Antinuclear activists are too modest
Jim Conca has published a couple of recent posts on Forbes.com about the premature closure of nuclear power plants in the United States. One titled Are California’s Carbon Goals Kaput?…
If you have followed any of my recent Twitter posts, (atomicrod) you will note that I have been involved for a day or so in an ongoing discussion with an anti-nuclear California lawyer from Marina Del Rey named Roger Sowell on Joe Romm’s Climate Progress blog. It has been an enlightening experience.
Here is one of the quotes from Mr. Sowell’s recent comments:
I strongly oppose nuclear power plants and do all in my power to stop their proliferation. The toxic wastes including plutonium and other elements are being stockpiled by our generation, to be dealt with by future generations. This is completely irresponsible in my view.
Future generations will not thank us. Just imagine how we would respond if ancient civilizations had left a lethal substance that we could not see, nor smell, nor hear. The only way we found out about it was when archaeologists grew ill and died.
This became a smoking gun candidate when Mr. Sowell pointed me to the home page for his legal practice. Here are two direct quotes from his biography page:
Roger Sowell is a refinery defense attorney, and also advises those involved with operating and designing all process plants, including petrochemical plants, chemical plants, and natural gas plants. Legal topics include, but are not limited to, regulatory compliance under Clean Air Act, OSHA and NEPA, design liability, litigation due to process upsets and catastrophic events, construction disputes, advanced and optimization process control issues, and evaluating and protecting intellectual property rights, especially trade secrets.
He practices law after a successful 20-year career as a process consulting engineer world-wide.
…More than 20 years world-wide engineering experience in the continuous process industries, including more than 75 oil refineries, petrochemical plants, and basic chemical plants. His vast experience led to a keen interest in improving process safety, both by design and careful operation.
Former employers include Diamond Shamrock Corp., Champlin Petroleum Company, Solomon Associates, Inc., Profimatics, Inc., Cryogenic Experts, Inc., and Roger Sowell & Associates.
Engineering experience includes process engineering, project engineering, construction supervision, startup and guarantee test runs, planning and scheduling, advanced process control feasibility and master plans, oil movement automation, front-end engineering design, grass-roots refinery feasibility studies, plant energy optimization, steam system optimization, advanced process simulation and optimization, and project economic analysis.
In other words, he has clearly stated financial interests in the continued market domination of the fossil fuel industry, and he pursues legal means to increase the cost and difficulty of employing nuclear fission power.
Reminder: In case you have forgotten or are new to Atomic Insights, “Smoking Gun” posts are about people who are directly associated with the fossil fuel establishment who work to oppose nuclear fission power. They are my tidbits of evidence gathered in building the case that the real power that has opposed nuclear energy is not “The Environmentalists”, but the establishment fossil fuel industry that hates the idea of losing its addicts. You can find the articles by entering the words – smoking gun – in the search block next to the orange blogger logo at the top left side of any Atomic Insights page.
Rod Adams is Managing Partner of Nucleation Capital, a venture fund that invests in advanced nuclear, which provides affordable access to this clean energy sector to pronuclear and impact investors. Rod, a former submarine Engineer Officer and founder of Adams Atomic Engines, Inc., which was one of the earliest advanced nuclear ventures, is an atomic energy expert with small nuclear plant operating and design experience. He has engaged in technical, strategic, political, historic and financial analysis of the nuclear industry, its technology, regulation, and policies for several decades through Atomic Insights, both as its primary blogger and as host of The Atomic Show Podcast. Please click here to subscribe to the Atomic Show RSS feed. To join Rod's pronuclear network and receive his occasional newsletter, click here.
Watch the latest business video at video.foxbusiness.com Jerry Taylor of the Cato Institute, a self proclaimed libertarian think tank, recently visited Fox Business to explain his opposition to nuclear energy. The episode was on the Stossel Show and is called Nuclear Power: Republican Junk Economics?. If you listen really closely, you will hear him using…
A commenter on my last smoking gun report claimed that it did not provide direct evidence of antinuclear activity by the beneficiaries – in that case, the people selling LNG tankers to a market that is growing because of the forced shutdown of operable nuclear power plants in Japan and Germany. Today I ran across…
In 1972, an Exxon internal audit disclosed that Esso Italiana, Exxon’s Italian subsidiary, had been making payments to Italian political parties that were tied by amount to specific corporate objectives. One of the objectives that was listed on documents seized by Italian authorities was halting nuclear energy development in Italy in favor of burning more…
In 1969, Robert O. Anderson, an oil man whose long career included a stint as the Chief Executive Officer of Atlantic Richfield (ARCO) (now part of BP, the company formerly known as British Petroleum), gave David Brower $200,000 to start Friends of the Earth (FOE). Here is a quote from that organization’s page about nuclear…
On January 9, 2012, The Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University held a hydrofracking workshop. The organizers invited a number of speakers from both industry and academia to discuss a contentious, but important energy issue from a variety of perspectives. You can read about the workshop on TheGreenGrok on a post titled Minds…
It’s been quite a while since my last smoking gun post on Atomic Insights. It may be time to revive the series to remind nuclear energy advocates to follow the money and know their opponents. In the battle for hearts, minds and market share it is always useful to know why vocal opposition exists, but…