Go nukes!

If the Pačes commission has its way, the government's policy of no nukes will soon change to go nukes. Such a shift will raise the hackles of environmentalists, so the commission's report will be written in code. It won't explicitly call for enlarging Temelín, Václav Pačes said in E15 yesterday, but it will suggest that nuclear power will play a very important role in the future. How important? Consider the following: The commission wants to reserve the CR's coal for producing heat, not electricity; it doesn't think alternative energy can play a key role; and it says that natural gas is expensive and its supplies unreliable. Yet Pačes - almost like a ČEZ spokesman - says that exporting electricity is an excellent business and could be a permanent money-maker for the CR. Once deciphered, this means becoming something like 70%-dependent on nukes for electricity and still exporting a pile of nuclear energy. [Czech Republic plant Dukovany]