What’s going on with Nuclear Energy?

Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced a new panel this morning to take a microscope to the future of nuclear power in America. The bi-partisan group will be headed by Lee Hamilton (a Democrat with ties to the intelligence community) and Brent Scowcroft (a Republican with ties to the intelligence community).

From the announcement:

In light of the Administration’s decision not to proceed with the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, President Obama has directed Secretary Chu to establish the Commission to conduct a comprehensive review of policies for managing the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle.  The Commission will provide advice and make recommendations on issues including alternatives for the storage, processing, and disposal of civilian and defense spent nuclear fuel and nuclear waste.

For those of you not familiar with their backgrounds, Hamilton was a long-time Democratic Congressman from Indiana, chaired the House Intelligence Committee, and then served on both the 9/11 Commission and the Iraq Study Group. Scowcroft was the National Security Advisor to both Gerald Ford and Bush I but broke with Bush II over the Iraq war, which he publicly advised against (“Don’t Attack Saddam”, WSJ).

What was wrong with Yucca Mountain? Well, it turned out that the proposed storage facility was in someone’s back yard! And that someone was Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Yucca Mountain). Which bodes ill for the fate of the Hamilton/Scowcroft commission. The bottom line on nuclear waste: nobody wants it in their back yard.

Obama’s line about more nukes in his State of the Union got the lowest grade of the entire speech in MoveOn.org’s membership focus group (see our SOTU wrapup article). While there are definitely voices promoting nuclear power, they’re few and far between on the progressive side of politics, where it seems nobody really wants to promote nuclear energy.

At least, not the form of nuclear energy we have now. But there’s an alternative to the uranium reactors the world has been using for the past 60 years: reactors based on Thorium. Stop back in next week when TENTHMIL tells you more about this intriguing blast from the past…

What’s your take on Obama’s environmental prospects? Leave a comment here, leave a comment at the WhiteHouse.gov website, or vote in our TENTHMIL poll.