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It is clear that we need to address our dependence on coal and foreign oil and all the ills - from lung disease to global warming - they cause. But the question begs, does nuclear power offer a safe, affordable domestic solution? Advertisement Unfortunately, the facts suggest otherwise. The industry is dependent on subsidies and is not economically viable. Nuclear waste is problematic at best. The technology is not safe despite billions of tax dollars spent on research to try to make it safe. The claims from nuclear energy's proponents have always been too good to be true. "Too cheap to meter" was the first. Inaccurate power projections led to TVA's first nuclear plant construction program in the 1970s and '80s, leaving more than $25 billion in debt, which Tennessee Valley residents are still paying. Current estimated cost for one new 1,200-megawatt reactor is $7.5 billion. From 1950 to 1999, federal subsidies totaled around $145 billion. Cleanups of radioactive federal Superfund' sites are expensive, difficult and proceeding slowly. The fact is that they may never be cleaned up.

President Barack Obama has named Commissioner Gregory Jaczko as chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the White House announced Wednesday. Senate confirmation is not required because Jaczko is already a member of the commission. Jaczko, a physicist who currently is the only Democrat on the presidentially appointed commission, will replace Dale Klein as chairman. Klein said early this year that he plans to serve out the remainder of his term -- ending in June 2011 -- as a commissioner if replaced as chairman. Before joining the commission in 2005, Jaczko was science adviser to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. Reid, a fierce opponent of the DOE high-level nuclear waste repository project at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, pushed for Jaczko's appointment to the commission in 2005. Jaczko's second term ends in June 2013.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee approved a provision to its sweeping climate and energy bill that would create an autonomous Clean Energy Deployment Administration within the Energy Department and make reforms to DOE's loan guarantee program for low-emission projects. The time spent debating the amendment was more than hour, suggesting the committee will face a slog through the 946-page measure. The amendment passed 51-6, with ranking member Joe Barton (R-Texas) among a handful of Republicans who opposed it. Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), who offered the amendment with Democrats Jay Inslee of Washington and Bart Gordon of Tennessee, said the plan would aid deployment of new nuclear plants as well as renewable technologies. Changes to the loan guarantee program and creation of a "clean energy" bank within DOE are also part of a major energy bill before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, although the plans are not identical. The Clean Energy Deployment Administration would be empowered to provide a suite of financing options, including direct loans, letters of credit, loan guarantees, insurance products and others.

The U.S. Energy Department will scrap a Bush administration initiative that could have brought billions of dollars in new spending-and a lot more nuclear materials- to South Carolina. The Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, unveiled in 2006, was a plan to reprocess spent commercial nuclear fuel to maximize its efficiency, reduce waste volume and prevent its exploitation for nuclear weapons. Two of the 11 sites proposed for such reprocessing centers are in South Carolina.

Six months ago, then Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama told a crowd in Pendleton he wasn't familiar with the Hanford nuclear reservation and didn't have a clue what was going on there. The comment caused a stir in the Tri-Cities and set off alarm bells with the state's two Democratic senators, Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell. It remains unclear whether the former community organizer from the south side of Chicago who spent three years in the Senate and is now the president-elect has learned anything about the $2 billion-a-year Hanford cleanup or the long-standing commitment from the federal government to clean up one of the most toxic sites on Earth.

According to info distributed by the Alliance of Nuclear Worker Advocacy Groups, ANWAG and the action groups at Linde Ceramics are petitioning NIOSH and the Dept. of Labor to make rules changes in the administration of the sick nuclear worker compensation program. "Congress never intended this program to develop into the ongoing and overwhelming burden it has become for sickened nuclear weapons workers or their survivors," Terrie Barrie of ANWAG said in a statement. "Congress was well aware when they passed EEOICPA that the Department of Energy did not keep adequate exposure records, particularly for chemicals and heavy metals. Yet, DOL requires claimants to provide proof of exposure where none exists. It is long past due to return this program to the original intent of the law."

According to info distributed by the Alliance of Nuclear Worker Advocacy Groups, ANWAG and the action groups at Linde Ceramics are petitioning NIOSH and the Dept. of Labor to make rules changes in the administration of the sick nuclear worker compensation program. "Congress never intended this program to develop into the ongoing and overwhelming burden it has become for sickened nuclear weapons workers or their survivors," Terrie Barrie of ANWAG said in a statement. "Congress was well aware when they passed EEOICPA that the Department of Energy did not keep adequate exposure records, particularly for chemicals and heavy metals. Yet, DOL requires claimants to provide proof of exposure where none exists. It is long past due to return this program to the original intent of the law."

It will be announced today that Dr. Steven Chu, Director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, is President-elect Barack Obama's choice for Secretary of Energy. Dr. Chu shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on laser cooling and trapping of atoms. Prior to becoming director of LBL, he was a professor at Stanford University and also worked at the former Bell Laboratories in New Jersey. For a more complete overview of his work, there is this autobiography or a rapidly-updated Wikipedia entry. Reaching deep into The Oil Drum archives, commenter Step Back pointed to an audio presentation of a talk and interview with Dr. Chu in July 2005 at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, CA.: * Real Audio * MP3 Here is one excerpt:

Physics met politics at the confirmation hearing Tuesday for Steven Chu, the Nobel laureate scientist chosen by President-elect Barack Obama to head the Department of Energy, and the physics bent a bit, as Dr. Chu backed away slightly from earlier statements he has made - that gasoline prices should be higher, and that coal was his "nightmare."

