto the US. Investors Business Daily rips Reid and the administration for blocking the use of Yucca Mountain for safe fuel reprocessing, which...

Death Knell For Nuclear Power? August 03, 2009 Energy: A Senate vote to kill funding for the spent fuel repository in Nevada shows the Democratic Party and this administration aren't serious about energy independence, economic growth or environmental Killing the storage facility for the spent fuel rods produced by the nation's nuclear power industry has long been a dream of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and President Obama. Last week, the Senate granted their wish, voting to deny the resources needed to complete a review necessary for Yucca Mountain to open. "This is a major victory for Nevada," said Reid,...

Energy: A Senate vote to kill funding for the spent fuel repository in Nevada shows the Democratic Party and this administration aren't serious about energy independence, economic growth or environmental protection.Killing the storage facility for the spent fuel rods produced by the nation's nuclear power industry has long been a dream of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and President Obama. Last week, the Senate granted their wish, voting to deny the resources needed to complete a review necessary for Yucca Mountain to open. "This is a major victory for Nevada," said Reid, who is up for re-election next year. "I...

NEW YORK, July 28 (Reuters) - USEC Inc (USU.N) said on Tuesday it would scrap plans to build a new uranium enrichment plant after the U.S. Department of Energy denied its request for a loan guarantee, and it now may seek a partner or buyer, sending its stock plummeting. USEC's planned American Centrifuge Plant in Piketon, Ohio, was one of four new facilities proposed that would be built to supply enriched uranium to the nuclear power sector, which industry experts believe is poised for a renaissance in the United States. "We are shocked and disappointed by DOE's decision," USEC Chief...

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration will not grant a $2 billion loan guarantee for a planned uranium-enrichment facility in Piketon, Ohio, causing the initiative to go into financial meltdown, the company and independent sources confirmed last night. The U.S. Department of Energy's decision means "we are now forced to initiate steps to demobilize the project," said Elizabeth Stuckle, a spokeswoman for USEC. That's the company that is trying to build the $3.5 billion advanced-technology plant on the same site where it ran the Cold War-era uranium-enrichment facility that has been shuttered since 2001... "Instead of creating thousands of jobs across...

Department of Energy Denies USEC’s Loan Guarantee Application -Company begins demobilization of American Centrifuge Plant- BETHESDA, Md. – USEC Inc. (NYSE:USU) President and Chief Executive Officer John K. Welch issued the following statement today after being advised that the U.S. Department of Energy would not proceed with USEC’s application for a loan guarantee to complete construction of the American Centrifuge Plant in Piketon, Ohio: “We are shocked and disappointed by DOE’s decision. The American Centrifuge met the original intent of the loan guarantee program in that it would have used an innovative, but proven, technology, reduced greenhouse gas emissions and...

Energy Policy: California regulators are ready to conclude that corn ethanol cannot help the state fight global warming. It seems they've discovered putting food in our cars would destroy the earth in order to save it. California regulators have apparently discovered it ain't easy being green. The California Air Resources Board began two days of hearings in Sacramento on Thursday on a proposed Low Carbon Fuel Standard which considers the carbon intensity of fuels during a given fuel's entire life cycle. The California Environmental Protection Agency apparently has concluded that corn ethanol would not help the state implement Executive Order...

Energy Policy: Obama announces his energy team without mentioning a green source of renewable energy that could create jobs, reduce carbon emissions and reinvigorate a vital manufacturing sector — nuclear power.The domestic auto industry isn't the only uncompetitive industry that seems to require life-sustaining transfusions of government cash to stay in business. Alternative energy sources have relied on such subsidies, called "investments," for years. Yet in President-elect Obama's announcement of his energy team, we were told "the foundations of our energy independence" lie in "the power of wind and solar." Except that for these alternative sources there's been a severe...

The agreement was announced after Mrs Clinton, the US secretary of state, met the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, in the Indian capital. S.M. Krishna, India's external affairs minister, said India had agreed to buy US defence equipment under an arrangement which will allow Washington to monitor its "end-use" to prevent weapons technology being sold on to rogue regimes. Mrs Clinton said the agreement "will pave the way for greater defence co-operation" between the two countries. The agreement puts the United States ahead of its rivals as India prepares to spend billions on modernising its armed forces, including the purchase...

The push for conversion to plug-in electric cars will do nothing to stop carbon emissions, a report by the GAO warns, throwing cold water on a push by Democrats to get more plug-ins on the road. In fact, the problem could be made worse as demand goes up at coal-fired electrical plants. Plus, the need for batteries may just have the US changing the dictators to which we’re chained, as IBD reports...

