Every Spring, Gallup conducts a poll on energy issues and the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) usually does so too–and usually tries to beat Gallup to the punch so that it can tout its numbers first. Not surprisingly, the NEI numbers somehow always show large public support for nuclear power.
Today NIRS and our colleagues at Nuclear Energy Information Service (NEIS) in Chicago kicked off the most important state-level action we’ll be doing all year: taking on Exelon’s full-court press for a bailout of its aging, uneconomic nuclear fleet in Illinois. If you’re in Illinois, tell your legislators to reject Exelon’s proposed bailout legislation and…
Yesterday, the Department of Energy released a major new report on wind power that, in its words, looks “at the future of wind power through 2050 and the economic benefits that come with a robust wind industry.” That future and those benefits are quite clear. DOE predicts that wind alone can provide 10% of our…
Today is, in case anyone forgot, the fourth anniversary of the beginning of the seemingly endless Fukushima nuclear disaster. Four years later, hundreds of thousands of people are still displaced from their homes and previous livelihoods; hundreds of tons of radioactive water continues to leak from the reactor site into groundwater and the Pacific Ocean;…
Back in 2008, when presidential candidate John McCain was calling for construction of 45 new reactors in the U.S. (and presidential candidate Barack Obama was calling for “safe” nuclear power), Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander outdid his colleague: he issued a call for construction of 100 new nuclear reactors. In 2008, the nuclear “renaissance” was in…
It’s been more than a year in the making and sometimes it felt like the project might never be finished. But here we are. Today, NIRS, Friends of the Earth, Sierra Club, Public Citizen and Greenpeace released our first major video–one we hope you’ll help us take viral. It’s at www.makenuclearhistory.org and tells a tale…
After a year of making us wait with bated breath, last week Exelon unveiled its proposals for the energy future. And man, is it anti-climactic. And anti-CLIMATIC, actually. The long and the short of it is that Exelon is proposing that the state of Illinois and energy regulators at every level create new ways to…
Pity those poor, sensitive souls at the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) and Exelon’s Nuclear Matters astroturf group. It seems that some people don’t like them, and aren’t afraid to say so. And it’s hurting their feelings. That’s the message NEI CEO Marvin Fertel sent to Wall Street this week during its annual briefing to the…
In theory, the “all of the above” energy policy has a certain amount of appeal: why should government pick winners and losers? Why not–since no one knows the future–as a matter of policy pursue all energy sources? One obvious issue is the availability of sufficient resources to effectively support all energy sources. But there is…
Every year (well, this is the second year), the trade website Utility Dive conducts a survey of about 400 electric utility execs across the country to find out what they think about the future of their business. The good news about the survey this year is that many of them seem to get a very…