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Review of accelerated depreciation, investment tax credit, and production tax credit provisions of Senator Kerry's and Senator Lieberman's American Power Act In May 2010, Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) released a discussion version of The American Power Act (henceforth referred to as the "K-L Bill" or the "APA"). The K-L Bill as proposed is a wide-ranging piece of energy legislation that includes a number of new subsidies to nuclear power. This memo evaluates three of those nuclear provisions, describing how they work and estimating their subsidy value to recipients in the nuclear power sector: * 5-year accelerated depreciation period for new nuclear power plants (section 1121). * Investment tax credit (ITC) for nuclear power facilities (section 1122) and the related grants for qualified nuclear power facility expenditures in lieu of tax credits (section 1126). * Modification of credit for production from advanced nuclear power facilities (section 1124). The K-L Bill includes a number of subsidies to nuclear power that were not evaluated in this memo, and as a result this memo should be viewed as one part of a larger picture of how federal subsidies distort US energy markets and fuel choice.1 The values presented

"Roughly a quarter of global electricity could be generated by nuclear power by 2050, requiring a tripling in nuclear generating capacity but making a major contribution to reduced CO2 emissions, a report said Wednesday. A study by the International Energy Agency, which seeks to coordinate energy policies in industrialised nations, and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development described such a target as "ambitious but achievable." "Nuclear is already one of the main sources of low-carbon energy today," said Luis Echavarri of the OECD's Nuclear Energy Agency."

Almost 700m tonnes of CO2 would be released into the Earth's atmosphere by even the smallest nuclear conflict, according to a US study that compares the environmental costs of developing various power sources Just when you might have thought it was ethically sound to unleash a nuclear attack on a nearby city, along comes a pesky scientist and points out that atomic warfare is bad for the climate. According to a new paper in the journal Energy & Environmental Science, even a very limited nuclear exchange, using just a thousandth of the weaponry of a full-scale nuclear war, would cause up to 690m tonnes of CO2 to enter the atmosphere - more than UK's annual total.

One of the world's top climate scientists has written a personal new year appeal to Barack and Michelle Obama, warning of the "profound disconnect" between public policy on climate change and the magnitude of the problem. With less than three weeks to go until Obama's inauguration, Professor James Hansen, who heads Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, asked the recently appointed White House science adviser Professor John Holdren to pass the missive directly to the president-elect.

ELLAFIELD is under threat from rising sea levels, according to new research. Experts from Manchester University claim high tide levels could soar by almost three feet by 2080. And threatened areas include wildlife habitats, historic places and industrial sites on the west coast such as Sellafield. But bosses at the nuclear plant says their operations would not be under threat - even if levels were to rise by twice that amount.

Your report on the gross energy inefficiency of the government estate (Government buildings emit more CO2 than all of Kenya, 23 December) should come as no surprise to anyone who has watched the obsession by energy and climate change secretary, Ed Miliband, to make nuclear power a "solution" to our greenhouse gas emissions requirement. Even if new nuclear plants were to replace the entire "fleet" of current reactors, it would save at most 2-3% of our carbon emissions. But this obsession has diverted attention and investment from much more sustainable and effective ways of delivering the massive cuts in carbon that will be required. Last week, the government's own environmental watchdog, the Sustainable Development Commission, revealed that departments had overall seen their use of renewable electricity fall to 22% in 2007-08, down from 28% the previous year.

City Council gets: Carbon Free and Nuclear Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy Stockings filled with coal come by the Wyoming trainload to feed the furnaces powering CPS Energy's plants. But impending federal regulation of carbon emissions is causing utilities nationwide to wrestle with alternatives. CPS's position has been that natural-gas prices are too volatile. Solar's still too small. But does that imply nuclear is just right? San Antonio has been locked in stiff debate over that question this year. Local environmental and energy activists scored a key victory when they got language supporting the proposed doubling of the South Texas (Nuclear)Project stripped from CPS's May rate hike.

