Nuclear Industry's Secret Santa
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written by Sue Prent
Thursday, November 6, was a day for much rejoicing in the U.S. environmental community.
President Obama had finally announced his decision to reject the Keystone XL pipeline that would have transported some of the world’s dirtiest oil reserves from Western Canada all the way to refineries near the Gulf of Mexico.
Many members of that environmental community would have withheld celebration had they known that on that very same day, under cover of the Keystone XL announcement, the Obama administration held a “White House Summit on Nuclear Energy,” apparently organized and attended only by industry insiders.
In the course of my online research the next day, I stumbled across videos of two sessions of that Forum.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlTA0kdOu2M (first session)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0SLBfIa638 (second session)
The event was so intimate that the speakers were given only summary introductions at the start of each session; yet, the initiative announced that day represents a significant threat to the advancement of the U.S. toward truly clean renewables.
The secret Summit was introduced by White House Senior Policy Advisor Jason Walsh, who thanked “Third Way” for “…being really valuable partners in helping us think through this event and also design the agenda…John Cowan, President of “Third Way” will be moderating the third panel.
Idaho National Laboratory was also thanked for providing refreshments. Considering the scope of their research, I know I’d pass on those cocktails.
Mr. Walsh was followed in the morning session by John Holdron, who is described as the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. (Is it only me who thinks this sounds like one job with three income streams?)
He spoke tantalizingly of reading the list of Summit participants and their affiliations, referring to them as ‘amazing.’ Needless to say, no one from the community of skeptics was informed that the event had even been scheduled.
The afternoon session opened with Mr. Walsh again. Next came Janet McCabe, the Acting Assistant Administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation at the EPA. She was followed by David Christian, CEO of Dominion Generation Group and Ken Caldera, Climate Scientist at Carnegie Institute for Science in the Dept. of Global Ecology Stanford. Of course, who was surprised that former NRC Commissioner William D MagwoodIV, who is now the Director-General of the pro-nuke Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) specialized Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) was on the agenda. You may remember that when Mr. Magwood was an NRC commissioner, he led the charge to have NRC Chair Gregory Jaczko unseated from the commission. Of course, Paul Bodner, a Senior Director for Energy and Climate Change at the White House National Security Council was another pro-nuke voice on the roster.
Ms. McCabe spoke of the Clean Power Plan introduced by the President this past summer. It confirmed his endorsement of an “all of the above” approach to gradually replacing carbon emitting energy. It must be noted that the Clean Power Plan did not specifically give advantage to nuclear over renewables, and it did not endorse expansion of U.S. nuclear; but it did treat nuclear as a “clean” alternative on an equal footing with wind and solar.
When Mr. Christian took the podium, after a brief homage to the myth of nuclear providing “low cost,” “clean” alternative energy, he got right to the point. He announced that, that very morning, he had delivered a relicensing application for the Dominion Surry nuclear plant to extend its operating life to 80 years, or double its design life!
Nuke risk analysts and experts have long suspected that the nuke industry and its alleged regulator the NRC were developing new plans behind closed doors to double the lifespan of these aging, leaking, and outdated atomic reactors. This Dominion proposal is the first in the industry to operate these aging nuke reactors for 40-years past their original design life and way past the endurance of their construction materials. Many of these aging atomic reactors predate computer design programs when they were designed back in the 1960s on mathematical slide rules.
Unsurprisingly, Ken Caldera made a pitch for expanding U.S. dependence on nuclear energy.
Mr. Magwood said that his office had determined that in order to achieve the energy reduction goals espoused in the “2 Degree C Scenario” (limiting global warming to 2 degrees) recently adopted by the Nuclear Energy Agency (OACD), it will be necessary not only to increase use of renewables in the U.S. but also to add significant additional capacity to our existing nuclear power fleet. The plan calls for so much additional capacity that Mr. Magwood says it will have to increase the nuclear fleet by by 2.5 times: the equivalent of 500 new nuclear plants! Of course nuclear is the NEA’s raison d’être, so their bias betrays them here.
Comments and questions from the insider audience centered around complaints about the economics that force “premature economic shutdown,” and Ms. McCabe of the EPA suggested that states might become less resistant to relicensing of old nukes and even consider incentives to keep them operating if a carbon tax was successfully established. In such an environment, “emission trade credits” might sweeten the economics for nuclear.
The message to industry was clear: The Obama administration looks favorably on nuclear energy expansion and will not turn a deaf ear to the concerns of operators.
All in all, it was a love fest for nuclear energy expansion.
