The world today has commemorated the 21st anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, prompting a useful assessment of nuclear energy a generation after the accident. (Although…why mark the 21st anniversary? Shall we toast, “Na zdorov’ya?”)

From Marketplace Morning Report, the anti-business business public radio program, comes an interesting report from Corvallis, Ore., where engineering students attending an American Nuclear Society conference appear receptive to nuclear energy.

If this were the ’80s, there might be protesters outside. But times have changed, and Idaho State nuclear engineering major Caleb Robison feels it.

CALEB ROBISON: There’s a lot more buzz about nuclear going on.

Robison says when student groups on his campus got together recently, he met some unexpected allies.

ROBISON: You wouldn’t have ever expected it because the uh, I guess I’d call ‘em tree huggers, I don’t know what organization they were from, they came over and you would have thought that we were best friends. They said it was such a great idea and they supported nuclear power and they wouldn’t have said that 10 years ago. They would have been exiled from their own group for having said that.

Having honed one’s sense of editorial exasperation working at the Corvallis newspaper in the late ’80s, this blogger can attest to the fact that times have changed, indeed.

The willingness of young engineers to embrace careers in nuclear energy is important news. (Reported by Reuters here.) Stagnant for nearly three decades, the U.S. nuclear industry has struggled to develop a new generation of specialists, technicians, scientists and engineers, all necessary for the nuclear renaissance to grow. Indeed, steps to encourage that training is included in the NAM’s comprehensive strategy, “Energy Security for American Competitiveness.”

Also marking the Chernobyl anniversary, our friends at Nuclear Notes, the NEI’s blog, have compiled several resources on the disaster, including this fact sheet. A key point: “All U.S. power reactors have extensive safety features to prevent large-scale accidents and radioactive releases. The Chernobyl reactor had no such features and was unstable at low power levels.”

Finally, this week the NAM’s radio program, “America’s Business with Mike Hambrick,” carries an interview with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich about energy policy. Gingrich is a supporter of nuclear power, and sees great damage having been done by scaremongers who exploited fears in the ’70s.

You have, by the way, for those people who say they are worried about global warming, you have the same kind of hysterical emotion caused by the movie, “The China Syndrome” about nuclear power. It turns out – and I think this is a great irony to pose to people like Al Gore — if the United States had followed the French in a clean nuclear strategy, and we were producing the same amount of electricity from nuclear that the French are, we would be generating two billion — not million — two billion, two-hundred million tons a year less in carbon.

The result, he says, would have been carbon emissions 15 percent below the levels required by the Kyoto agreement. Gingrich’s comments are available in an .mp3 file here, and we’ll have the full interview available tomorrow.

Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher profiles a litigious D.C. judge who wants millions — MILLIONS! — because the cleaners misplaced his pants. If the story weren’t so ridiculous, it would be …well, it’s just ridiculous.

He says he deserves millions for the damages he suffered by not getting his pants back, for his litigation costs, for “mental suffering, inconvenience and discomfort,” for the value of the time he has spent on the lawsuit, for leasing a car every weekend for 10 years and for a replacement suit, according to court papers.

[Roy] Pearson is demanding $65,462,500. The original alteration work on the pants cost $10.50.

By the way, Pearson is a lawyer. Okay, you probably figured that. But get this: He’s a judge, too — an administrative law judge for the District of Columbia.

In the immediate case, this is a nightmare for the Chung family that runs Custom Cleaners, who are spending thousands of hard-earned dollars to defend themselves from complaint after complaint.

But more generally, this kind of litigation frenzy has serious implications for our America’s competitiveness. It was just a month ago that the Pacific Research Institute released a study documenting how America’s out-of-control legal system hits the economy with $865 billion annually in direct and indirect costs.

According to the study, the $865 billion spent on tort costs each year represents 2.2 percent of our GDP, compared to 0.9 percent from other advanced economies. In the private sector, this is over $367 billion per year in lost product sales for America companies because spending on litigation curtails investment in research and development.

“It’s time for Congress to wake up and realize that America can no longer be a nation of the lawyers, by the lawyers and for the lawyers,” [NAM President John] Engler said.

The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, a free-market think tank, has analyzed Gov. Jim Doyle’s proposed gross receipts tax on oil companies, including his scheme to make it a crime to pass on the additional costs to consumers. (News stories here and here.) In a devastating report — The Truth Behind Wisconsin’s Oil Company Tax: Why You’ll Pay More at the Pump — the Institute concludes Doyle’s proposal amounts to illegal government price control and there is no way to avoid it becoming a 5 cent per gallon tax increase. From the Executive Summary:

The report includes an economic refresher showing that, if the no-pass-through feature stays, markets will adjust to the added cost and pump prices will rise. There is nothing nefarious about this phenomenon; it is the way a free market works.

The report also identifies the no-pass-through feature for what it is: a cost control. The federal government and a few states have tried to control the price of gasoline. In every instance, the results were the opposite of what was intended. Most recently, Hawaii scrapped its cost control after just eight months when it discovered that prices were actually higher after the controls were implemented than they were before.

