Steven Chu, Insidious Right-Wing Deregulator

Steven Chu, Secretary of Energy is a big fan of nuclear power. He has a PhD in physics, so that may not be surprising. From a scientific standpoint, the case for nuclear power is clear cut and convincing. Politically, it's anything but.

Plans for new nuclear power stations have been thwarted since 3 Mile Island. Scientists know that 3 Mile Island resulted in few to no cancer deaths, flipper babies, etc. Politicians know that that doesn't matter. The power of fear (and fear-mongerers in the media and environmental groups) is the defining reality.

Contra this instinct, Steven Chu is doing the sensible thing. He's ignoring the squeaky wheels and quietly by-passing the regulatory thicket that stands between us and the future. When Republicans do this, it's called deregulation, and it's a portent of a coming minarchist dystopia. In regards to the guaranteed loans given to nuclear energy companies, Steven Perlstein of the Washington Post writes:

The staff's response was to present Chu with a long list of laws and rules and standard procedures that had to be complied with as part of the loan approval process, each one requiring weeks if not months to complete. On further inquiry, however, it turned out that, as secretary, Chu had the authority to waive, alter or expedite more than half of those. It was just that nobody up to that point had bothered to ask.

I'm rooting for Steven Chu. His background suggests a very reasonable, empirically based approach to reality. As a physicist, he's been surrounded by other such scientifically minded people. The political hackery and antirational arguments that are usually presented to retard progress probably sound like alien gibberish to him. But the long knives may yet come out. Let's be prepared to defend him from the Philistines, and strike a blow for sound energy policy.