FOE continues promoting fossil fuel by trying to force Diablo Canyon closure
As a literature major during my undergraduate years, I was fascinated by the variety of stories that can be told about the same topic depending on the author’s selected point of view.
Here is a brief example. Friends of the Earth (FOE) has a page on its web site titled Shutting down Diablo Canyon. The first couple of paragraphs tell a brief story about the organization, its founding, and its position on Diablo Canyon that has been widely promoted and is probably accepted by many of its dedicated members.
Concerns over the proposed construction of nuclear reactors at Diablo Canyon were an impetus for David Brower to found Friends of Earth in 1969. Since then, more information about the seismic activity near the two aging reactors has made it increasingly clear that Diablo Canyon should never have been built on its current site. The tremendous and unnecessary risk these reactors pose to public health and the environment necessitates that they be shut down.
At the time of construction, our knowledge about earthquakes was relatively basic. Nonetheless, it was known that Diablo Canyon, the nuclear reactors operated by Pacific Gas & Electric, was at risk from two earthquake faults: the San Andreas, 45 miles inland and the Rinconada, 20 miles inland. Since then, as our understanding of earthquakes and ground motion has grown, it has become increasingly clear that Diablo Canyon is surrounded by faults capable of creating ground motion beyond that for which the reactors and their components were tested and licensed.
I would tell the same story in a different way because I have a different set of experiences, research and personal opinion lenses through which I view the world. Here is my version.
Concerns over the construction and operation of nuclear reactors that do not consume any hydrocarbon products were a call to action on the part of those whose business was to sell hydrocarbons. Though their products would continue to be useful in a world with a rapidly increasing quantity of power supplied by atomic fission, the unit sale prices would be negatively impacted by the resulting change in the balance between energy supply and demand. The industry’s profitability and long-standing ability to dominate international politics would be dramatically reduced.
Robert Anderson, the CEO of Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO) and a recognized leader in the petroleum industry, went looking for a credible spokesperson with an established following who could criticize nuclear energy and initiate action to mitigate some of its obvious competitive advantages. Anderson learned that David Brower, a prominent environmentalist and influencer at the Sierra Club, was involved in a leadership struggle at his organization, partly because he wanted to take a more aggressive stance against the use of nuclear energy.
Anderson made contact with Brower. He soon provided the initial donation of $200,000 that enabled Brower to found a new, more focused antinuclear environmental group, Friends of the Earth. Other people involved in the hydrocarbon business provided additional ammunition in the battle to increase the cost of nuclear energy construction by performing additional seismic surveys of the area near the Diablo Canyon construction site. They timed the release of information raising questions about the site stability so that the revelations resulted in substantial plant redesign work and years/billions worth of project delays.
Not surprisingly, Anderson did not publicly oppose nuclear energy himself. That would have been easily identified as special interest pleading by a competitor. It was much more effective to publicly proclaim support of nuclear energy while quietly providing the funds to enable “environmental” activists to attack and spread fear, uncertainty and doubt about the technology and the industry that was developing it.
It’s worth mentioning that there has never been a case anywhere in the world in which a nuclear power plant sustained enough damage from an earthquake to cause it to endanger the public. They are exceedingly resilient facilities.
Despite the efforts by its well-heeled and motivated opponents, the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant was completed and licensed to operate. It now produces between 17 and 18 terawatt-hours of electricity every year. It has done so for decades and has the capability to continue doing so for numerous additional decades.
Replacing that amount of electricity with the best available natural gas power plant technology would result in the release of at least 6.2 million tons of CO2 every year. It is not possible to replace that steadily produced, grid stabilizing, adjustable power factor, smooth frequency AC power with a combination of wind turbines and solar panels.
Shockingly (not really), one of the prominent allies in the still active antinuclear movement effort to close Diablo Canyon and replace it with power mostly produced by burning products of the petroleum industry — in this case, natural gas — was a petroleum industry geologist, former California state senator Sam Blakeslee.
Additional evidence
This is supplemental information aimed at supporting the assertions made in my version of the history of opposition to Diablo Canyon.
Exploration of the offshore Santa Maria Basin began in the 1960s with regional seismic surveys, marine gravity surveys, and aeromagnetic surveys designed to identify the limits of the basin and the major structural features. In 1971, geologists from the Shell Oil Company published a paper in which they were the first authors to identify a major fault zone offshore south-central California (Hoskins and Griffiths, 1971). Their interpretation of the fault was based on analyses of widely spaced CDP seismic reflection data. Figure 2 in their report is a small-scale map that shows a continuous offshore fault trace extending from south of Point Sal approximately 140 km to the north end of the Piedras Blancas Structure. They do not characterize the nature of the fault nor provide any indication of the recency of activity.
Source: US Geologic Survey (USGS) Characterization of the Hosgri Fault Zone and Adjacent Structures in the Offshore Santa Maria Basin page 4
This screenshot (click to enlarge) shows a damning page from a book titled Environmentalism: Ideology and Power by Donald Gibson, published by Nova Science Publishers in 2002.
Funny. The other Fukushima plants rode out the shakes well enough and kept in ticking but who’s heard that what with Tokyo TV passing off massive oil plant fires as the reactor incident. Naughty naughty. But I wonder how many chemical and gas facilities perch fault lines totally without a curious peep from the 4th estate…
James Greenidge
Queens NY
@James Greenidge
There’s a reason why petroleum-related facilities get a pass from ad-supported media. The owners advertise – heavily.
I wonder why Environmentalism: Ideology and Power is so expensive ($85.00 or £70.99)? Maybe the publisher has some conflict of interest?
