Nuclear Energy Becomes Pivotal in Climate Debate

WASHINGTON - Once vilified by environmentalists and its future dim, nuclear energy has become a pivotal bargaining chip as Senate Democrats seek Republican votes to pass climate legislation. The nuclear industry's long-standing campaign to rebrand itself as green is gaining acceptance amid the push to curtail greenhouse gases.

Nuclear power still faces daunting challenges, including what to do with radioactive reactor waste. Reactors also remain a tempting target for terrorists.

But 104 power reactors in 31 states provide a fifth of the nation's electricity while producing essentially carbon free power and no greenhouse gas emissions.

It's something the nuclear industry has been pushing in advertising and in lobbying on Capitol Hill for nearly a decade. But only recently has it begun to resonate, not only among industry supporters, but some skeptics as well.

"If you want to address climate change and produce electricity, nuclear has got to be a significant part of the equation," Marvin Fertel, president of Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry trade group, said in an interview.

Not unexpected from a top industry lobbyist. But the same is being heard from Republicans and Democrats in Congress, from a growing number of environmentalists, and from the White House where nuclear power otherwise has received tepid support.

The Senate this week will kick off three committee hearings on legislation to cap greenhouse gases from power plants and large industrial facilities, with an intent of cutting them about 80 percent by 2050. The House has already passed a bill.

It's chances in the Senate could hinge in part on whether demands by a handful of GOP senators for measures to help build new reactors are included in the bill.

A study by the industry-supported Electric Power Research Institute says 45 new reactors are needed by 2030. The Energy Information Administration puts the number even higher, at 70 new reactors. And the Environmental Protection Agency analysis assumes 180 new reactors by 2050 for an 80 percent decline in greenhouse gas emissions.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has applications for 30 new reactors, although only a handful likely will be built over the next decade.

Sponsors of the climate bill are far short of the 60 votes needed to overcome a GOP filibuster, but hope compromises could be forged to bring uncommitted centrist Democrats and some Republicans on board.

from : foxnews

Russia Tries to Control the Reset Button

BRUSSELS ? When Russia issues a reminder that it wants to buy an advanced, helicopter-carrying warship from France that?s built for amphibious assaults ? hello all you folks along the Black, Baltic and Caspian Seas ? then it?s pressing deeper its own reset button on altered relations with the United States and NATO.

The Americans can insist that scrapping plans for a ground-based missile shield on Moscow?s borders is all about Iran and not Russia, and that the Obama administration has traded away nothing to the Russians in the process.

But the Kremlin has made clear its will to extend what it considers a triumph. It?s talking up a plan that Russia sees as containing an alliance-splitting downside for the United States whichever way it turns.

The latest gambit is the warship purchase bid. Trumpeted by Russia three times over the last month ? think Moscow wants to grab Europe?s attention? ? and confirmed by the French Defense Ministry, the Russian proposal involves buying a 21,300-ton Mistral class helicopter carrier and eventual joint production of four or five more.

A response of silence over the long term from the American side could look like another cave-in to Russia in the minds of the European and Central Asian allies who consider Moscow to have vetoed the ground-based missile defense system.

Even more problematically, should a deal for the helicopter carriers materialize, it would open the door ? at least in the view of an American specialist on international arms transactions ? for European allies to sell arms to China.

That?s a horrific idea for the American military, yet it remains a suspended project on a low flame inside the European Union. Indeed, China arms sales continue to have the open backing of President Nicolas Sarkozy.

But how does the United States say no nowadays to Russia (and France, if it agrees to build the ship and share the technology) on a major military transfer when the administration does not want to consider Russia a strategic threat?

Would the United States lie down across the tracks to block a Russian arms deal with the French, when the Russians say they could also make offers to the Netherlands or Spain, described as having the necessary technology? Not comfortably or coherently now, and certainly not without reviving the boss-in-big-boots NATO role President Barack Obama isn?t eager to play.

Russia, though, is exulting in a process in which its influence appears to be growing while American policy setbacks wobble from diminished control over events in Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan to taunting Russian arms sales to Venezuela.

In relation to the ship purchase talks ? against the background of Russia?s invasion of Georgia last year and its virtual annexation of two Georgian provinces ? the Russian Navy?s commander in chief, Adm. Vladimir Vysotsky, rhapsodized over how he could have done the Georgia job in 40 minutes instead of 26 hours if he had had the French warship.

Add Vladimir Putin?s voice to the armed forces chiefs of staff, and politicians who, while applauding an American fade on the missile shield, want to convert it into divisiveness in NATO and a weakened role for the United States as guarantor of Russia?s former Soviet bloc neighbors.

In an account of a conversation published in Germany last week just before the rollback, Mr. Putin said he could not understand why Europe would hesitate to move forward in ?cooperation? with Russia on military technology. (A hint: his country?s absence of a rule of law, its denial of Iran?s nuclear weapons intentions, and its past threats to target NATO members engaged in the missile shield.)

But those tactics may seem to Mr. Putin to have worked. And he appears to think he?s on a roll in relation to the United States ? able to frustrate Washington, divide it from friends, and to a certain extent maintain Russia as the obligatory point of passage for anything positive to happen on Iran.

The warship contract gambit is an example of his relish in playing this strong hand.

It?s striking, though, how hard people informed about U.S. administration policy here insist it?s meaningless that the Russians, who claimed in paranoid mode the land-based shield was a threat to their security, can now portray its elimination as their victory.

More reassuringly, I continued in Brussels to hear this description of America?s very realistic analysis of Russia:

A country that does not want Iran to have a nuclear weapon; yet one that will play out the issue to the disadvantage of the United States as long as possible, and above all would prefer no solution on Iran (or the anti-American fallout from an attack on Iranian installations) to accepting an arrangement in which Russia would see itself subordinated to a U.S. plan or design.

Difficult.

A rogue thought enters here. Is the United States in such a discomforted position that it could tell Moscow, we might want to think about your idea that Russia take over all of Iran?s nuclear enrichment? On the condition, of course, that Iranians are locked into an inspection regimen that blocks them from ever having enough enriched uranium to make a bomb.

It?s an idea that has run around, respecting the Russians to death and sparing them from ever having to admit they?ve disregarded the truth in insisting Iran?s atomic program has no military goals.

But at a time when Russia?s thumb is aggressively jabbing at its own reset button in relation to America, it?s a notion that makes two depressingly elementary mistakes: crediting the Kremlin with game-breaking influence over Iran (or anything else); and expecting the mullahs, in crisis, to turn back from what has become their existential mission.