Nuclear Policy Half-Life
Interim steps toward solving America’s spent-fuel dilemma.
New legislation could clear the path toward a sustainable strategy for storing spent nuclear fuel. Complexities and disagreements, however, might scuttle the effort.
Lamar Alexander
The Art of the Plausible
Prospects for clean energy legislation in 2011.
With budget battles heating up in Washington, Congress and the Obama administration are squaring off to debate energy policy legislation. While Democratic leadership favors a clean energy standard, Republican lawmakers are focused on blocking administration initiatives to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. A compromise approach might bring substantial changes to America’s national energy strategy.
Subsidy Addiction
Government incentives are smothering free enterprise.
When Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) announced legislation in November 2009 aimed at doubling America’s nuclear power capacity within 20 years, he compared the clean-energy challenge to fighting a war. “If we were going to war, we wouldn’t mothball our nuclear navy and start subsidizing sailboats,” he told attendees at the American Nuclear Society’s winter meeting. “If addressing climate change and creating low-cost, reliable energy are national imperatives, we shouldn’t stop building nuclear plants and start subsidizing windmills.”
Carbon Costs: The Coming Battle
Where are prices going, and where have they been?
The Supreme Court’s recent decision empowering the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate carbon dioxide shifted momentum toward a mandatory program to cap greenhouse-gas emissions. Eventually, there will be huge implications for power generation.
A National Gasification Strategy
Presenting a program to stimulate robust coal-gasification technology deployment at low federal cost.
Federal loan guarantees and other incentives can clear the hurdles to near-term deployment of gasification technologies.