Archive for the ‘Need’ Category
Nukes Need Money – Nuclear
Posted on: September 18, 2008
It’s late summer in Washington at the tail end of a lame duck presidency. And that means one thing for Beltway insiders: open season for lobbying.
The nuclear energy industry is one group in a good position to take advantage of the changing of the guard. And one of its biggest guns–former New Jersey Gov. and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman–is drumming up publicity for what might be a nuclear renaissance in the U.S. within the next few years.
“Right now the only base form of power that we have that doesn’t emit any greenhouse gases or other pollutants while producing power is nuclear,” she said in a recent interview with Forbes.com. She says the U.S will need 25 to 27 new reactors by 2030 if nuclear power is to continue to produce 20% of the nation’s electricity, the current level.
Whitman’s got a vested interest in seeing the U.S. nuclear industry bloom. She spoke to Forbes.com in her role as co-chair of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, a pro-nuclear group whose very broad membership includes nuclear power heavyweights like Exelon (nyse: EXC – news – people ), AREVA (other-otc: ARVCF.PK – news – people ) and Southern Co.. It’s funded by the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), an industry organization.
But she’s also got a point. There’s a lot of buzz about nuclear power around the country. Republican presidential candidate John McCain says he wants to see 45 new plants built by 2030. Democrat Barack Obama says it’s “unlikely” the U.S. can meet its climate goals without the help of nuclear power, though he wants the waste issue resolved. Both are pushing for a new regulatory mechanism to curb greenhouse gas pollution, a boon for operators of nuclear plants. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission expects applications for as many as 34 new reactors by 2010.
Other issues remain. The industry is concerned that Senate appropriators have reduced funding for the proposed waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The NEI is also pushing for the creation of a “clean energy bank” that could offer loans and guarantees on nuclear and other energy projects. It wants to see the government create a cost-sharing program with the private sector for spent fuel-recycling units.
Moreover, Whitman says McCain’s grand vision is a “nice idea” but it’s “not going to happen,” partly because one reactor component is only built in Japan.
Still, the industry’s staying busy. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, a watchdog group, the NEI has spent $1.23 million on lobbying so far in 2008. In June, the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition released a study touting the job creation a nuclear renaissance could bring–as many as 700 jobs at each reactor, many of which pay upwards of $65,000 per year.
“Nuclear’s not a silver bullet,” concedes Whitman. Though it would certainly be cheaper if it was.
Nukes Need Money – Nuclear
Posted on: September 18, 2008
It’s late summer in Washington at the tail end of a lame duck presidency. And that means one thing for Beltway insiders: open season for lobbying.
The nuclear energy industry is one group in a good position to take advantage of the changing of the guard. And one of its biggest guns–former New Jersey Gov. and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman–is drumming up publicity for what might be a nuclear renaissance in the U.S. within the next few years.
“Right now the only base form of power that we have that doesn’t emit any greenhouse gases or other pollutants while producing power is nuclear,” she said in a recent interview with Forbes.com. She says the U.S will need 25 to 27 new reactors by 2030 if nuclear power is to continue to produce 20% of the nation’s electricity, the current level.
Whitman’s got a vested interest in seeing the U.S. nuclear industry bloom. She spoke to Forbes.com in her role as co-chair of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, a pro-nuclear group whose very broad membership includes nuclear power heavyweights like Exelon (nyse: EXC – news – people ), AREVA (other-otc: ARVCF.PK – news – people ) and Southern Co.. It’s funded by the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), an industry organization.
But she’s also got a point. There’s a lot of buzz about nuclear power around the country. Republican presidential candidate John McCain says he wants to see 45 new plants built by 2030. Democrat Barack Obama says it’s “unlikely” the U.S. can meet its climate goals without the help of nuclear power, though he wants the waste issue resolved. Both are pushing for a new regulatory mechanism to curb greenhouse gas pollution, a boon for operators of nuclear plants. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission expects applications for as many as 34 new reactors by 2010.
Other issues remain. The industry is concerned that Senate appropriators have reduced funding for the proposed waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The NEI is also pushing for the creation of a “clean energy bank” that could offer loans and guarantees on nuclear and other energy projects. It wants to see the government create a cost-sharing program with the private sector for spent fuel-recycling units.
Moreover, Whitman says McCain’s grand vision is a “nice idea” but it’s “not going to happen,” partly because one reactor component is only built in Japan.
Still, the industry’s staying busy. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, a watchdog group, the NEI has spent $1.23 million on lobbying so far in 2008. In June, the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition released a study touting the job creation a nuclear renaissance could bring–as many as 700 jobs at each reactor, many of which pay upwards of $65,000 per year.
“Nuclear’s not a silver bullet,” concedes Whitman. Though it would certainly be cheaper if it was.
