flying cuttlefish picayune

Enformable –

The resignation of Steven Chu

[snip] . . . .  As energy secretary, speaking at the Vogtle nuclear plant site in Georgia last year, where two of the new plants he cited in his letter are supposed to be built, he said:  “The resurgence of America’s nuclear industry starts here in Georgia, where you just got approval for the first time in three decades to build new reactors. The Obama administration is committed to doing our part to help jumpstart America’s nuclear industry. The Energy Department is supporting this project with more than $8 billion in conditional loan guarantees. And we have partnered with industry to support the certification and licensing of the new Westinghouse AP1000 reactor design.”

http://enformable.com/2013/02/the-resignation-of-steven-chu/

and

. . . .  Chu’s former laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley, was then called the Radiation Laboratory. It describes itself as the “oldest” of the national laboratories.   It and the other national nuclear laboratories were long run by the Atomic Energy Commission, which the Manhattan Project was turned into after the war. Then, because the AEC was such a zealous advocate of nuclear power, while supposedly a regulator of the technology, the AEC was eliminated by Congress in 1974 and a Nuclear Regulatory Commission and then a Department of Energy were created.

The DOE was given the mission of promoting nuclear power—a mission that Chu pursued as energy secretary. It also replaced the AEC in running the national nuclear laboratories.

. . . .  And he refuses to accept that true “clean” energy—safe renewable energy technologies such as solar and wind—can provide all the energy we need and not contribute to climate change at all. “A Plan to Power 100 Percent of the Planet with Renewables” was a 2009 cover story in Scientific American, about one major study done in recent years coming to the same conclusion.