Steven Chu said today that as energy secretary he will pursue the "best possible scientific analysis" to chart the disposal of the nation's nuclear waste, without saying specifically what he plans to do about the proposed Yucca Mountain repository. Appearing at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Chu was asked how he plans to approach nuclear waste management where the government's preferred disposal site in Nevada is more than 10 years behind schedule. Nuclear waste poses "very thorny questions," Chu said, noting that President-elect Barack Obama has stated "very clearly" his opposition to the repository where the Energy Department is seeking a license to build disposal tunnels for more than 77,000 tons of radioactive material.

Senators celebrated Steven Chu today as a scientist, administrator and Nobel Prize winner. But in the hearing on his nomination as President-elect Barack Obama's Energy secretary, Chu was cast in a new role: politician. Under gentle questioning from the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, the physicist and director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory signaled his support for a variety of energy alternatives -- including coal -- to America's dependence on imported oil.

"U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said on Friday that the United States needs to come up with a better system for storing or disposing of radioactive nuclear waste than a planned repository near Las Vegas. "The president has made it very clear that we are going to go beyond Yucca mountain. You should go beyond Yucca mountain," Chu said. "But instead of wringing my hands, let's go forward and do something better." The Obama administration, in January, announced it was stopping the license application for a long-planned multi-billion dollar nuclear waste storage site at Yucca Mountain near Las Vegas, which is opposed by environmental groups."

"Vice President Joe Biden said on Thursday the U.S. must spend significantly more to ensure the readiness of American nuclear warheads even as the president presses an agenda to rid the world of those weapons. Biden was making the case for the big jump in spending so that scientists can make certain the aging U.S. nuclear stockpile remains ready for use, if needed, without test explosions. The new administration budget allocates $7 billion for scientists and laboratories that maintain warhead readiness - an increase of about 13.5 percent and one of the largest in the next spending plan. The 2011 budget also calls for spending an additional $5 billion on those projects over the next five years. "

"The old B Reactor on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation doesn't look like it's going to be a National Park anytime soon. But the National Park Service says there are ways to increase public access to the site. The agency held a public hearing on that idea Thursday in Richland as correspondent Anna King reports. The B Reactor, at Hanford, was part of the top-secret Manhattan Project during World War II. But now many of the sites associated with the race to build a nuclear bomb are disappearing. The National Parks Service came out with a study in December on how to save some of that history for the public."

"The Department of Energy and the White House are at odds over how steep to cut the Yucca Mountain budget for fiscal 2011, according to reports. Energy Secretary Stephen Chu is balking over the White House plan to slash the budget for the nearly-doomed nuclear waste dump north of Las Vegas, according to reports in Energy Daily and the Wall Street Journal. Apparently, the White House wants to zero out the $46 million in the Energy Department's request in the president's new budget due next month. Chu sent a letter to White House budget director Peter Orszag last month arguing that at least $25 million was needed to close out the Yucca Mountain office, including for the retention of "critical knowledge and data.""

"The most contaminated site in the Western Hemisphere is at Hanford, Washington state's sprawling nuclear waste reservation on the Columbia River. The Department of Energy wants to dump more nuclear waste at Hanford before cleaning up what's already there. The proposal doesn't sit well with watchdog groups or the public. Narration: A federal proposal to dump more radioactive waste at Hanford, the nation's most contaminated nuclear site, has watchdog agencies and the public on high alert. Sending more waste to the sprawling nuclear reservation before cleaning up what's already there could threaten the Columbia River for thousands of years, says the Heart of America Northwest. Gerry Pollett is Director of the non-profit which has monitored Hanford for over 20 years."

"Tourists in New Mexico know the art galleries of Santa Fe and the ski slopes of Taos, but not the state's truly unique attraction: the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP, is a series of caverns mined out of underground salt beds. The Department of Energy has been burying "transuranic" waste there for 11 years. The waste includes gloves, equipment and chemicals contaminated - probably with plutonium - during the making of nuclear weapons. It's dangerous stuff but fairly easily handled. That's what WIPP was built to take. But the federal government has a lot of other really hot, high-level waste to get rid of - especially spent fuel from reactors. "

"Speakers at a public hearing Tuesday night split their comments between calling for the Fast Flux Test Facility to be saved and worries that proposed cleanup plans for Hanford would not protect the environment and human health. The Department of Energy hearing in Richland kicked off a series of eight meetings in three states to hear public opinion on a wide-ranging draft study that lays out options for cleanup of many areas of the Hanford nuclear reservation. More than 100 people attended. Among the decisions that the Draft Tank Closure and Waste Management Environmental Impact Statement recommends are entombing FFTF, emptying 99 percent of radioactive waste from underground tanks, leaving the emptied tanks in the ground and extending a ban on sending many types of radioactive waste to Hanford."

A proposed energy park at Hanford could include piped natural gas, a biofuel plant and acres of solar panels that may help power the vitrification plant and one day produce commercial power. Gary Petersen, vice president of Hanford programs for the Tri-City Development Council, told Benton County commissioners Wednesday that Cascade Natural Gas has proposed piping natural gas to the future site, which could supply a significant amount of the energy needed to power the vitrification plant being built there. Two Cascade pipelines could be used. One would have to cross the Yakima River and the other would have to cross the Columbia. Natural gas is one of four proposals being eyed to offset energy consumption by the massive plant being built to turn some of Hanford's worst waste into a stable glass form.

A proposed energy park at Hanford could include piped natural gas, a biofuel plant and acres of solar panels that may help power the vitrification plant and one day produce commercial power. Gary Petersen, vice president of Hanford programs for the Tri-City Development Council, told Benton County commissioners Wednesday that Cascade Natural Gas has proposed piping natural gas to the future site, which could supply a significant amount of the energy needed to power the vitrification plant being built there. Two Cascade pipelines could be used. One would have to cross the Yakima River and the other would have to cross the Columbia. Natural gas is one of four proposals being eyed to offset energy consumption by the massive plant being built to turn some of Hanford's worst waste into a stable glass form.