[madmanslitany]

Isn't Steven Chu, Obama's new Secretary of Energy, pro-nuclear?

From: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=reactivating-nuclear-rea...

"Nuclear power, as I said before, is going to be an important part of our energy mix," said physicist Steven Chu, Obama's secretary of energy during his confirmation hearing on January 14. "It's 20 percent of our electricity generation today, but it is 70 percent of the carbon-free portion of electricity today. And it is baseload. So I think it is very important that we push ahead." He added: "There is certainly a changing mood in the country because nuclear is carbon-free, that we should look at it with new eyes."

[jacoblyles]

With the money in the stimulus bill, they could have replaced 20% of the nation's electrical capacity with nuclear (a million megawatts of national capacity, $5 billion for 1,200 megawatts of nuclear power, round down a bit to make the math easier). I doubt the actual bill goes towards anything so useful. I'm not sure what is actually in the slop bucket, but I have heard that some will go towards subsidies for rather useless, but sexy, green tech.

If they believe in nuclear, they could put their money where their mouth is.