Originally published by The Washington Examiner.

Written by Jeremy Beaman and Breanne Deppisch.

TVA CEO ON NUCLEAR: The Tennessee Valley Authority, the United States's largest public power provider, is betting big on burgeoning nuclear technologies to anchor an evolving generation fleet with carbon-free electricity and reliably serve its sprawling seven-state service area across the Southeast.

TVA, which operates the youngest nuclear reactor in the country at Tennessee’s Watts Bar and manages three legacy plants, expects to stand up potentially dozens of small modular reactors to work alongside and ultimately replace the existing fleet.

“I use the number 20 — could be more, could be less, but that's a good number sort of to visualize,” Jeff Lyash, TVA's president and CEO, told Jeremy.

Why nuclear: For TVA, which is driving to retire all its coal by 2035, nuclear is already its leading source of power generation, making up 41% of its resource mix in FY2021.

“Power, while it's certainly national, is very regional in nature. Why is that? Because the resources are different,” Lyash said. “Wind is not a good resource in Tennessee. It’s a good resource in Oklahoma.”

Lyash stressed the reliability and clean characteristics of nuclear make it the resource of choice for his generation fleet.

Access to vast water resources in the Tennessee River and other bodies for cooling make nuclear especially viable (Hydro is also a big part of the portfolio for TVA, too, whose access to water props up its 109 hydroelectric units.)

The site could ultimately take up to four reactors, and the plan is for its first unit to be online in the early 2030s.

Lyash said he’s hopeful the utility can select additional sites next year to begin permitting work for other advanced nuclear plants.

“TVA has a very disciplined, gated process to decision making here around nuclear,” Lyash said. “There’s really no sense building one reactor. You need to build one only if you're certain you can drive down the cost, shorten the schedule, and build a fleet. That impacts at scale.”

FETTERMAN’S CONFUSING REMARKS ON FRACKING: Fracking featured last night in the first and only debate between Pennsylvania Senate candidates John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz.

When Fetterman, the state’s lieutenant governor, was asked by moderators to clarify his stance on fracking — which he now supports, after previously backing a moratorium on fracking during his 2016 Senate campaign — he said, “I’ve always supported fracking,”

Later, Fetterman, who recently suffered a stroke and struggled with words at times in the debate, attempted to clarify: “I do support fracking. … I support fracking and I stand — I support fracking.”

On the campaign trail, Fetterman has said he supports fracking “as long as it’s done environmentally sound and making sure that we’re not contaminating our waterways.”

Oz has also shifted his position on fracking. In a 2014 column, the then-TV doctor wrote that fracking should be banned until its health effects are studied. Last night, Oz described the practice as a “lifeline for this commonwealth to be able to build wealth” and noted its potential to create more jobs in the state.

CLIMATE PLEDGES ‘NOWHERE NEAR’ WHAT’S NEEDED, U.N. SAYS: Countries are not doing nearly enough to limit global warming or to meet their emissions reduction pledges set under the Paris climate accord, according to a new report from U.N. Climate Change published less than two weeks before the COP27 climate summit begins in Egypt.

The new report found that countries’ pledges as they currently stand put the planet on track to warm by an average of 2.1 to 2.9 degrees Celsius by the end of the century compared with pre-industrial levels—much higher than the goal set goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius set under the Paris deal.

In addition, just 26 countries of the 193 countries that agreed last year to step up their climate actions at the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow have actually done so, the U.N said.

“We are still nowhere near the scale and pace of emission reductions required to put us on track toward a 1.5 degrees Celsius world,” said Simon Stiell, the executive secretary of U.N. Climate Change.

SAUDI ENERGY MINISTER CRITICIZES BIDEN SPR SALES: Saudi Arabia’s energy minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, said yesterday that some countries were using their emergency stocks to manipulate markets rather than offset supply shortages—an apparent criticism of President Joe Biden’s decision to sell 180 million barrels of oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

“We, as Saudi Arabia, decided to be the maturer guys,” the prince said yesterday at the Future Initiative Investment conference in Riyadh. “People are depleting their emergency stocks … [using] it as a mechanism to manipulate markets when its profound purpose is to mitigate shortages of supply.”

He also echoed the line that the OPEC+ production cuts were necessary to provide a “buffer” to protect against a major drop in global supply, such as Russia abruptly halting production.

“You need to make sure you build a situation where if things [get] worse you have the ability to [respond],” he said. “Running out of capacity has a much dearer cost than what people can imagine.”