Alternative Energy: A government report says reliance on electric cars will do little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and may merely shift our dependence on foreign sources from one set of dictators to another.It's a beautiful theory — highways full of electric cars emitting no greenhouse gases or pollutants after being plugged into an outlet in our garages overnight. The problem, according to a new Government Accountability Office report, is that the effort may only shift the problem somewhere else. "If you are using coal-fired power plants, and half the country's electricity comes from coal-powered plants, are you just trading...

Alternative Energy: A government report says reliance on electric cars will do little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and may merely shift our dependence on foreign sources from one set of dictators to another..."If you are using coal-fired power plants, and half the country's electricity comes from coal-powered plants, are you just trading one greenhouse gas emitter for another?" asks Mark Gaffigan, co-author of the GAO report. The report itself notes: "Reductions in CO2 emissions depend on generating electricity used to charge the vehicles from lower-emission sources of energy."

Gov. Ted Strickland and other officials will meet in southern Ohio on Thursday to unveil plans to develop a nuclear power plant that would bring new life to a former uranium enrichment facility that closed nearly a decade ago. Strickland, U.S. Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, and U.S. Rep. Jean Schmidt, R-Cincinnati, are scheduled to visit Piketon, where they are expected to disclose plans for the project. The plant will be a joint effort of Charlotte, N.C.-based Duke Energy Corp. (NYSE:DUK) and Areva SA of France, according to a source with knowledge of the project. The proposed plant, what the state...

Four power companies are expected to split $18.5 billion in federal financing to build the next generation of nuclear reactors -- the biggest step in three decades to revive the U.S. nuclear industry and one that could vault the utilities ahead of some of the sector's strongest players. UniStar Nuclear Energy, NRG Energy Inc., Scana Corp and Southern Co. are expected to share a set of loan guarantees to be awarded by the Energy Department. The guarantees would enable the companies to start building the reactors as early as 2011, with the plants likely to come online by 2015 or...

U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander is emerging as the spokesman for the Republican Party's message on energy - and he is thinking big on the subject. Alexander late last month said he will call on the federal government to permit the construction of 100 nuclear power plants over the next 20 years. The project presents a tremendous challenge, but the Tennessee Republican believes the nation is up to the task. Alexander's advocacy certainly should gear the nation to dealing with the energy issues facing it. In politics, Alexander's request is defining the difference between the GOP's energy goals and those of...

On ‘dead’ Yucca Mountain project, House subcommittee asks: If not there, where? The House lawmakers who appropriate money for energy needs were not pleased as Energy Secretary Steven Chu appeared before them Wednesday. The legislators have approved spending hundreds of millions of dollars annually for the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. Chu arrived to present the Energy Department’s annual budget request, which, it was widely known, had only minimal funds for the project. President Barack Obama is terminating the planned dump northwest of Las Vegas.

Obama has concluded that energy concerns might motivate the Islamic Republic's nuclear program. Putting aside Iran's past deceit, and the fact that North Korea also initially justified its program in energy concerns, the Bipartisan Policy Center had examined whether energy concerns could justify Iran's nuclear program. Here is what they found: Iran’s electricity consumption is growing approximately eight percent per year. By 2012, its annual consumption could be between 202 and 289 billion kilowatt hours. Until recently, the Iranian government has managed to keep production above demand, but in 2008 had to institute a series of scheduled blackouts in Tehran...

Nuclear power is the most environmentally friendly power of all, low on emissions, does not require destructive mining or drilling efforts to feed it, and is also one that creates a lot of jobs both in initial construction as well as to sustain its ongoing operation. Nuclear power is also a mainstay power source for such countries as France. It's clean, safe, and extremely desirable. Its only drawback is what to do with its waste. But to the U.S. enviro-racket, nuclear power is a bugabear that needs to be deep sixed forever and Barack Obama is a chief bugger...

LONDON -- President Barack Obama suggested that Iran may have some right to nuclear energy _ provided it proves by the end of the year that its aspirations are peaceful. SNIP SNIP "What I do believe is that Iran has legitimate energy concerns, legitimate aspirations," Obama said, adding that the international community also "has a very real interest" in preventing a nuclear arms race.

More grist for the idea of an American nuclear revival: Duke Energy, one of the country’s largest power companies, sees a brighter future for nuclear power than for coal. Chief executive Jim Rogers laid it out at the big corporate climate summit in Denmark today, Reuters reports: Rogers described his company as the third largest U.S. generator of electricity from coal and the third largest from nuclear. If Duke Energy had to choose between one technology or the other Rogers said: “I’m betting on nuclear. And I would go a step further and probably say that these two coal plants...

