Catching up on developments in the world of nuclear energy, we note:

1. The Washington Post’s story, “China Embraces Nuclear Future.”

Under plans already announced, China intends to spend $50 billion to build 32 nuclear plants by 2020. Some analysts say the country will build 300 more by the middle of the century. That’s not much less than the generating power of all the nuclear plants in the world today.

Unlike the Soviet nuclear push of past decades, the Chinese are attentive toward safety, using the latest U.S. and Japanese technology, and are also adopting “cookie-cutter” model plants, simplifying construction and operation.

2. At the Nuclear Energy Institute’s annual conference in Miami last week, NEI’s newly elected board chairman, John Rowe, gave a state-of-the-industry speech that was both upbeat and realistic.

The industry has proven its ability to operate nuclear power plants on a sustained basis at high levels of safety and efficiency at a time when demand for reliable electricity from clean-energy technologies is increasing. Despite this favorable situation, “significant regulatory, financial and infrastructure challenges stand between where we are and where we need to be,” Rowe said.

He cited used nuclear fuel management, financing of capital-intensive projects, and future work force needs as among the key challenges facing the industry. In separate remarks during the conference’s opening session, NEI President and CEO Frank L. “Skip” Bowman identified a need for improved communications to solidify political and public support among people and entities who are increasingly – but sometimes tenuously – embracing nuclear energy.

The news release is here, Rowe’s speech is here, and Admiral Bowman’s speech is here.

3. The restart of the TVA’s 1,150 megawatt Browns Ferry I nuclear reactor continues, with some operational problems arising — as might be expected after a 22-year hiatus. Safety has not been compromised.

4. Paul Newman, the newly retired actor and still environmental activist toured Entergy’s Indian Head nuclear plant in New York last week. Anti-energy groups oppose the plant’s reauthorization, claiming terrorists may target the facility. Newman:

I recently toured the Indian Point nuclear plant and I expected to be shown safety and security at the plant. But what I saw exceeded my expectations. No Army or Navy base I’ve ever visited has been more armored and I couldn’t walk 30 feet inside the plant without swiping my key card to go through another security check point.

There was security at every turn, and the commitment to safety is clear. One worker told me his family lives very close to the plant, downwind even, and he is very comfortable because of the plant’s commitment to safety.

An accurate assessment from a party you’d expect to be hostile or skeptical. Good for Cool Hand Luke.

UPDATE 11:50 a.m.: “Actually, he’s now known around these parts as ‘Cool Hand Nuke’.” — Eric McErlain at NEI.

Marketplace, American Public Radio’s anti-business business show, carried an interesting report yesterday about the deterioration of the German labor model, which gives unions a place in boardroom decision making. Long held up by the left as an enlightened, effective way to promote growth and social justice, the model has produced a rigid labor market ill-equipped for a dynamic, global economy. That’s been true for a while, but now bribery scandals are hitting the unions, as well. So change is coming.

Still, what a weird, weird story, starting with reporter Ethan Lindsay’s description of the 1980s. We assume the reference to “halcyon” is ironic. And the failure to mention Germany’s 10 percent unemployment misleads through omission. (Pass the Employee Free Choice Act and you, too, could enjoy the ossified labor policies that produce double-digit unemployment.)

But that’s hardly the worst.

ETHAN LINDSEY: During those halcyon days of Ronald Reagan, American labor unions grew weaker and smaller. But in Europe and Germany, labor unions remained powerful and respected.

In fact, economist Michael Fichter at Berlin’s Free University says unions deserve a lot of the credit for Germany’s miraculous growth since 1945. In the post-war reconstruction, workers saw an opportunity to consolidate their power.

MICHAEL FICHTER: The labor unions in both East and West Germany had political demands from the very beginning. That has contributed very strongly to the economic development of Germany, and even among social scientists is given the name “the German Model.”

Got that? “The labor unions in both East and West Germany had political demands from the beginning.”