A legal review shows that the new tax is built on shaky legal ground. Similar no-pass-through provisions have been found to be a violation of the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Finally, the report notes that the staff at the Department of Revenue warned that, “The Department’s auditors may have no rational basis to isolate the cause of price increases as the oil company assessment (the gross receipts tax).” Implementing the no-pass-through provision will prove to be nearly impossible.

Doyle has tried to sell the plan with populist drum-beating, but in the end, the proposal fails on a political level, as well. Bad law and bad economic policy make for bad politics, too. One hopes that the plan’s coming collapse — and the collapse of Governor Rendell’s similar plan in Pennsylvania — will discourage other states’ politicians from essaying similar schemes.

Scientists say that a previously-unknown Earth-like planet is so close to us–only 120 trillion miles away–that they could possibly pick up our radio signals and vice versa. This discovery of a planet with all the characteristics of our own, and even roughly the same size, is a dramatic new insight into our universe. The European astronomers, using a telescope in the Chilean Andes, have named this planet Gliese 581 c. That’s not a very warm and fuzzy name for a place that has the right temperatures and is in the right zone from its sun to have liquid water and, possibly, some kind of life.

This discovery draws attention to the role that highly trained scientists play in our world. It’s not only astronomers but a wide range of skilled workers from nuclear engineers to biologists to computer and robotics operators who make up the world we live in. What nation is most likely to ever make it to Gliese 581 c? Americans are justly proud of the U.S. space program. But Europe has one and so do the Chinese. Maybe someday the Indians will be exploring the planets too. There’s no monopoly on this kind of exploration.

And there is no monopoly on the kind of high-tech, high-paying innovation economy that the United States enjoys today. If we want to keep that kind of standard of living, we need to be doing more to provide manufacturing and other industries with the skilled workers they need to perform at world-class standards. Today’s workers in the United States are highly-skilled but many of them will be retiring as the Baby Boom generations ages. Will we have the right mix to replace them? Unless we focus more on this aspect of the future, it may be other nations that take the lead in advanced manufacturing and innovation.

Closely related to this concern is a question about whether Congress will muster the will anytime soon to provide the United States with a sensible supply of energy going forward. Many industries rely on a stable and competitively priced energy supply not only for their heating and cooling in their plants, but also for the basic building blocks of their products. Fail to provide manufacturers with that essential ingredient and the wherewithal to build rockets and other space gear will pass to another country as well.

Congress would do well to focus on these two issues in this session and, in so doing, will ensure that the United States will stay in the lead and that Americans might be the first major explorers of this very interesting new planet. To read Britain’s Daily Mail article on Gliese 581 c and some very intersting graphics, click here.

The NAM has joined the newly created Sugar Policy Alliance, a broad coalition of industry, farm, food and consumer groups and companies who believe that current U.S. sugar policy makes food more expensive, costs jobs — thousands of manufacturing jobs included — and encourages economy-throttling protectionism. The foundation of that policy is limits on the amount of sugar that can be imported, creating artificial shortages that push up price. From the news release announcing the new alliance:

“Current sugar policy costs good jobs for American workers, hampers our export opportunities and hurts consumers while eroding American farmers’ long- term competitiveness,” said Bill Reinsch, President of the National Foreign Trade Council, a member of the Sugar Policy Alliance. Current sugar policy, which relies on government-regulated price floors, marketing quotas, and import restrictions, prevents the sugar market from operating efficiently. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the program will cost American taxpayers at least $1.3 billion over the next ten years. The economic distortion caused by the current sugar program is estimated to be as much as $1.9 billion a year by the Government Accountability Office.

Senator Richard Durbin, D-IL, is leading the effort in Congress to bring sugar reform to the next Farm Bill; Chicago-based confectionary businesses and their jobs have been killed by high-price sugar.

Sugar interests nearly blocked the Central American Free Trade Agreements (CAFTA). Thank goodness they failed. In 2006, the year after CAFTA’s enactment, U.S. exports to the four countries that had implemented CAFTA jumped 18 percent over 2005. The U.S. trade surplus was $1 billion, compared to the $1.2 deficit in 2005. (Statement from Commerce Secretary Gutierrez here.)

The International Dairy Foods Association has made a copy of the alliance’s founding statement and call for reform, signed by 75 groups and companies, available here in .pdf form.

The National Labor Relations Board has forced major concesessions from a Service Employees International Union local, one of Oregon’s most active unions, for running a dishonest and coercive “card check” organizing campaign. From The Oregonian:

Local 49 had used a card-check agreement last fall to organize a group of 32 janitors working at silicon-wafer maker Siltronic Inc. in Portland as employees of Somers Building Maintenance. Ryan Canney, a worker for Somers, filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board alleging that the union relied on out-of-date cards and deceived and coerced employees into supporting unionization.