An analysis of the co2 gasses produced by the nuclear industry and specifically around uranium mining.

WITH the federal government offering the nuclear industry $18.5 billion in loan guarantees and billions more in production tax credits and insurance against bureaucratic delays, at least a few new reactors seem certain to be built. But how many? Worries about carbon dioxide and galloping demand for electricity might seem to be setting the stage for a renaissance of nuclear power. But reactors, it turns out, are not at the top of the list for stopping global warming, at least in the United States, at least not any time soon.

The mining of uranium has long been a controversial public issue, and a renewed debate has emerged on the potential for nuclear power to help mitigate against climate change. The central thesis of pro-nuclear advocates is the lower carbon intensity of nuclear energy compared to fossil fuels, although there remains very little detailed analysis of the true carbon costs of nuclear energy. In this paper, we compile and analyze a range of data on uranium mining and milling, including uranium resources as well as sustainability metrics such as energy and water consumption and carbon emissions with respect to uranium productionsarguably the first time for modern projects.

Nuclear energy is increasingly being called upon as a clean and renewable alternative to fossil fuels. As the threat of global warming becomes clearer, nuclear energy is lauded as a carbon-free, clean energy solution. This is an absolute myth. When looking at the entire fuel cycle, one quickly realizes the mining, milling, processing and transportation of uranium fuel for reactors are extremely energy intensive and will emit tons of global-warming pollution.

Why greens must learn to love nuclear power Global warming and finite resources mean our way of life is more threatened than ever, and it's time for the environmental movement to face up to some hard truths

British climate and energy policy is incoherent and needs an overhaul, dumping carbon targets and building more coal and nuclear power stations to stop the lights going out, a pro-nuclear scientist said. A report entitled "A Pragmatic Energy Policy for the UK", by Professor Ian Fells and Candida Whitmill, said renewables would not fill the impending energy gap so old nuclear and coal plants had to be kept going while new ones were built urgently.

Calling climate change one of the greatest challenges ever faced by the human race, some former opponents of nuclear power have recently become its advocates, if cautious advocates. Our purpose here is not to debate climate change, but rather "Is nuclear power essential to addressing climate change and energy independence?"

No nuclear reactors have been built in the United States since the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island. But that is about to change. A number have recently been approved and dozens more are waiting in the wings.

Nuclear power has a major advantage over fossil fuel power sources when it comes to global warming. Generating power from nuclear fuel does not produce any carbon dioxide. Shouldn't we be retiring our coal-fired power plants and replacing them with nuclear plants?

The Bush administration on Friday rejected regulating greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, saying it would cause too many job losses. In a 588-page federal notice, the Environmental Protection Agency made no finding on whether global warming poses a threat to people's health, reversing an earlier conclusion at the insistence of the White House and officially kicking any decision on a solution to the next president and Congress.

WASHINGTON (June 4, 2008) - Environmental, science and public health groups today commended the Senate for beginning debate on the most comprehensive legislation to date addressing climate change and urged lawmakers to reject adding nuclear power subsidies to the bill.

There is a reason Miami-Dade County in Southern Florida is the first place where America's utility industry is moving forward with new nuclear capacity in three decades. In Miami, Florida Power & Light found public officials malleable as silly putty, willing to allow a local agreement with a wink to substitute for solid facts that the public had the right to know: where the cooling water will come from at a time of chronic drought, where the water--more than 50 million gallons per day-- will go when it is evaporated, and what will its effects be on public health and the environment

Nuclear power appears to be making a comeback. With the emergence of global warming, the hopes of the industry have revived based on a growing sense that, nasty as it is, nuclear may be better than coal. Politicians and industry interests -- including some influential people in Saskatchewan and Alberta -- are touting uranium as the climate-change fighting fuel of the future. Nuclear power is now being advertised as green, greenhouse-gas free and sustainable.