Midday Open Thread

• Scott Horton is very pleased with Obama's choices for director of the CIA (Leon Panetta) and national intelligence director (Admiral Dennis Blair). mcjoan notes that Mother Jones also has a positive take on Panetta. This looks like change we can believe in.
• Further evidence that the problems facing the American auto companies are caused by the economy and credit crunch more than anything else: Toyota will close every one of its Japanese production facilities for 11 days in February and March. -- DHinMI
• It looks like Yucca Mountain will "bleed real hard", indeed:

  The bleeding might soon begin.

  A few weeks after Sen. Harry Reid declared that the Yucca Mountain project was going to "bleed real hard" in the coming year, he said Monday the already reduced budget for the controversial nuclear waste plan will be cut "significantly" for the remainder of 2009, and that a 2010 White House spending request will contain "little if anything at all."

  The Nevada Democrat made the declaration after he brought up Yucca Mountain in a meeting with President-elect Barack Obama earlier in the day.

  [H/T Nuclear Reaction] -- Plutonium Page

• More nuclear power news comes from Joseph Romm:

  A new study [PDF] puts the generation costs for power from new nuclear plants at from 25 to 30 cents per kilowatt-hour -- triple current U.S. electricity rates!

  This staggering price is far higher than the cost of a variety of  carbon-free renewable power sources available today -- and 10 times the  cost of energy efficiency (see here).

  The new study, Business Risks and Costs of New Nuclear Power [PDF],  is one of the most detailed cost analyses publicly available on the  current generation of nuclear power plants being considered in this  country. It is by a leading expert in power plant costs, Craig A.  Severance. A practicing CPA, Severance is co-author of The Economics of Nuclear and Coal Power (Praeger 1976), and former Assistant to the Chairman and to Commerce Counsel, Iowa State Commerce Commission.

  -- Plutonium Page

• Our Milky Way Galaxy may be much bigger than scientists previously thought -- it may be roughly the same size as the Andromeda Galaxy. Take that, Local Group!
• Vice-President Elect Joe Biden and his wife Jill were apparently turned away from a sold-out showing of "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button":

  There's been no confirmation from the Biden camp, but the theater employees say they are sure it was him.

  -- snip --

  Remarkably, none of the other moviegoers appeared to notice. Employees said nobody mobbed Biden or called his name or asked for an autograph.

  "It didn't seem many people recognized him," said employee Becky Gingrich, 21. "Honestly, I think people were just too wrapped up in themselves to notice."

  Luckily, one hears that the White House has its own screening room.