So far the score card in my opinion is not too pretty for the Messiah. He is wrong on Afghanistan, wrong on Gitmo, wrong in taking over Chrysler and General Motors, obviously wrong on the Banks as they all want to give the money back, wrong on trying to push unproductive Unions down our throats, wrong on who is supplying weapons to Mexican drug cartels, wrong on many aspects of healthcare, wrong to apologize to the Mexicans, Europeans, and Muslims in the name of all Americans, and now; he is spitting into the wind with a fantasy of going green...

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has issued an updated version of its 2003 "Future of Nuclear Power" report and concluded that, while global warming concerns have grown, the nuclear revival appears to be stuck in neutral.

Hyperion Power Generation today has no product or service. It certainly doesn't have a plant. Yet, the Denver company is valued at an astonishing $100 million by investors, and its books boast a whopping 70 orders for what it plans to manufacture — small nuclear reactors. Unlike large reactors in nuclear power plants that cost billions of dollars, Hyperion's reactors will sport a relatively modest price tag of $25 million to $30 million apiece. "We are four years away from putting the first reactor in the ground," said Hyperion CEO John "Grizz" Deal, sporting the optimism of many chief executives....

Under the guise of cutting wasteful spending, President Obama is terminating support for the Yucca Mountain spent nuclear fuel repository in Nevada. While not unexpected, this development means that there will be no place to store nuclear waste, probably for decades, other than at temporary storage locations at each of the nation's nuclear power plants. This termination decision was one among several contained in a document titled "Terminations, Reductions, and Savings" which were announced today by the White House to cut $17 Billion from the FY2010 budget. It seems disingenuous to suggest that canceling the Yucca Mountain project is going...

<p>President Barack Obama wants to end $26 billion in oil and gas industry tax breaks, calling them ''unjustifiable loopholes'' in the tax system that other companies do not get.</p> <p>Obama's proposed fiscal 2010 budget, details of which were released Thursday, also more clearly spells out his intention to shut down a proposed nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada and calls for ending a government subsidy that helps utilities license and plan for new nuclear power plants.</p>

One of the oldest and most efficient wind farms in Britain is to be dismantled and replaced by a nuclear power station under plans drawn up by the German-owned power group RWE.The site at Kirksanton in Cumbria - home to the Haverigg turbines - has just been approved by the government for potential atomic newbuild in a move that has infuriated the wind power industry. Colin Palmer, founder of the Windcluster company, which owns part of the Haverigg wind farm, said he was horrified that such a plan could be considered at a time when Britain risks missing its green...

In March Energy Secretary Seven Chu said he would shut down the nuclear waste strorage facility at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, casting a pall over hopes for a resurgent nuclear power industry. The Yucca Mountain project came about from President Jimmy Carter’s decision not to permit reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel in an effort to prevent nuclear proliferation. The alternative was a long term nuclear waste storage facility that eventually was sited and developed at

Like anybody who understands electricity, McCracken [an energy economist at Platts] is both slightly provoked and slightly alarmed by the headlong rush into wind power in Europe and America. "Wind power has its critics and they feel that their reservation have been overridden by policy makers whose imagination have been captured by a green agenda that downplays wind's limitations," says McCracken judiciously. The major limitation, of course, is wind's intermittency -- its lack of "dispatchability." Quite simply, you can never count on it. You can't even predict it from hour to hour with 100 percent accuracy and the windiest sites...

Link only, per FR copyright and posting rules

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran now controls the entire cycle for producing nuclear fuel with the opening of a new facility to produce uranium fuel pellets, the Iranian president said Saturday. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made the speech two days after the inauguration of the facility which produces uranium oxide pellets for a planned 40-megawatt heavy-water nuclear reactor near the town of Arak, central Iran. Production of nuclear fuel pellets is the final step in the long, complicated chain of nuclear fuel cycle.

It’s been 30 years since the accident at Three Mile Island effectively killed the commercial nuclear power industry in the United States. But strongly escalating concerns about global warming, growing worries about so-called “Peak Oil," and greatly improved nuclear-power technology are combining to make nuclear power an increasingly alluring option in the United States, Money Morning has been reporting. The 30-year anniversary of the Three Mile Island accident – which occurred near Harrisburg, Pa., in the in the predawn hours of March 28, 1979 – has obviously resurrected some of these discussions. But thanks to these deep-seated and growing concerns...