Canney gained legal support from the National Right to Work Legal Defense and Education Foundation, an anti-union nonprofit group based in Virginia that has challenged the legality of card-check agreements across the nation.

The labor board found that the union lacked a majority of workers in favor of forming a bargaining unit in October. SEIU spokeswoman Shauna Ballo said a majority signed cards in favor of the union, but in the span of several weeks before the employer signed the agreement, some workers changed their minds and tipped the balance against the union.

As part of the settlement, made public Tuesday by the National Right to Work Foundation, the union agreed to terminate the bargaining unit at Siltronic. The union also agreed to the condition that it not accept recognition as a collective bargaining representative of workers at any employer for six months unless it follows a secret ballot election conducted by the federal labor board.

Pass the emetically named Employee Free Choice Act, and these sorts of abuses will run rampant, with workers being forced into unions against their will through coercion and deception. The protections of secret-ballot elections will be gone.

The National Right to Work Foundation’s news release is available here, and the foundation has made the settlement agreement available here in a .pdf file.

California makes it awfully difficult for manufacturers these days, as policymakers and the public discourage energy development, add regulatory burden upon burden, and embrace more government at every turn. Governor Schwarzenegger is, alas, all too often part of the problem.

But to his credit, the Governor, and to their credits, many other Californians are engaged in serious, good work to promote improved technical training, the kind of educational programs better able to meet the demands of the modern workplace, manufacturing included. Schwarzenegger, himself a product of the Austrian vocational education system, has called for a series of initiatives — spending initiatives — to expand the opportunities for high-quality career training. He has also made excellent use of the bully pulpit, holding California’s first Career Technical Education Summit in March (remarks here).

Working parallel, a coalition representing business, labor, education and public safety — including our friends at the California Manufacturers and Technology Association — is pushing a legislative package to beef up career and technical education. Called GET REAL (Relevance in Education and Learning), the group’s members appeared today at the first hearing on the bill, S.B. 672.

Andrew Becker of the Contra Costa Times recently wrote a good piece on the voc-ed debate, and education writer Peter Schrag examined the education-business tension in this column.

So, kudos to the Californians who acknowledge that education needs to change to keep up with the demands of the economy and the interests of their citizens. In this area, at least, of intense interest to manufacturers, California is showing solid leadership.

A roundup of a few developments on the deaconly named Employee Free Choice Act:

The New York Sun last week carried a useful summary of the presidential candidates’ position on nuclear power. Almost to a man, they see a role for nuclear energy in building America’s energy security and addressing the risk, they believe exists, of anthropogenic global warming. It’s an astonishing change from the anti-nuke sentiment held by national politicians, at least national Democrats, not so long ago.

Each of the top contenders for the Republican nomination and all but one of the major Democratic hopefuls support nuclear power to some extent. Most cite the prospect that atomic energy could help reduce climate change by supplanting power produced by fossil fuel sources such as coal and natural gas.

“The global warming issue is what is causing at least the Democratic candidates to say we need to leave nukes on the table,” Ms. [Rachel] Becker, the executive director of the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility, said.

The exception is former North Carolina Senator John Edwards of trial lawyer fame.

The Las Vegas Review Journal reported [in this story] that during a visit to that city in February, Mr. Edwards declared that atomic energy had no future in America. A spokeswoman for the candidate, Kate Bedingfield, said the report slightly overstated his position, but she added, “He does not advocate building additional nuclear power plants in the U.S.”

Well, now. Edwards also opposes use of America’s abundant coal resources.

America should ban the construction of new coal-fired power plants and charge industry for creating greenhouse gases to generate money for investing in clean technology, Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards said Saturday.

“People ought to have to pay that want to generate greenhouse gases,” Edwards said at a global warming rally that is part of a nationwide day of demonstrations aimed at drawing attention to climate change.

So, Senator, what’s left for baseload power generation? Wind and solar energy are not realistically going to produce enough affordable, reliable baseload power to meet the demands of a growing economy (and manufacturers). Are you going to dam any more rivers?

Anyway, Edwards’ position smacks of unseriouness, certainly toward the demands of the manufacturing economy. And for a presidential candidate, he’s declaring a remarkably self-destructive political choice. What presidential candidate who runs on a “DEATH TO COAL” banner is going to win the (possibly) swing states of West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia?

Here’s an article from yesterday’s Washington Times about global warming skeptic Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) and his call for the Hollywood hypocrites to lower their carbon footprint. Inhofe has called on such luminaries as Al Gore and John Travolta (who owns a few jets himself), to reduce their carbon footprint to a level commensurate with that of the average American household by Earth Day 2008. It sure seems to be a laudable goal for anyone who cares to match their actions to their words, but thus far he has no takers.

You’ll recall that Al Gore’s house eats energy at a rate not equaled by any average American household. Even green crusader Laurie David has been criticized for her environmental insensitivity.

It really is the height of hypocrisy for these folks, with their enormous multiple homes and private jets to preach to us plain folks about reducing our carbon footprint. Maybe these actors should start acting more responsibly.