Career OMB employees sabotaging Trump’s quest for energy dominance
For now, I’m going to leave all names out of this piece of hearsay. Please believe me when I say that my sources are good and varied.
Throughout his campaign, President Trump ran on the slogan “Make America Great Again.” That inspired many to attend his rallies and probably convinced many to vote for him.
Within the shrinking nuclear energy industry, there was hope that the new Administration would recognize that nuclear energy was one part of the American economy that used to be great and offered vast potential for even greater accomplishment.
There have been many words uttered since the election victory to reinforce that optimism.
However, as a former successful Republican president famously said, “Trust but verify.” Because he was a great communicator, he didn’t expand the statement to explain what one should do if the verification fails.
Here’s my expansion of Reagan’s good advice. “Trust but verify. If verification reveals that trust wasn’t justified, stop trusting.”
A week or so ago, the Trump Administration released its proposed budget for FY2019. In spite of all of the positive, warm and friendly words from various representatives of the Administration within the Department of Energy, the budget for the Office of Nuclear Energy has been slashed by 25% from the nominal dollar amount appropriated and spent during FY2017.
The nice, warm and friendly people that the Administration has put into leadership positions at DOE have had their feet chopped off by the green eyeshade budget analysts at the Office of Management and Budget. They apparently believe that their job is to spread budget cut pain evenly, without any prioritization that reflects public promises.
They also seem to be under the mistaken impression that Trump was elected by people who wanted immense cuts in all government programs outside of DOD.
Some of the nice people at DOE are good soldiers who are now put into the thankless roll of explaining how an industry is supposed to lift itself out of a lengthy period of insufficient support with 25% less money than they had just last year. They say public private partnerships will save us and that they want “the industry” to lead.
Aside: What industry do we have left? Small companies working on advanced reactors are intriguing and exciting, but need positive reinforcement. Operating companies are following through with their promises to close marginal plants. At some point that we may already have passed, the number of plant employees needed will be substantially less than the supply of qualified and willing applicants. Westinghouse is broke and broken. GE isn’t interested. End Aside.
The nice folks at DOE make noises about in-kind programs like GAIN (Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear) without acknowledging that the top line budget number can only be achieved with substantial headcount reduction at the national labs. Those are the “Crown Jewels” of America’s nuclear energy investment that are supposed to make themselves available to assist industry in solving common problems.
They say things like “if money could solve the problems, they would have been solved already” as a way to attempt to pacify frustrated questioners. They fail to acknowledge that it’s been three decades or more since anyone actually tried to solve the U.S.’s flailing nuclear development infrastructure by giving it an adequate budget.
They attempt to claim that a big part of the funding reduction was reaching the end of the SMR licensing assistance program, but they fail to acknowledge that the program was woefully underfunded in terms of achieving its stated goal of helping he NRC work out the unproven parts of its licensing review process for smaller reactors.
Some seem to believe that the submission of NuScale’s Design Certification Application was the desired end state that meant the program had achieved its goal. They need to review the documents created at the time the program was initiated to recognize how far the government has fallen short of completing its part of the task. There is still a long list of unresolved issues and decisions that only the government can make, but there is no money left to defray the cost of making them.
The plan cannot be to help America become great in nuclear energy development by charging a startup company like NuScale to complete the government’s task of determining how to treat small and advanced reactors that work differently than the large light water reactors built and licensed many years to decades ago.
There is no hope of enough room in a $750 million per year nuclear energy budget to allow DOE to do anything to provide a fast neutron testing capability as envisioned by a bill (H.R. 4378) that recently sailed through the House of Representatives and has been put before the Senate. The drafters of that bill likely assumed – based on the same statements that have given some hope to nuclear energy professionals – that DOE would add money to the Office of Nuclear Energy’s budget. There was no need to suspect that the plan was really to cut $250 million from the Obama Administration’s already meager number.
Some have told me that the initial budget submission is just a number that will be rescued by interested Congressional leaders. Maybe they will add a bit of money to protect the programs at labs in their district. This gamesmanship is risky at best and will not result in anything better than a lifeline to the squeakiest programs.
Really important work will not be done. Programs that have been underway for a number of years and are nearing a solid endpoint may be dropped just short of the finish line, making all of the prior milestone achievements virtually worthless.
We have tremendous human capital assets in nuclear energy here in America. Many are stressed to the quitting point. A cut of 25% in the DOE nuclear energy budget may send the signal that it’s time to stop trying and to move onto somewhat easier ways to make a living. That would have serious negative consequences for current and future generations.