Biden administration thought it had a deal? Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that the Biden administration thought it had secured a promise from Saudi Arabia to keep oil flowing—leaving them duped and furious when OPEC+ cut production.

Days before the OPEC+ decision was announced, the Times reports, American officials were receiving assurances from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that there would be no production cuts.

The Biden administration reportedly reached a private oil deal with Riyadh in May, shortly after U.S. officials began planning the president’s trip to Saudi Arabia. According to the Times, the deal consisted of two parts: First, the Saudis would accelerate an OPEC+ production increase planned for September to July and August, then, they would get the cartel to ramp up production further by 200,000 barrels per day from September to December.

The Saudis followed through with the first part of the plan, ahead of Biden’s visit in July—but then backed away shortly afterwards.

In August, OPEC+ announced a production increase of 100,000 barrels per day, just half of what U.S. officials believed they were getting. Then, in September, OPEC+ announced a production cut of 100,000 bpd—prompting concerns, confusion, and eventually, a frantic push to change bin Salman’s mind. Read the full story here…

DOE SHOULD BE BACKFILLING THE SPR: PENNSYLVANIA DEMOCRAT: Democratic Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, who led bipartisan legislation this summer that would cut off some foreign countries from being able to purchase oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, said the Biden administration should replace oil drained from the SPR over the course of its ongoing emergency drawdowns and sales.

“The administration and our government should be backfilling the oil reserve, guaranteeing the demand that the industry is looking for,” Houlahan, who said she supports Biden’s use of the SPR, told Jeremy.

Republican lawmakers in particular have criticized the administration for drawing down hundreds of millions of barrels of reserve oil over the last year to alleviate high fuel prices and supply disruptions. DOE announced plans last week to offer fixed-price contracts to producers providing for repurchase oil for the SPR at a price of between $67 and $72 per barrel or lower, with initial repurchases being delivered in 2024 or 2025.

Cutting out some competitors: Houlahan is in the company of a number of Republican and Democratic lawmakers who support the placement of restrictions on what foreign entities can receive oil from the reserve.

Chinese and other foreign-based companies have taken delivery of reserve oil volumes released under Biden’s emergency drawdowns, as they have under previous congressionally-mandated sales.

Some lawmakers support a categorical ban on exports of oil from the SPR, including Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan, who introduced legislation to that end earlier this month.

Houlahan said her proposal — which was tacked onto Energy and Commerce Chairman Frank Pallone’s Buy Low and Sell High Act and would ban sales to China, North Korea, Russia, Iran, and any country currently under sanction — strikes the right balance between helping allies and avoiding giving up the goods to China, Russia, “or others that would do us harm.”

“Working with our allies is really central and core to who we are, in terms of our presentation to the world, and so I don't think that necessarily is the right move to make it only for the United States’ consumption,” she said.

GROSSI WARNS OF RISK TO NUCLEAR POWER’S FUTURE DUE TO WAR: The future of atomic energy would be compromised if Ukraine were to suffer a major accident at any of its nuclear power plants, International Atomic Energy Agency head Rafael Mariano Grossi said yesterday.

“If we have a major accident in Ukraine, the societal license we need to do whatever we may be wanting to do will — and rightly so — be even more difficult to get,” Grossi told a crowd of nuclear executives and other industry players during the Nuclear Energy Institute’s Nuclear Finance Summit in D.C.

Grossi and teams of IAEA inspectors have traveled to Ukraine to check out nuclear plants that have been caught up in the crossfire during the war.

Most recently, Grossi met with Vladimir Putin on Oct. 11 to lobby for the establishment of a security protection zone around the Zaporizhzhia plant, the largest nuclear plant in Europe, with six reactors on site.

Bonus: Grossi said further this morning during remarks at the IAEA’s International Ministerial Conference on Nuclear Power in the 21st Century that he will urge the U.N. Security Council tomorrow to support a security protection zone around the plant.

WILL BIDEN’S SPR RELEASES COME WITH COLLATERAL DAMAGE? Former FERC chairman Neil Chatterjee and Breanne explored Biden’s decision to draw down 180 million barrels of oil from the U.S. emergency stockpile on this week’s “Plugged In” podcast, and discussed potential collateral damage from the sales, which have drained the reserves to a 40-year low.

With major events on the horizon that threaten to squeeze markets even further—such as the potential for an economic reopening in China, new sanctions on Russian crude, and the G-7 oil price cap slated to take effect on Dec. 5, the two consider what the true cost of the decision will be. Listen to the full episode here.