Not our headline – that of the AP story that covers Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s testimony before the Senate Budget Committee. A lot of the Senators there had no intention of letting nuclear energy slip away as a priority and Chu reassured them that it won’t.
"I believe in nuclear power as a central part of our energy mix. It provides clean, busload [sic: baseload] electricity"
“Closing the fuel cycle is something we want to do.”
Chu said he is ready to act on loan guarantees for the first group of new reactors and plans on "moving very aggressively to getting the money out the door."
"Nuclear is going to be part of our energy future. It has to be."
Read the whole story for the senatorial jitters – all good, in our view – and Chu’s remarkably reassuring performance. We’ve noticed that the Obama administration has displayed a tendency to roll back over an issue it’s passed by once – see the squabble over earmarks in the omnibus spending bill, for one – so, although Chu has never been particularly harsh in his rhetoric about nuclear energy, we now have to see if these soothing words are followed by effective actions.
Consider these tangles between Congress and the administration preludes to an energy policy. That’s where the tale will really be told.
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