And you are surprised Rod? Did you really fall for the MAGA slogan and think Trump cared about anything other than the DOD and the 1%? Come on buddy…you are better than that.
Rod said that this came from career OMB people, not the WH.
Trump is busy draining other swamps ATM. Until the FBI and DOJ are rid of their Deep State operatives, he’s going to have limited time for other things. OMB has done what it’s done, but how well OMB followed whatever instructions came down from the WH isn’t something I know. If the career bureaucrats took instructions to MNEGA and cut the budget 25%, that’s grounds for demotion or dismissal. Maybe that’s what’s going on, giving them rope to hang themselves. We won’t know for a while.
OK, I will bite. What’s MNEGA?
Make Nuclear Energy Great Again
Agreed, gmax137. The only things that a Google search turned up for me was its meaning in astrological numerology, or as a family name. Still, thanks to Rod and all of the commenters here.
The pentagon seems to have no problems with funding. We gotta keep the sea lanes open in case China decides to sink the ships bringing cheap Chinese-made wide-screens to Walmart. We also have to fund those coming here to seek a better life doing those jobs Americans refuse to do.
It isn’t cheap funding an indispensible nation open to those yearning to breath free powered by windmills and solar panels.
The NRC is funded by the Nuclear Utilities. Regulations require 100% Licensee funding. However, any person that can balance their checkbook (which I realize upon writing that that old analogy is not a good analogy these days as no one does or knows how any more) could easily determine that the nuclear utilities pay more than their fair share as universities and other “public good” licenses get a discount. So just why the worry, concern or even effort to cut this portion of the budget? It achieves no purpose other than a downward spiral of the Nuclear Utilities.
Rod, you know better than most that the $750MM budget is a farce. What amount of that is destined to spur ‘real’ nuclear innovation? `~$30-40MM in the form of the Nuclear Energy FOA recently released. GAIN is a joke as implemented.
So whine all you want to about a budget cut, but until ‘real’ innovation is spurred and we start building ‘real’ reactors that are cost competitive with gas, it’s nearly all a complete waste.
Here’s the way I see it. Beat me up. Our politicians work for Wall Street and other rich folks. Nuclear Energy is a long term solution to our energy problems. Wall Street and other rich folks have limited interest in long term solutions to our energy problems. They are interested in making money. They would like to make their money now. Their altruistic motives are limited.
Natural gas is a great short term energy money maker. It is needed to replace aging coal plants and support all those windmills that the rich folk have money tied up in. It will keep the color TV, beer cooler and deep fryer going. The common folks will have their bread and circuses. Money should follow this path.
I don’t think the big money people are going to help nuclear energy. Nuclear energy needs some new allies. May I suggest those environmentalists that I’ve seen many make non flattering remarks towards? They want clean energy. They do not want global warming. Politics makes strange bedfellows, but it sure looks like a potential win-win.
As far as I can tell the vast majority of “environmentalists” aren’t actually interested in clean energy or helping the environment. Not if means they might actually have to, you know, learn some chemistry, biology and physics.
The point to being an “environmentalist” seems to me to involve a feeling of self-righteousness brought on by joining the “right” tribe. Then follow the dogma, regardless of the actual basis underlying it, because the leadership guides the followers, the followers make up the tribe, and the tribe is righteous. If you’re not a member of the tribe, you’re one of the bad polluty guys.
“The point to being an “environmentalist” seems to me to involve a feeling of self-righteousness brought on by joining the “right” tribe. Then follow the dogma, ”
Is that really a bad thing? Many of these people are trying to do good in this world. Perhaps rather than casting dispersion on their quest, you could offer a little guidance. I’ve met a lot of people who are math and science challenged. We’re all given what we’re given on this earthly plane and there are always going to be those who cannot do what we can do and things we cannot do as well as they.
“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.” – Abe Lincoln 1862
I believe the dogmas of today’s environmentalists are not inflexible. A new generation is arising with different ideas. The protest times of Hanoi Jane are long gone and so perhaps are outdated ideas.
Every once in a while, I run into a Greenpeace person outside the supermarket. Trust me, they are clueless and want blissfully to remain so. This is really a religious war.
The only way this will change is if there are extended blackouts/brownouts and many have to decide between eating and paying the electricity bill. Perhaps Germany or South Australia will experience this first and provide a lesson for us so we don’t have to experience this first hand.