EAST GERMANY? Labor’s leaders were coopted or replaced by Communist, i.e. Socialist Unity Party (SED) hacks or brutally repressed; official unions were completely suborned to the ruling party. In June 1953, workers across the Soviet-controlled territory rose up demanding, among other things, labor reform. The tanks rolled and the Volkspolizei shot protesters down in the street. (A good summary here.)

It’s hard to see anything other than abject moral equivalency in Lindsey’s observation and Fichter’s quote. The American-born Fichter is based at the notoriously left-wing Free University Berlin but even accepting a political bias, it really is a stretch to be comparing East Germany’s labor front groups to the West’s organized labor. An offensive, ahistoric stretch.

P.S. The International Herald-Tribune reported on the labor corruption and deterioration of the German model in April, an informative and balanced story.

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page considers the immigration reform bill’s provisions concerning skilled immigrants and finds them lacking. From The Legal Visa Crunch:

U.S. businesses aren’t looking for skilled workers in general; they’re looking for people with specific skills. And in the high-tech industry especially, where the demand for new products and services is constantly changing, employers need the flexibility to fill critical positions as quickly as possible. The last thing Hewlett-Packard or Texas Instruments needs is uncertainty about whether the workers they want to hire will pass some bureaucratic point test. If the Senate wants the U.S. to keep attracting the world’s best and brightest, this bill is an odd way of showing it.

And, given the facts, the conclusion:

Immigration policies should acknowledge that the U.S. is not producing enough home-grown computer scientists, mathematicians and engineers to fill our labor needs. Last year, U.S. universities awarded more than half of their master’s degrees and 71% of their Ph.D.s in electrical engineering to foreign nationals. It’s foolhardy to educate these individuals and then effectively expel them so that they can put their human capital to work for U.S. competitors. There’s no shortage of countries that would be thrilled to benefit from a U.S. brain drain.

The best way to keep that from happening is by raising the quotas for employment-based visas and green cards to realistic levels consistent with market demand, and by allowing U.S. firms to make their own decisions about which workers are best suited to fill their labor needs.

At The Manufacturing Institute, we often undertake research projects dealing with the manufacturing economy and what strengthens it and what weakens it. I’m always interested in new perspectives.

Sen. Hillary Clinton is quoted in today’s news with the following statement that I find intriguing:

There is no greater force for economic growth than free markets. But markets work best with rules that promote our values, protect our workers and give all people a chance to succeed,” she said.

I’m genuinely interested to know if there is a report or study that corroborates her statement that markets work best with the kind of rules she cites. Maybe there are quite a few. I’m interested in the sources for that statement and presume others are too. If you can recommend that report, we’d all be interested. Thanks, readers.

In 1947, India achieved independence after about two centuries of British rule. In 1952, a polling firm undertook to find out how many Indians were aware the British had left. India was a primitive country back then. Most people were illiterate and few had access to radio or newspapers. Even so, the pollsters were amazed to discover that the great majority of India’s people were not only unaware the British had left, they were unaware the British had ever arrived in the first place.

A recent report in the Financial Times that China will gradually take over the role of the U.S. as the world’s largest manufacturer by 2020 will no doubt elicit the same kind of response. It is fair to assume that after years of incessant news reports of China’s great leap forward in manufacturing, many Americans thought the Chinese had long since overtaken us in manufacturing and will be surprised to learn otherwise.

In truth, the U.S.’s position in the global league table of manufacturers remains surprisingly strong, according to an authoritative economic study by Global Insight, a Washington-based economics consultancy. Global Insight forecasts that the U.S. will keep its share of global manufacturing output above 20 percent at least until 2024. The U.S. share of global manufacturing output is expected to fall to 22.2 percent by 2020 from 25.5 percent last year. By 2020, China’s share would overtake that of the U.S. for the first time. It will rise to 22.4 percent, from 12.1 percent in 2006.

