A story in yesterday's Tri-City Herald about Hanford cleanup funding illustrates the dilemma facing the federal government's nuclear waste management efforts in the coming year:

Washington's congressional leaders are having increasing difficulty finding support for enough money to continue Hanford cleanup projects, the letter said. Next year a new administration likely is to be focused on working on the nation's energy problems rather than Cold War nuclear site cleanup when it sets the DOE budget, said Gary Petersen, TRIDEC vice president of Hanford programs.

Expect similar discussions regarding cleanup at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Economist Scott Irwin has written a nice guest post on the Econbrowser blog explaining, in layman's terms, the role of speculation in the oil price market this summer:

The impact of speculation, principally by long-only index funds, on commodity prices has been much debated in recent months. The main provocateur in this very public debate is Mr. Michael Masters, a hedge fund operator from the Virgin Islands. He has led the charge that speculative buying by index funds in commodity futures and over-the- counter (OTC) derivatives markets has created a "bubble," with the result that commodity prices, and crude oil prices, in particular, far exceed fundamental values. Act I of the Masters farce was his testimony to the Homeland Security Committee of the U.S. Senate in May of this year. Act II is now upon us in the form of a lengthy research report co-authored by his research assistant, Mr. Adam White, and his testimony this week to a subcommittee of the Energy and Resources Committee of the U.S. Senate.

My purpose in writing this post is to show that Mr. Masters' bubble argument does not withstand close scrutiny. He first makes the non-controversial observation that a very large pool of speculative money has been invested in different types of commodity derivatives over the last several years. The controversial part is that Mr. Masters concludes that money flows of this size must have resulted in significant upward pressure on commodity prices, which in turn drove up energy and food prices to consumers throughout the world. This argument is conceptually flawed and reflects a fundamental and basic misunderstanding of how commodity futures and related derivatives markets actually work. It is important to refute Mr. Masters' argument since a number of bills have been introduced in the U.S. Congress with the purpose of prohibiting or limiting index fund speculation in commodity futures and OTC derivative markets.

Just finished listening a little bit ago to LANL Director Mike Anastasio's testimony before the University of California regents.

For folks who follow the labs closely, Anastasio did not make news, but it's nevertheless instructive to see where he chooses to place his emphasis given a short chance to make his pitch to an influential audience that does not know the lab in detail. Some key points, in order more chronologically than in order of importance:

• We're still in "an important time of transition for the laboratory" - the shift from University of California management to the new hybrid UC-Bechtel etc. management structure.
• Science, in Anastasio's view, serves as the bridge from the lab's past to its future.
• Keeping an eye on the "culture of science" is critical.
• In the core mission area, Anastasio points to what he views as successes - plutonium pit production and the completion of the DARHT xray machine (others might point to significant costs and delays in both efforts)
• In the area of non-nuclear weapons science, Anastasio pointed to a number of success stories, including the lab's work on the Cassini space probe, and the development of new detectors for airport security. Also climate modeling and the insanely cool (my words, not his) Roadrunner supercomputer.
• In the management realm, he cited significant reductions in accident and security incident rates - a critical issue (again my words - Anastasio didn't say this) in a news media and congressional environment that is hyper-aware of problems at Los Alamos.
• Budgets have been essentially flat, but costs have increased under the new management structure by something on the order of $150 million per year. Combined with inflation, that's essentially a $500 million per year hit - a 25 percent budget decrease.
• It's hard to find money for new "infrastructure" - buildings and the like, especially in a federal budget environment that amounts to a federal government-wide "squeeze on science."

PNM's long term electricity plans feature renewables and natural gas, with large coal and nuclear plants not looking like a good deal economically for the foreseeable future, according to a plan submitted this week to the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission.

More details in a story I wrote last month on the plan's final draft:

Coal and nuclear power will provide less of the power coming out of Albuquerque light sockets in the future than it does today, according to a road map of the region's electricity future.

Natural gas and renewable energy will take up much of the slack, according to the plan being developed by utility company PNM with the help of renewable energy advocates. In addition, conservation can be used to cut power demand, substituting for power plants that would otherwise need to be built to meet the needs of a growing population, according to the study.

"Energy efficiency makes a lot of sense," said Evelin Wheeler, director of PNM's planning effort.