By Katherine Berezowskyj

Today we want to highlight a recent Huffington Post piece by Carl Pope—yes, the chairman of the Sierra Club. Taking an open and frank dialogue about energy and future development is important, and while we don’t agree with all of his comments, he does open the conversation that “we should be having.”

What we appreciate most is his discussion and analysis of John Hofmeister, the former president of Shell USA. Pope takes stock of Hofmeister’s recent book, Why We Hate the Oil Companies, saying:

“The short-term nature of American politics – not the individual flaws of parties or politicians – is Hofmeister’s villain. He says that we need to operate and decide in what he calls “energy time” – the decade or more that it takes to significantly change the nation’s energy sector—but that politicians can only look forward in “political time”, the two or four years before the next election.”

Pope goes on to say that the long-term vision Hofmeister takes is quite a departure from his oil industry background:

“For one thing, he takes mass transit and urban planning profoundly seriously, ‘Real conversation starts with the manner in which we develop and use land, water and air resources in the world around us… the unconstrained geographic growth of communities that became a way of life in the twentieth-century America has got to change.’”

While Pope is not convinced by Hofmeister’s entire argument, he concedes that “some degree of greater planning is clearly desirable – so however much I may disagree with Hofmeister, I though it was very helpful to have to engage with his ideas. That’s the kind of conversation we should be having.” Read the full post here.

We also agree that the conversation on energy should taking place and the need to look at how we are going to meet the nation’s growing demands — to create jobs, energy security with sources that don’t produce carbon emissions. And at AREVA, we are developing the latest generation technologies in nuclear energy and making advancements in renewable sources—both of which meet these demands. Why? Because if we want to have real conversations about our energy future, we need to have the options available first.

By Jarret Adams

Over at the Huffington Post today, Carl Pope of the Sierra Club has dished up another attack on the economics of nuclear energy that goes light on the facts and heavy on the rhetoric. Contrary to Mr. Pope’s wishes, nuclear energy’s revival already is well under way with more than 50 new plants under construction worldwide. More than 20 of these new reactors are being built in China alone.

The main question is whether Americans will see past the constant flood of disinformation about nuclear energy and support the revival as other industrial nations have done. In fact, nuclear energy is by far America’s largest source of electricity that does not produce greenhouse gases.

While new nuclear plants are expensive, the cost of electricity generated by these facilities over 60 year is relatively inexpensive. Once these costs are amortized, the operating costs of nuclear plants (at about 2 cents/kwh) are well below natural gas (at 5 cents/kwh) and even lower than coal.

Nuclear energy also has an excellent safety record in the United States. In fact (another fact), it is safer to work in the nuclear industry than in manufacturing, according the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Regarding ability to withstand hurricanes, the Gulf region nuclear plants withstood Hurricane Katrina without sustaining any significant damage and were among the first major power generation back online after the storm.

We at AREVA fully support renewable energy as another way to produce low-carbon electricity, especially if we are talking about our state-of-the-art offshore wind turbines, concentrated solar power, and advanced biopower facilities.

Why does Mr. Pope trash nuclear in an effort to promote renewables? In actuality, nuclear energy and renewables are complementary – a combination of the two is the best near-term way to remove CO2 emissions from our electricity grid. And why does he put in a plug for low natural gas prices?