For now and for the foreseeable future, U.S. manufacturing remains the heart of our nation’s economy, producing more volume of manufactured goods than ever before. Standing alone, U.S. manufacturing would be the eighth largest economy in the world. We sell about $900 billion worth of manufactured goods overseas each year – which is a major reason we need to keep the trade lanes open – and we are more than a match for China, thank you very much.

Or to paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the death of U.S. manufacturing have been greatly exaggerated.

Members of Congress have slipped the surly bonds of Washington for their home districts — or Greenland, as the case may be — for the Memorial Day recess/district work period/CODEL time. The Senate will reconvene at 2:30 p.m., Monday, June 4nd, to take up the immigration bill, S. 1348. The House gets an extra day by the pool, reconvening at 2 p.m., Tuesday, June 5th. Until then…

Below we’ve related the latest development in Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle’s scheme to raise fuel taxes while making it a crime to pass the costs onto consumers. Short take: Unconstitutional, invidious, and the underlying tax still works out to 7 cents a gallon.

In Pennsylvania, Governor Ed Rendell has been promoting the same kind of taxing sleight of hand, the major difference being his less frequent bashing of oil companies. But now, hmmm, his eagerness for this particular tax wanes:

HARRISBURG, Pa. – Barely a month before the deadline for approving a new state budget, Gov. Ed Rendell’s enthusiasm appears to be waning for some of the more than $2 billion in tax increases he has proposed….

Rendell also allowed that his plan to tax oil company profits to provide money for public transportation in the state may not be necessary, although he said that hinges on legislative approval of his proposal to lease the Pennsylvania Turnpike to a private operator.

The rest of the AP story recounts Rendell’s remaining tax preferences, which are still aplenty, but the slippage in the oil tax is good news. And the political pressure continues to grow:

The board of the Lancaster Chamber of Commerce & Industry is taking aim at Gov. Ed Rendell’s proposals to increase the state sales tax and impose a new tax on the gross profits of oil companies doing business in Pennsylvania.

Rendell wants to bump up Pennsylvania’s sales tax from 6 percent to 7 percent and enact a 6.17 percent gross-profits tax on oil companies.

“Raising existing taxes and creating unfairly-targeted new taxes might provide a quick-fix fill to a budget gap, but what Pennsylvania really needs is comprehensive tax reform aimed at ensuring our state’s economic competitiveness,” Chamber President Tom Baldrige said in the chamber’s position statement. “These two proposals, coupled with the recently voter-rejected Act 1 proposal, are not only onerous to business and the consumer, they also suggest we are in a state without a comprehensive tax strategy.”

From James Lileks, wrapping up the weekend in Minnesota.

Via Insty, this Sullivan excerpt re: Michael Moore. He wants to eliminate private health insurance. Here’s a suggestion: let’s eliminate private movie completion bonds, too. It’s a form of insurance, right? You get a bond that assures your investors the movie will be completed on time. Let the government handle the job. Let the government decide which movies will get the bond. It’s not like they’d ever use that power to control an artist’s message, and it’s not as if Congress woudl ever abuse the power of the purse.

Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys has come out against the global warming tour, noting, quite sensibly, that he finds rock stars lecturing the rest of us to be a little presumptuous. Thank you, Neil. Now go back in time and redo the lyrics for your last album, chum, because the amount of enjoyable music was inversely proportional to the amount of Important Issues Vaguely Tackled.

Another blow has fallen against Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle’s preposterous, populist scheme to impose a 2.5 percent gross receipts tax on fuel sales but make it a crime for oil companies to pass on the additional cost to consumers. That’s right: Make a basic, commonplace business decision how to price your product, and GO TO JAIL.

Reaching a predictable legal conclusion, the non-partisan Wisconsin Legislative Council — the research arm of the state Legislature — has determined that provisions to criminalize passing on the costs violates the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution. From our compatriots at the Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce:

“Clearly, this legal opinion demonstrates that consumers will pay the price at the pump,” said James A. Buchen, vice president of government relations for Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce. “That means this will be a gas tax that automatically goes up without legislative review.”