For the third session, I could only find a press release from General Atomics, referencing the fact that their physicist, Dr. Christina Back was one of five panelists that included John Kotek, Acting Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy in the DOE. Dr. Back presented on the design of the EM2 gas-cooled reactor that is General Atomics’ latest entry in the race for next-gem nuclear. All we get from the General Atomics summary is that the balance of the five-person panel consisted of “industry leaders.”
Apart from the General Atomics announcement, I have been unable to find so much as a White House press release about the stealth event; but I did unearth a couple of brief additional video clips posted by Rod Adams on the pro-nuke Atomic Insights website, but not a peep about the ‘new technologies’ segment upon which so much of the arguments for nuclear depend.
From Atomic Insights clips, I gleaned the fact that the AFL-CIO (the U.S.’s premier labor union) sent their Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler to vigorously demand more federal investment in new nuclear plants, something that Danny Roderick of Westinghouse endorsed enthusiastically. Thus, big labor and big business came together once again to endorse expansion of our radioactive legacy.
The cynicism of their attempts to invoke the specter of Climate Change was stunning. Not only did they essentially pass over the role of genuinely clean and significantly less costly renewables in replacing carbon intensive energy sources, they made no attempt to address the elephant in the room: forty years of radioactive waste stockpiled with no end in sight.
None of these pro-nuke ‘think tanks’ ever seems to envision disasters, mischief, or act of nature intervening in their best laid plans.
I only later learned from the MIT Tech Review that something called The Gateway Program had been announced at the Summit. MIT called it the “clearest signal to date of the Obama administration’s support for new nuclear technology.”
Christmas came early this year for the U.S. nuclear industry.
“The DOE also announced it would broaden its $12.5 billion loan guarantee program for innovative nuclear technologies. These initiatives will give advanced nuclear companies access to the national laboratories, a single point of contact for collaboration with DOE experts, and help in “understanding and navigating the regulatory process for licensing new reactor technology.”
According to the Fact Sheet (which I was able to locate):
“The President’s FY 2016 Budget includes more than $900 million for the Department of Energy (DOE) to support the U.S. civilian nuclear energy sector by leading federal research, development, and demonstration efforts in nuclear energy technologies, ranging from power generation, safety, hybrid energy systems, and security technologies, among other things. DOE also supports the deployment of these technologies with $12.5 billion in remaining loan guarantee authority for advanced nuclear projects through Title 17.”
Promises were also made concerning industry access to government research labs and facilities, and assistance to “navigate the regulatory process for new reactor technology.
This is a sweet, sweet deal for an industry that already enjoys significant government supports and subsidies created with your tax dollars.
The Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy had already announced its intention to invest $425-million “…over five years to support first-of-a-kind costs associated with certification and licensing activities for small modular reactors (SMRs) through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.”
It is interesting to note that, in 2008, then presidential candidate Barack Obama made a point of saying the following:
Those issues have yet to be ‘addressed.’ Furthermore, the Fukushima Daiichi disaster plus the rise of global terrorism since that time should have increased his concern about the safety of the nuclear energy option; not to mention the fact that remarkable advances in battery storage predict a time in the not so distant future when truly clean renewable energy will easily meet the demands of a sustainable economy.
What would you rather have in your backyard? A small modular generator powered by renewable energy, or a small modular nuclear reactor?
It would seem that the Obama administration has bought the completely untested theory that a new generation of modular reactors will solve all the safety, waste and proliferation issues that plague the industry worldwide.
It appears that the secret White House Summit is attempting to seal the dubious deal, even though a video of the new technology segment could not be found in public access.
This forum of large-scale retail atomic power energy interests and their support agencies, there seems to have been no discussion of the most significant ‘gateway’ we have to reducing our carbon emissions without ramping up other toxins in the environment: efficient and sustainable consumption policy.
There was also no discussion of the need to rethink our antiquated distribution grid that is ill-suited to the 21st century clean energy generation efficiency opportunities. If we keep reinforcing dirty, risky, and inefficient technologies like atomic power reactors just because our 20th century distribution system serves the interests of these corporate power brokers, we are doomed to be left in the dust by more nimble nations.
To quote Mr. Roderick: “Nuclear is a long term business that cannot simply be switched on and off.”
Yes, I called nuclear “dirty.” No matter how many times nuclear industry interests may try to hide behind a carbon neutral claim, the fact remains that atomic power is an extremely dirty means of generating electricity. It’s a dirty and dangerous business, from Uranium mining and processing through the fuel chain; the deadly fission products that comes as byproduct of generation; all the way through to the atomic waste, some of which may find its way into some future recycling scheme, but mostly will just accumulate on earth, representing tons of radioactive hazard for decades into centuries and thousands of years.
All this to power the bathroom light that Junior forgot to turn off before leaving for school
