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  1. They haven’t covered every corner. They are DOOMED to fail if that don’t directly engage the unsympathetic and (yes) green-biased media for “misinformation control” and getting their message and out straight. If the media believes and trusts it, the public herd will follow too. If they don’t do this they might as well be crying out in a discarded soup can. They’ve been warned!…

    1. I know they have written letters and op-eds and held rallies. They have done a lot!

      The idea that “nothing is worth doing unless you can do EVERYTHING” is a sure way to ensure defeat.

      I am surprised you wrote this.

      1. Meredith, I didn’t say they did nothing. The first priority for nuke acceptance is grabbing a television reporter or editor with direct challenge to all of their intentional nuke defaming — the same media that if they bothered to, showcased the Greenpeace march as a Rodney Dangerfield freak rally. Despite a seat at the table here, the war for nuclear is dominantly a PR war which the nuke community fatally dissed for decades. People will pay extra for clean energy IF they know it’s safe, which the nuke circle never pitched on. One TV interview session crushing TV reporter conceptions of nukes will do more than months of flyers or op-eds — IF you demand one like others do.

        1. To me, “warning” people that unless they do “X” (whatever X happens to be) that, without this X, they may as well be “crying out in a discarded soup can”…to me, that is a recipe for getting people to throw up their hands and do nothing.

          CGNP is the first organization (to my knowledge) that has actually achieved a “seat at the table” and they deserve hearty congratulations. Huge congratulations!

          I have just spent a year of my life writing a book about pro-nuclear activism, and one of my prime themes is that doing SOMETHING matters, whatever it is you do. If nothing else, doing something can encourage other people to do something, also. “Hey, there are other people who are pro-nuclear. I’m not alone!” My book should be out this fall. I hoped for this summer, but it is taking too long. Hopefully, early fall. “Campaigning for Clean Air: Strategies for Pro-Nuclear Activism.”

          Everything counts. Every pro-nuclear activity counts.

          I am still surprised that you wrote this.

          1. I agree that any positive effort is just that…a positive effort, and therefore…well…positive..

            However, Mitch does have a point. If the mainstream media ignores, hides, or counters the truth, than positive effort may not reap much in the way of reward. And the antis certainly have the edge when it comes to media attention. If the media refuses to air the message, thrn the industry, and groups like CGNP really need to pony up and buy air time. Note how BP spent countless millions with their post gulf spill message. I saw no such effort on behalf of nuclear energy on the heels of the Fukushima event. I realize air time is ridiculously expensive. But, if I may be blunt, what you guys are doing doesn’t seem to be bearing fruit. Plants are closing like falling dominos.

            1. @poa

              For all of their faults, professional journalists have a healthy skepticism regarding attention seekers. They will begin reporting when there is actual news to report and when groups like CGNP make steady efforts to earn a seat at the table and the attention of journalists, viewers and readers.

              BP is a company whose gross annual revenues often exceed $300 billion. That is 2x the entire budget of the US Navy.

              When their Gulf of Mexico well blew out, it resulted in a moratorium on drilling in the entire basin. That drove up world oil prices enough to make it so that BP’s cash flow actually increased even after the loss of the well. Of course, their expenses related to the event were huge, but they had the cash on hand and coming in to pay the direct and propaganda costs associated with a rather large technical mistake.

              CGBN and other pronuclear groups have to work on a shoe string, but at least they have the truth on their side. That will attract attention; not everyone loves the oil and gas companies.

          2. “That will attract attention; not everyone loves the oil and gas companies”

            It ain’t about love, its about money. Truth doesn’t buy air time, money does. We are talking media here. That “not everyone” you refer to doesn’t include mainstream media, Rod. Mainstream media loves the almighty dollar, and the “truth” is whatever the highest bidder says it is.

            1. @poa

              That may be true on a corporate level, but corporate folks don’t have as much day to day influence as they think they do. Professional journalists can often make real decisions on which stories to run and which to keep following. There is a delay before the advertiser influence gets insterted.

