Tag Archives: Steven Chu

Meanwhile, Over on the Hill …

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Notes from Steven Chu’s Senate confirmation hearings

“Will you take a lead, not just to talk about it, not just to opine about it, but actually do the things necessary to see if we can’t restart our nuclear industry?” asked Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama. Tennessee Senator Bob Corker echoed the question later, asking Chu if he meant to “pursue nuclear now… all out now?”

Yes, yes, and yes, Chu replied. “Nuclear power is going to be an important part of our energy mix,” he told the committee, a position he has stated before. Chu noted that nuclear power provides 70% of the carbon-free electricity in the country. Still, he said it was important to continue researching better waste disposal and fuel recycling technologies, perhaps in collaboration with other countries.

Will He Skate Through His Confirmation Hearings?

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Steven Chu prepares for power

If confirmed as expected, Chu may well set sparks flying at the staid agency. Over the past four years, Chu has realigned the DoE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in California into a pioneer for alternative-energy research.

Using an ice-hockey analogy, Eddy Rubin, director both of the Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, California, and of the genomics division at the LBNL, says: “You can’t stay where the puck is — you have to skate where the puck is going to be. [Chu] had a compelling vision to put the lab where it needs to be.”

And I wonder who the Goons are going to be, to do the necessary forechecking?

According to the division directors, Chu said he would take the job if he could select the approximately 15 political appointees who would direct key DoE components. In the early days of the Bush administration, vice-president Dick Cheney was behind most of those appointments. Instead, “Chu will get to select the smartest people he knows”, says Rubin.