Non-partisan Legislative Council staff Attorney Bill Ford warned Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch (R-Onalaska) in a legal analysis:

“Because the provisions of the anti-pass through provision in SECTION 2496 of 2007 Senate Bill 40 [the Senate budget bill] and the New York anti-pass through provision struck down in Shell Oil are similar, it appears that the anti-pass through provision in Senate Bill 40 raises the legal issue of whether it violates the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution.”

With gas prices as they now stand, Doyle’s gross receipts tax would translate to 7 cents a gallon at the pump — a tax that could rise if prices continue to increase.

But what if the tax does pass constitutional muster? Well, it’s not as if the market stops functioning. As a WMC analysis (.pdf file here) argues:

The provision to make it a crime for oil suppliers to pass the gross receipts tax on to consumers is unworkable — legally suspect, and will hurt consumers. But assuming the no-pass-through provision is enforceable, rather than take a 2.5 percent hit in Wisconsin, fuel suppliers will look to ship fuel to other regional markets that are more economically attractive, which will result in less fuel going to the Wisconsin market. The
lower supplies will in turn result in higher prices, and with the threat of criminal penalties, these higher prices are likely to be well above the 2.5 percent underlying tax.

And on and on.

Doyle apparently thought he could push through a major tax increase on the political cheap, taking advantage of anti-oil company sentiments ginned up by cynical politicians. Besides poisoning the well, the tax tactic also discouraged a more rational discussion of budget and infrastructure needs in Wisconsin.

The plan’s dead, now, Governor. Try something else.

As we’ve observed before (here and here), labor activists and their political allies prefer not to talk about the actual provisions of the hubristically named Employee Free Choice Act. An open discussion of eliminating secret ballots in the workplace tends to meet with disbelief and anger.

Another tactic is to completely, dishonestly represent the incidents of supposed employer misbehavior in order to justify such a radical proposal as card check. Here’s a favorite misrepresentation from an on-line column in the Rocky Mountain News by Jessie Ulibarri, director of the Colorado Progressive Coalition’s Campaign for Economic Justice (closely aligned with Big Labor):

Every day corporations deny employees the freedom to decide for themselves whether to form unions to bargain for better wages and benefits. In 2005 alone, there were 31,358 cases of illegal firings and other forms of discrimination against workers for exercising their federally protected labor law rights.

The implication is clear: Employers fired more than 31,000 people for trying to organize unions. But it’s just not true. The NAM’s Jason Straczewski has previously debunked that claim, but it keeps coming up.

According to the NLRB, there were 31,358 employees who were awarded back pay in 2005 from NLRB. A vast majority (25,620) were the result of informal settlement agreements where no finding of coercion exists at all. Furthermore, labor has not provided a breakdown of how many of these instances actually were related to the organizing process or the secret ballot election process.

And here’s the next claim from Ulibarri, who appears to be progressive with the facts:

Twenty percent of union activists are likely to be fired when trying to form unions, according to a new study by the Center for Economic Policy Research.

James Sherk at the Heritage Foundation has clobbered that particular claim, noting first of all that it comes from a survey of union organizers. Some objective source. Sherk continues:

In fact, NLRB data reveal that employers rarely fire workers during organizing drives and that unions win most organizing elections. Companies improperly fired workers in just 1.5 percent of organizing campaigns in 2005, and unions won 61 percent of those elections. These facts, not polls of union organizers or numbers taken out of context, show that most organizing elections are fair and that companies very rarely take illegal action against workers who want to join a union.

Do employers occasionally cross the line during organizing campaigns? Yes, and they correctly suffer the legal consequences for it. But the union claims about widespread retaliation against organizers are just false, period. Both Jason and Sherk’s columns linked above — featuring point-by-point rebuttals — demonstrate those falsehoods conclusively.

P.S. A good column in The Boston Globe on card check by Bob Gibbon, interim president and chief executive of the Massachusetts Hospital Association, “Democracy at the ballot box.”