          3. Ok….Rod. If what you say is true, show me the articles, essays, and media accounts telling the truth about the actual, ongoing, and long lasting damage that the gulf spill did. Or, better, show me the articles telling us the truth about the actual state of the area surrounding Fukushima.

            1. @poa

              You’re moving the goal posts. This conversation has been about whether or not the media will cover positive news about nuclear energy that is created by grassroots organizations like CGNP as long as it is real news.

              There is no doubt that large amounts of cash in the form of advertising dollars can encourage mainstream outlets to move on to other topics or that the media has a difficult time paying attention to mundane, slow moving stories like the actual state of the area surrounding Fukushima.

          4. You completely missed my point, and my position. Now, “Hiroshima Syndrome” is mainstream media? Gee, I’ll be sure to ask John Q what he learned today when he visited there. I know the state of the area surrounding Fukushima because of my participation here. See John Q here? I’m about the only John Q coming around here, and you’re doing your level best to alienate, and repel, anymore of us coming around. It escapes me why you think being an ignorant bigot is an asset to this site.

  2. Thank you for posting this article. Dr. Alexander Cannara alerted me that I had the wrong year for when California Governor Jerry Brown completes his fourth (!) term. His term ends in January, 2019. My co-Government Liaison, Carl Wurtz provided me the crucial process information to complete my Certificates of Service. I am very grateful for his assistance. I suggest you contact Carl about his battle to stop the decommissioning of SONGS. By our reckoning, restarting SONGS would be far less expensive than the $4.7 Billion in Capital Cost Recovery that is currently a matter of controversy. CGNP is “David” in a David versus Goliath battle. While Southern California Edison (SCE) (the Goliath) wants the deal to go through as originally “arranged.” there is the issue of illegal ex-parte communications between then-CPUC-head, Michael Picker and senior executive Stephen Pickett of SCE at a hotel in Warsaw, Poland in March, 2013. http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2015/feb/09/cpuc-warsaw-hotel-bristol-peevey-edison/. CGNP successfully petitioned to obtain CPUC party status in the investigation I1210013 on July 26, 2016.. Because we were awaiting publication of this relevant article in the San Diego Union Tribune, “Pro-nuclear green group: Bring back San Onofre – Move would be unprecedented, plant’s operator says” http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2016/jul/21/sanonofre-return-group/all/ we delayed our filing.

    See also this Dan Walters op-ed, also from July 26, 2016, “Will California Public Utilities Commission get the reform message?” http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/politics-columns-blogs/dan-walters/article92042182.html

    The California Assembly makes rare moves for institutional reform, targeting the State Bar and Public Utilities Commission, but one effort was stymied and it’s unclear whether the PUC has gotten the message that change is needed……

    1. On SONGS, in the aforelinked SD Union Tribune July 21 piece Dr. Gene Nelson remarked

      “Yes, this is definitely an uphill battle. But we recognize the stakes are too big and that’s why we don’t take no for an answer readily.”

      No kidding. Its The awful truth about climate change no one wants to admit – the unfathomable enormity of our unfolding catastrophe that few in the “green” environment movement seem willing to fathom.

      That said, I do have one minor quibble with David Robert’s Awful Truth: his assertion that “…models routinely show 4 or even 6 percent annual reductions, a rate of emissions decline that has never been achieved by anyone, anywhere, ever, much less consistently over 50 years” is, as most here are aware, not entirely true.

      The models are probably fine. But as Qvist and Brook showed in a peer-reviewed study in PLOSone last year:

      The Swedish experience indicates that in steady-state phase of capacity expansion, nuclear power can be added at a rate of about 25 kWh/y/y/1k$-GDP, which, if multiplied by current global GDP (Table 2), amounts to ~1500 TWh/y/y (i.e., 10% of current global fossil-fuel electricity production when scaled to the worldwide economy). The peak annual addition rate per GDP in Sweden occurred 1980–1981 and corresponds to a GDP-weighted annual addition of 3000 TWh/y, or 20% of the current global fossil-fuel electricity production.