Fee-based services say they’ll protect your identity, privacy, credit, name, and more. Find out what they can and can not do — and learn what you can do to defend yourself.
What is your identity worth? According to the Global Internet Security Threat Report from Symantec, credit card numbers go for as little as 40 cents on the black market. Complete access to a bank account? Just $10.
Not so long ago, one’s identity didn’t involve so many dollars and cents. Discussions of privacy seemed better suited to the realm of academic debates or conspiracy theories. Today, unfortunately, the context is too often one of ripped-off consumers, with tales of swiped credit card numbers, false mortgages, and employment fraud leading to many cumulative hours spent, perhaps over years, trying to clean up the mess.
Of course when someone comes gunning for granny’s life savings, “good Samaritans” won’t be far behind.
Take identity theft monitoring service providers. The pitch? Give us your Social Security number and notification of suspicious identity activity is only an e-mail alert or phone call away. These services, which typically cost $10 to $20 per month, offer to guard your identity by monitoring the three credit-reporting agencies (Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion), cell phone applications, government databases, and public information. Some also provide insurance (subject to underwriting, and not valid in every state) to help defray costs associated with recovering from identity theft cases.
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Tips For Fighting ID Theft |
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• 5 (Mostly) Free Alternatives To ID Theft Monitoring Services • What No Identity Theft Monitoring Can Catch |
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Others offer even more. For example, Intersections’ Identity Guard ($17 per month for the “Total Protection” plan) says it uses “patented scanning technology” to maintain “daily surveillance of the Internet’s ‘back alley’ chat rooms and news groups” and see if your identity is for sale. Secure Identity Systems ($7 per month) says it “tracks hundreds of databases that use Social Security numbers, including utilities, DMV records, financial institution records, and more.”
MyPublicInfo ($80 for a six-month “Public Information Profile”) watches criminal records and real estate reports. Debix ($99 per year) automatically calls you at home or on your cell phone the moment someone obtains new credit in your name. LifeLock ($10 per month) requests “that your name be removed from pre-approved credit card and junk mail lists, and we keep making the requests as they expire,” so would-be attackers can’t swipe credit card offers from your mailbox. According to LifeLock, “we’ve got your back.” More Than 225 Million Records Breached Since 2005
A little identity theft prevention would be nice, especially since over 225 million records containing sensitive, personal information have been compromised since January 2005, according to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. Furthermore, the quantity and scale of data breaches appears to be on the rise. For example, a March break-in at an Indiana debt-collection agency led to a missing server containing 700,000 people’s personal information, including some Social Security numbers. (The server is still at large.)
Does Ballmer Need To Go?
Posted on: May 5, 2008
Microsoft’s dramatic decision this weekend to withdraw its offer for Yahoo and not pursue a hostile bid raises a whole host of questions. What happens to Yahoo now? What happens to Microsoft? Or is this just a tactic to drive down the price of Yahoo’s shares so that Microsoft can go hostile with a lower offer? And if the deal really is dead, does Steve Ballmer
need to start looking for a new job?
This last question may not be so hypothetical. Ballmer has been the big driver behind this deal at Microsoft—some would say to the point of obsession. After the disaster that has been Windows Vista (Microsoft’s core product), Ballmer may have realized he needed to redeem himself in the eyes of Microsoft’s board. And the “transformative” deal with Yahoo was the way he was going to do it.
One reading of Ballmer’s obsession with the deal is that he felt his job was on the line if he didn’t get it done. According to one secondhand account that leaked to us yesterday before the deal was called off, over the past week Ballmer increasingly has been “yelling and screaming at employees for almost no reason” and is being “more of a tyrant than usual.” One executive on the Microsoft deal team supposedly made a comment about “not having to worry about Ballmer anymore” if the Yahoo deal fell through. What the exec didn’t know, though, was that Ballmer was in earshot, and he screamed back that the deal would go through and that he wouldn’t let the board “crucify” him.
As things stand, the fact that Ballmer was not able to close the deal could put his job in jeopardy. The big questions are: If he really does walk away, can he put this distraction behind the company? Or is it too late for Ballmer? If Microsoft’s board loses patience with him, it might have to ask Blll Gates to temporarily come back as CEO until it finds a replacement. After all, Ballmer has already made a strong and convincing case for why Microsoft needs Yahoo to make its online and advertising strategy work (it needs the scale of Yahoo’s display and search advertising inventory to compete with Google). It is not clear how it can achieve its objectives on its own or through other acquisitions.
Maybe Ballmer backed down because he realized the deal was becoming too big of a distraction and he didn’t want to drag it out further given Yahoo’s continued resistance. (And save his job in the process). Or perhaps he thinks he can still get it done by making Yahoo’s stock price collapse and come back with a hostile offer. (After all, if you are going to go hostile, you’d want to drive down the stock price of the target company to make your offer look even more attractive to shareholders). We’ll find out later this week.
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