ExxonMobil aiming to capture growth in US electricity market
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…
I have always tried to be clear when I talk about how fossil fuel interests have been responsible for much of the success of the organized anti-nuclear movement. Many people in various discussion forums have misinterpreted my words “fossil fuel interests” as meaning just major oil companies, but I am trying to encompass a larger group that that. It includes coal and “natural” gas companies, pipeline companies, fossil fuel burning utility companies, railroads, many bankers, lawyers, and a large number of powerful unions whose members are often quite militant about protecting their dangerous, dirty, debilitating, but reasonably well paying jobs.
Many of the very large anti-nuclear demonstrations that some people may remember or have seen on video have been led by unions of miners or freight railroad employees.
A good friend sent me a link to one of the most direct smoking guns I have been able to post in quite some time. It is a YouTube video of an August 2008 BBC interview with Arthur Scargill, the former President of the British National Union of Miners. The occasion for the interview was Scargill’s attendance at Climate Camp 2008. Please watch this brief interview to help you understand just what I am trying to say about the confluence of interest groups that might otherwise be considered to be very strange bedfellows that come together to oppose nuclear power plants.
Scargill has made the smoking gun series here before. One thing you have to admire about the man is that he is not devious about promoting coal while bashing nuclear. If you listen closely, you will find that he is very specific about the kind of coal he likes – it is deep underground, not from open pits and it is British, not imported. (Coal from open pits, South Africa or the US does not represent any employment for British coal miners.) Scargill is not a fan of imported oil and gas and emphasizes that British oil and gas are rapidly depleting.
If you spend much time studying the energy business and listening closely to the internal debates between oil, gas, coal, wind, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric, biofuels, and even more exotic forms like fusion, you will hear a lot of bickering. Gas people talk about how they produce just 60% of the CO2 of coal, wind advocates claim that they are cheaper than solar, geothermal guys point out that they can be available round the clock, and fusion folks point to a point in the distant future where they will be able to power everything from nothing.
Like many large families, however, non nuclear energy interests unite when they confront a common enemy – fission – with the potential to make them all lose power, wealth and influence. Sometimes when I point out all of the people who have a vested interest in fighting nuclear, my fission fellow fission fans get discouraged. After all, there are some powerful forces at work.
My answer to that potential discouragement is to remind them that the energy consumers in the world are far more numerous than the establishment energy producers. When we open our pro-fission tent to all of the people who own lungs and have a vested interest in clean air, we can find a lot of friends to help in the fight.
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.
Jerry Taylor, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, has taken the time to produce a detailed and well-referenced rebuttal to my post titled Jerry Taylor, a Fellow at the Cato Institute, founded by a Koch, Focuses Libertarian Rhetoric Against Nuclear But Ignores Natural Gas Subsidies. Here is the comment that I posted in response:…
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…
One of the themes that I continue to pursue is the fact that the established energy industry has the means, motive and opportunity needed to be a silent partner in the anti-nuclear enterprise. When I bring up this topic at nuclear industry gatherings, I am often met with either silence or vocal disagreement. Many of…
Many observers of the nuclear industry will point to the disestablishment of the Atomic Energy Commission as one of the major turning points in the development of nuclear power as growing alternative energy source. For nearly 30 years from 1946-1974, the AEC was a focused agency responsible for all aspects of nuclear power research, development…
American Municipal Power-Ohio, a nonprofit wholesale power supplier and services provider, is planning to build American Municipal Power Generating Station (AMPGS), a 1000 MWe coal fired power plant in Meigs County, Ohio. The organization’s members are interested in building a plant that gives them more control over the cost of the electricity that they provide…
The old “smoking” industries are not the only ones who have a direct financial incentive in shutting out the nuclear competition. Here is a quote from a March 6, 2009 article on Energy Daily titled Analysis: Nuclear vs. renewable in Germany: In 2020 renewables are to satisfy 47 percent of Germany’s power mix — more…