      Even allowing for a doubling in global energy production, Sweden’s 20% of current global fossil-fuel production allows a small bit of leeway beyond Robert’s cited 6%.

      Although France and Ontario were larger and a bit slower on the uptake, these carefully planned fossil-to-nuclear transitions were all done out of environmental and energy security concerns: at the time few outside academia recognized the climate gun at our heads.

      And Robert admits that yes, technically climate change mitigation is still doable. But as a practical matter, it will require a collective political will that palpably does not exist.

    2. Dr Nelson and CGNP Government Liaison Director for Southern California, Carl Wurtz, have done hard work to start to get the California government to admit there are highly qualified citizen scientists fully supporting nuclear power.

      Anti nukes like shadowy so-called “Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility” have dedicated decades to closing clean, emission free nuclear plants, all the time calling themselves “environmentalists.” Yet they hide the fact closing a plant like San Onofre has caused release of millions of tons of carbon into earth’s atmosphere, plus release of tons of pollutants like soot, smoke and ozone that are definitely dangerous and proven to kill humans.

      Real environmentalists seeing nuclear is by far the best replacement for dirty planet-killing, people-killing fossil fuel are battling the incredibly rich fossil fuel industry. We need an honest press to understand our valid, sound scientific argument for nuclear power the best response to the biggest threat of all time – man caused global warming.

      We need seasoned investigative reporters to expose the real reasons for the big environmental groups unending, feverish campaign (like “Friends of the Earth”) against nuclear, as happened in 2012 with Time Magazine catching Sierra Club red handed “secretly” taking a cool $26 million from Chesapeake Energy.

      Please refer any investigative reporters looking for another block buster story about these environmental groups to us in CGNP. We are eager to help them get started on another career-boosting story exposing why the anti nukes do what they do.

      William Gloege
      CGNP.org

  3. We’re in a difficult spot given that PG&E itself wants to close Diablo (the real reason being that the state’s 50% renewables mandate will not allow it to run economically, i.e., most of the time). Dr. Nelson agrees with me (I believe) that nothing less than repealing California’s renewables mandate law, or modifying it to include nuclear, will be sufficient to prevent its closure. Same with San Onofre.

    A sign of our difficult position is that it’s hard to even say which side we’re on with respect to this proposal. Do we support the extension of the land leases, allowing Diablo to operate beyond 2018? Uh, well, yes. So we support the deal, right? Uh, well, yes and no. What are we going to say, exactly, at the PUC meeting? Are we in support or not? The problem is that the questions being posed are wrong, so it’s difficult to give a yes or know answer. The way the debate has been framed is wrong.

    I congratulate you, Dr. Nelson and CGNP, for your inclusion at the PUC meeting, but you have a difficult task. Do you plant to advocate for a change in the law at the PUC meeting. Many will say that you’re talking about things outside the meeting’s scope.

    1. What’s badly needed is for more citizen groups to form around each nuclear play, especially those under pressure from the natural gas industry who understand a closed nuclear plant means billions for them, as was seen with San Onofre.

      We need to stop complaining to each other and get to work with effective grass roots work. “Get Action” as Theodore Roosevelt famously wrote. We in CGNP would be happy to give pointers to action oriented pro nuclear environmentalists.

  4. I’d also like to ask a question, for Dr. Nelson and others. BTW, I included this question in my written response to PG&E, associated with their recent public information/participation meeting in South San Francisco.

    PG&E is pledging to make an (apparently legally binding) agreement to get 55% of it’s power from renewables, as opposed to the 50% required under the RPS law. The extra 5% supposedly replaces Diablo’s generation, but note that that calculation is based on the assumption that Diablo would only be running half the time after 2025, due to that same RPS law (in other words, the 5% is actually only half of Diablo’s total annual output).

