"The country and the companies who develop those renewable energy and resources that become cost competitive without subsidy all of a sudden have a world market,” Chu said at an event in Washington, DC sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trust. “And, boy, we can't lose that world market."
The Obama administration has been encouraging companies to invest in green growth, calling it a new source of jobs and fearing that other nations -- led by China -- are taking the lead in the renewable energy and other clean technologies.
“This is a race,” Chu said, reckoning that the time has come for their to be a national energy policy in the US that expressly promotes the use of wind, solar, advanced battery technologies, bio-fuels and efficient high-voltage transmission systems.
At the same time, Chu continued to espouse the administration’s position that small, modular reactors are going to be part of the nation’s future energy mix.
In February, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission reversed longstanding opposition to small reactors and issued a request for information to gauge the interest and plans of potential manufacturers.
The Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan that has been so much in the news since the earthquake consisted of four reactors with a capacity of 1,100 megawatts each.
But module reactors, which Chu described as “much, much safer,” can be much smaller, producing as little 25 megawatts in an underground chamber.
Chu’s endorsement of small reactors comes on the heels of remarks he made on American television last weekend in which he suggested the US would reconsider placing conventional nuclear reactors near populated areas.
“Certainly where you site reactors and where we site reactors going forward will be different than where we might have sited them in the past,” Chu said during an appearance on Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News Sunday.
“Any time there is a serious accident, we have to learn from those accidents and go forward,” he said.
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