I have already seen articles on “energy poverty” in Germany where people have had their juice cut off because they can’t afford both it and food/rent, and the effect on the greenie-heads thus far has been zilch. Truth can’t penetrate their bubble.
@Eino “Is that really a bad thing? Many of these people are trying to do good in this world”
If you are trying to seize the wheel, you darned well better know how to drive. Good intentions are no excuse for forcefully grabbing control and driving off a bridge.
And our energy policy is going off a bridge because of these people’s good intentions, led by the cynical propagandists.
If they were open minded, I would feel differently. I’ve met too many stubbornly self-righteous anti-nuke people. Facts aren’t even a consideration. That nukes are bad is an unquestionable inherent assumption for them. If you try to question it, you’re immediately labeled a dupe or a liar or (gasp) a member of what ever the opposite of the self-righteous tribe is in their mind.
These aren’t people just waiting to be fed knowledge. These are people who have seized a position without any personal knowledge and they’re not letting go.
That ranted, there are folks who can be brought around, but by and large, they aren’t the people who already self-identify as “environmentalists”.
@Engineer-Poet
A country where I have seen “energy poverty” on a much bigger scale than in Germany is the US. Maybe it is you who is sitting in a bubble.
@MSit
Can you be more specific about the examples of energy poverty that you have seen? I agree that they exist, but I’d like to see if your examples complement those that I have observed.
I don’t know how the numbers compare to Germany, but there’s this paragraph in Robert Bryce’s National Review article about Shellenberger, which is referenced in your twitter feed (I read your feed, but I don’t have a twitter account for posting).
“Electricity prices matter in California, which has the highest poverty rate in the country. In 2015 my colleague Jonathan Lesser, the president of Continental Economics, authored a study for the Manhattan Institute (where I’m a senior fellow) that found that in 2012, nearly 1 million California households faced “energy expenditures exceeding 10 percent of household income. In certain California counties, the rate of energy poverty was as high as 15 percent of all households.”
Reading your comment a little more carefully…
@Eino “Nuclear energy needs some new allies. May I suggest those environmentalists that I’ve seen many make non flattering remarks towards? ”
Evidence suggests:
If you are one of the rank and file (of environmentalists) and you embrace nuclear power, you will be ostracized from whatever organization of which you are a part.
If you are in the leadership and embrace nuclear power, you will be kicked out and villified, because the sources of money that drive the environmental movement are paying to have nuclear energy besmirched.
In other words, if you try to support nuclear energy, and are a professional environmentalist, you will quickly find that you have no funding.
Environmental NGOs are not being funded by their donors in order to do good. They are being funded as propaganda arms.
So, I don’t see how embracing environmentalists as allies will gain financial resources for nuclear, when the moment they come over, the allies will be defunded.
I think Rod has advanced the idea a few times that we need to identify other sources of funding in society and show them that nuclear offer financial advantages — industries that want reliable, clean power, with stable fuel prices, perhaps some honest bankers that would like reliable divendend producers. That kind of thing.
I just happen to be watching an old PBS Nova show, “The Nuclear Option.” What is the first prominent name to pop up? Well – It’s David H Koch. He helps pay for the show. He is one of the Koch’s behind Koch refineries. No matter how “pure” you may hope to be, you do not want to bite the hand that feeds. I expect a little bias in this show.
I just hope nuclear energy gets more credit than coal. The recent lame effort to bring subsidies to nuclear and coal is a sign that they are viewed by the Trump administration as somewhat equals.
Thank you Rod for saying what needs to be said. The financial support for nuclear energy is so weak as to reveal a serious lack of vision for energy policy by the government.
It seems most democracies that have nuclear power plants fail to recognize their true value. Others have essentially already said it in the comments here: Greed once again is getting in the way of what;s good for the country and what’s good for the planet. I can only reiterate that we need to keep up the education effort at all levels.
Remarkable. Seeing the resident assholes like EP bluster on about “truth” is truly comical. After his absurd attempts to lend credibility to the “Pizzagate” BS, and his blatantly racist ruminations about black children deserving lead poisoning because of the failed leadership of black and politicians, his opinions should be flushed into the sewer they belong in. But then again, nobody dissented, so maybe his opinions ARE in the sewer they belong in.
And you are suprised that Trump was feeding you BS and is actually going to underfund NE instead of giving it a boost? After watching him “drain the swamp” by stocking it from top to bottom with oil industry whores, lobbyists, executives, and investors. No wonder your energy darling is sinking, its advocates are blithering idiots.