    My question is this. If Diablo gets 5% more of its generation from renewables, wouldn’t that allow the remaining generators in the state to get exactly that much less from renewables, and still be in compliance with the RPS law? Or is the RPS law somehow designed so that individual utilities have mandated renewables goals, which would not be reduced by the Diablo deal?

    If that’s not the case, and the RPS law works the way I think it does (i.e., there is merely a goal for overall state renewable generation) then the Diablo deal will not require ANY additional renewable generation, statewide. Given that utilities will not build any more renewable generation than that required by law (a safe assumption, I believe), then the net effect of the deal will be that Diablo’s output is ENTIRELY replaced by gas.

    Any thoughts? Am I right about how the RPS law works? Is this a possible point that could be brought up at the PUC meeting?

    Another point that could be brought up is that, although California’s Once Through Cooling rule is ostensibly a generic rule that applies to all coastal CA power plants, it appears that other (fossil) plants such as Moss Landing, will be allowed to use much less expensive alternative/mitigation approaches to “comply” with the law. They will not be required to build cooling towers, whereas Diablo was not going to be offered any such options (the threat of requiring cooling towers being one thing that forced them to negotiate with the anti-nuclear groups). I’ve not heard any indications that the (~2 GW, fossil) Moss Landing plant will either install cooling towers or close.

    Although the OTC law is ostensibly generic, it allows govt. agencies such as the lands or coastal commissions to exercise their “judgment” on the question of allowing far less expensive approaches. This is where the (anti nuclear) state govt. gets to exercise its actual priorities, and get the state’s last remaining nuclear plant to close, while allowing it’s fossil plants to stay open. After all, those fossil plants are necessary to back up all that renewable generation.

    All these laws, and this deal, make it clear that concern about global warming is not the main priority of the state, and these “environmental” groups. Maximizing renewable generation at all cost (as a goal onto itself) and/or eliminating nuclear power (as opposed to fossil fuels) are clearly the main priorities. As one such “environmentalist” told James Hansen, the main purpose of RPS laws was, specifically, to kill nuclear (as opposed to fossil fuels). We’re now seeing it happen.

    1. Jim, keep asking your questions, but direct them to PUC, PG&E, and local, State and federal elected and government officials. The latter usually only hear from misinformed, propagandized, or paid off anti nukes, not solid citizens solely motivated intelligently by science about the threat of global warming. You and all citizens have standing only through your vote. Use that one power left to citizens and let elected officials know you intend to vote for those supporting clean, non-emitting nuclear power.

      Once Through Cooling is an entirely bogus issue used primarily against nuclear to shut plants. Natural fish and larvae mortality far, far outstrips cooling losses. The anti nuke biased in State government know cooling has zero impact on fishing, but use it and clauses in law as a stick to attack nuclear. Fishing has been improving
      for years. Fish and Game and the State Water Resources Board know this. Their anti nuclear bias is what drives them to use any possible ruse to close nuclear plants. They are cozy and extremely helpful with anti nuke Friends of the Earth who we suspect, like the Sierra Club Time Magazine example, may have more sinister, pro gas motives.

      Let PUC, PG&E, all government representatives know your about your support of clean, non-emitting nuclear power. Tell them, not others like yourself. Use your power as a citizen and voter! Get Action, as Teddy Roosevelt urged.

  5. The purpose of the RPS’s is not to combat global warming , not even to kill nuclear power although that’s part of it , it’s to power down society in general. These are the degrowthers. They made all this clear in the 70’s.

  6. All Advocates for the nuclear power are doing their part to promote nuclear power, and the law already clearly supports our efforts: (i.e. https://www.epa.gov/cleanpowerplan/fact-sheet-clean-power-plan-opportunities-nuclear-power, https://atomicinsights.com/holding-state-lands-commission-accountable/).

    Like all battles, it is vital to focus on all fronts in promoting nuclear power, to lift billions out of poverty, and stop the deaths of tens of millions each year from energy poverty and air pollution.

