The LA Times today published an inaccurate and sloppy editorial stating: "McCain's energy plan misleads the public and ignores the risks of nuclear energy." Nearly every claim in this opinion piece on nuclear energy is either grossly exaggerated or wrong. The editorial also makes several qualitative statements unsupported by facts to play into the fears of its readers. Here are a few...

[Bloomberg, 6 August] AtomEnergoProm, a subsidiary of Rosatom, has acquired a 51% stake in Ganz Energetika, a Hungarian manufacturer of fuel-loading and hydraulic equipment for nuclear power plants. The value of the deal was not disclosed. Ganz Energetika has manufacturing facilities in Budapest. AtomEnergoProm said that Russian orders will double the Hungarian company's sales to €20 million ($31 million) per year, allowing it to "recoup all the investment". AtomEnergoProm reportedly plans to spend €300 million ($465 million) in 2008 top acquire eastern European and Russian producers of components used to construct nuclear power reactors.

Recent opinion surveys have found broad support for new nuclear power plants amongst Italians, Poles, and residents of the Canadian province of Saskatchewan – all areas currently without nuclear power but looking into nuclear new-build projects.

France's nuclear regulator, the ASN, has been informed by Areva NC subsidiary Socatri that it has exceeded its annual limit for releases of carbon-14. ASN has ordered the company to suspend all its activities that generate the long-lived radionuclide until the end of 2008.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is reporting that Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle (D) is reconsidering his longtime opposition to the expansion of nuclear energy. Gov. Jim Doyle on Wednesday agreed with a study panel's call to change Wisconsin's 1983 moratorium on nuclear power plants to prepare for the coming national debate over that type of energy. At a news conference, Doyle told reporters...

The Environmental Protection Agency developed a power profiler that : Determines your power grid region based on your ZIP code and electric utility, Compares the fuel mix and air emissions rates of the electricity in your region to the national average, and Determines the air emissions impacts of electricity use in your home or business. To start, all you need is a zip code, check it out . Hat tip...

The US Department of Energy has issued a revised total cost estimate for the planned national used nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.

Areva has refuted claims that its MOX nuclear fuel assemblies failed in-core tests essential to the US program to use the fuel, which would be made in part from dismantled nuclear weapons.

Waste Control Specialists (WCS), a subsidiary of Valhi Inc, has awarded a contract to URS to lead the design and construction of a new low-level radioactive waste facility in Andrews County, Texas.

Australia's WildHorse Energy has joined with state-owned Mecsekérc to assess the feasibility of restarting uranium mining in the Mecsek Hills near Pécs in southern Hungary. A former mine in the area produced 21,000 tonnes of uranium.

Politico report on the maneuvering around energy that the House is attempting: while making conciliatory noises about offshore drilling, the goal is to run out the clock while letting endangered Democrats make the case back home that they’re in-line with the current polls that support all those new derricks. And why might the Dems do this? [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi’s [D-Calif.] gambit rests on one...

Senator John McCain's tour of the Fermi 2 nuclear plant was well-covered by the press. From The New York Times , [McCain] portrayed his support of nuclear energy as part of an “all-of-the-above approach” to addressing the nation’s energy needs at a time of $4-a-gallon gasoline. He called it “safe, efficient, inexpensive and obviously a vital ingredient in the future of the economy of our nation...

After reading Nick Loris's comment about nuclear waste, I decided to read some more of his observations. I don't know about you, but I find it very useful when a site has an author link that leads to a page with an archive of other work by that same author. One of the recent blogs that Nick wrote was titled Don’t Be Fooled Again by the Anti-Nuclear Crowd . With a title like that, how could...

Heritage Foundation blogger Nick Loris produced a blog entry dated August 5, 2008 and titled Nuclear Energy’s Great, But What about the Waste? that includes several passages that might have been influenced by the same thinking that has resulted in my used nuclear fuel strategy. For example, Nick wrote: Let’s start with some basics. What is nuclear waste? The Nuclear Regulatory Commission defines high...

We’ve viewed somewhat nervously the seeming effort to strip away a forward-looking energy policy in favor of the sparkly but short-sighted goal of replacing our dependence on foreign oil with a dependence on domestic oil. It’s an election year diversion that has taken way too much attention away from broader energy issues, especially since there seems no actual way to achieve the stated goal – lowering...