    Dr. Nelson and I have peppered the public record with ample evidence of the need to follow existing legislative mandates, and identify a clear path towards compliance with GGE targets, as required by several legislative mandates: http://docketpublic.energy.ca.gov/PublicDocuments/15-IEPR-11/TN205398_20150719T170914_Kirk_Gothier_Comments_Kirk_Gothier_Comments_on_Climate_Adaptati.pdf.

    However, absent funding to litigate, and enforce compliance with laws supporting nuclear power, industry and other special interest groups will continue to drive the closure of these essential public facilities, in direct conflict GGE mandates.

    Talk is cheap. Like Environmental Progress, which is doing their part on the social media front to Go Viral with our message, we need to find a benefactor to help fund CGNP’s efforts.

    So, please pass along any potential contacts with deep pockets, to Bill and Gene at CGNP ASAP!

  7. One only needs to read the above posts to realize that the environmentalists are more interested in shutting down all nuclear power plants than in reducing CO2.

    As I have said on this website many times: “When your house is on fire you do not spray 50% water mixed with 50% gasoline on it” The fastest and only way to effectively make electric generation as low in CO2 emission as possible is a massive effort to replace fossil generation with Nuclear Power Generation. The fact that we are picking and subsidizing methods that only reduce the CO2 emissions by at best 50% means that the methodology will never work.
    Thus I continue to remain skeptical of the aims and motives of the UN IPCC propaganda. One only needs to review the “references” section of any of the UN IPCC reports, and the motives of those writers.

  8. As we near August 6, those in the nuclear industry and community still haven’t quite come to grips with the trillion ton monkey that’s been an albatross around nuclear energy’s neck; The failure to dispel nuclear energy’s war baby Doomsday image. Like TMI’s urban legends should’ve been nipped in the bud back them, so should have Fukushima’s effect here, yet shoring up all NPPs here just because of that incident has been a main driver for all the recharged public consternation toward nuclear power. All we ever get is bad news about anything nuclear but the press will happily to a feature on the progress on solar and wind without any “incident” involved. Its called subtle media endorsement — the flip-side of how they regard and report nuclear power. As I scanned the network Sunday news shows yesterday, I must’ve seen at least a dozen “clean energy” or “vote for energy” ads of poorly disguised fossil commercials. But climate change contributors or not, they’re royally getting over in public opinion and acceptance by PR default. Ironically, I glean from social media the view that nuclear power now has to resort to an end run around public opinion via the “sneaky” legal route because they know there’s no other way nuclear can survive in this country because no one here really likes or want it — in fact outright vehemently fear it. This is the price for long eating your own BS $$ excuses for not passing the cup around and aggressively promoting yourself and educating the public primarily through Ads. More, as I see here on Long Island and New Jersey, there’s even a willing “tolerance” among solar and wind farm advocates to accept gas as a “back-up” for so-called unforeseen circumstances. “Anything else than DANGEROUS nuclear”. Ditto this with GE and BP’s wind farms. You have here a kind of unholy alliance that at once scrubs gas’s image as a climate change contributer by “endorsement” of the darlings of the clean energy sect. Just get rid of dirty old coal and the climate war is won, that’s that because even a child can see gas is way cleaner than a lump of coal, right? If this view prevails then there’ll just be no advantage to continue DANGEROUS nuclear in the public eye. Nuclear has never stated its case to the public in a major way, never shouted its safety record, its near zit historical mortality stats, cleaniness, low green impact, never dispelled smearing legends and “inaccurate” reporting and never challenged its opposition. Where there’s PR silence the public can only assume that you’ve no virtues to hawk, unlike gas and solar and wind and the other guys ever flaunting themselves as the white hats. As August 6 approaches with all apt commemorative features on the mass media and History Channel and Discovery Channel and Nat Geo Channels ready to go to scare and guilt and fear to provide more nine-inch nails for the anti-nukers to use to further alienate public fears away from nuclear power, let’s see what meager action the nuclear industry and community will — or won’t do this time to scrub nuclear’s image.

    James Greenidge
    Queens NY

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