How many other environmentalist policies are designed primarily to favour wealthy vested interests? If environmentalist energy policy (anti-nuclear, pro-wind and pro-solar) is about enriching Big Oil and commodity-trading banksters, is environmentalist urban policy (anti-car, anti-suburbia, pro-density and pro-rail) about enriching urban landowners, especially owners of prime city centre land?
Of couse, oil and gas have a publicity advantage as far as advertising is concerned, in that their products are purchased directly by most households (for motor vehicles and for heating/cooking respectively) while uranium fuel is currently only used for generating electricity in huge centralized facilities.
About your last phrase, I doubt it. I wonder if Donald Trump is pro rail, anti car and anti suburbia. I doubt it. We may never know, but I think it tends to be more pro union, and pro controlable labor.
Any organization that isn’t selling any kind of a product, or providing any kind of a service yet has a $100 Million + annual budget should set off the alarm bells in *every* American.
Yet…. not. Are we *that* stupid?
Here.
Rail unions would tend to be both anti-car (to make commuters dependent on them) and anti-nuclear (to encourage the use of coal, which only trains can practically deliver to power plants).
It isn’t ridiculous. Its been thoroughly modeled and can work, with little or not net cost to the economy.
What’s ridiculous is standing by and willfully and knowingly allowing our fossil fuels addition to lead the planet to fatal overdose.
But that is what we do.
There may be alternatives. Robert Hargraves suggests developing AND deploying reliable and usable energy technologies that are cheaper than coal, and gas. Fine. Who’s going to do it, and why?
I actually agree with Hargraves. I also agree with Hansen. Because implementing a carbon Fee and Dividend here in the United States is the surest way for our society — here — to face up to the true costs of fossil fuel alternatives, and the barriers we’ve erected to developing and deploying the most effective among them.
You and I might disagree a priori what those “most effective” might be. But a rising fee-and-dividend would make such personal disagreements moot. Meanwhile,
…and Rome burns. How do we change?
@ JohnGalt
Revenue neutral Fee and Dividend is by definition not a tax. It is a fee assessed one place — fossil fuel extraction in this case — and returned to another, in this case you and me to spend as we see fit.
Your no-nukes solution amounts to business-as-usual, and is a losing proposition. You can do better. Please do so.
@John Galt
The “carbon fee and dividend” proposal is NOT a tax policy. It’s a fee collected from carbon -fuel extractors and carbon-fuel importers. The proceeds are returned on a per capita, per month basis to households. It doesn’t go into the general government revenue to support research or infrastructure. People decide what to do with it. It’s the best market-based idea out there and we should try it. The only possible connection to tax policy is that one way to implement it would be through monthly payroll tax deductions and/or tax refunds. So we don’t have to create a new administrative infrastructure; it already exists.
Learn more about it at Citizens Climate Lobby: citizensclimatelobby.org/about-ccl/
You may even want to join!
@JohnGalt
as explained in The Little Engine That Could: Revenue Neutral Carbon Fee and Dividend.
You are, of course, free to disagree and fabricate your own definition. But your calling it so does not make it so. You’ve posted here numerous snarks upon things you are against: Nuclear power, economic tools to mitigate global warming. Tell us, John:
“What are you for?”
Probably not many of you move in certain circles but also in on-line pagan communities im always surprised to see the green propaganda overtaking responsible environmentalism. Issues of resources, habitat, land use and infrastructure requirements, land access and additional development; all go out the window for the church of the simpleminded and the destructive “renewable” and biofuel schemes.
Its sad people that have had to deal with so much closed-mindedness in recent history turn around and basically act the same towards the earth, within their stated core beliefs and spiritual principles, when it really matters.
I think its fair game and necessary to begin to bring the spiritual into the conversation here too. Certainly within Christianity it has begun to occur in the open recently. I also think many would be surprised at the extent of underlying links, current and historic, occurring through individuals, in the conservation, “environmental,” spiritual/pagan/magic/ritual, and even scientific movements. But after being on this side of it, not so surprised at the disjoin and mistakes Id imagine. “Friends of the earth” are anything but, in this instance.
I agree with John Galt that tax/dividend does have snags.
Clearly, it’s not a panacea, because it effectively removes the incentive to develop energy technologies which compete with fossil fuels directly. So ultimately, it is likely to lead to an energy system which is carbon neutral (good) but so expensive that the ‘fee’ has morphed into increased cost of energy, while the ‘dividend’ part has dried up along with the fee as a result of achieving carbon-neutrality.
So fee and dividend will work to decarbonise the energy system of nations which put it into their constitutions (it has to be that solid to work), but not to provide a competitive energy system for those enations. Hence, it does not solve the ‘carbon leakage’ problem which causes (industrial) energy consumption (along with jobs, and thus consumption in general) to shift to countries having the cheapest energy, which will still be fossil fuels.
A true global fee and dividend system locked solidly in constitutional law could work, but I suppose I agree with John Galt that the likelyhood of that happening is remote. I’ll eat my hat if it happens before its too late and truly disastrous climate impacts are hard in our faces.
I think the likelyhood of eliminating antinuclear psychological terrorism, thereby re-enabling cost-effective nuclear power, is a much better bet, because it doesn’t necessarily need fee/dividend to work because it doesn’t necessarily cost more than fossil fuels.
More snark. If you’d actually followed the link and done the reading, you’d have learned that wasn’t what Sec. Shultz mean at all. But again:
“What are you for?”
I wish he was pro-labor but he’s not. He’s a straight up GOP anti-working class politician now. Rail unions are not pro-rail to ‘make commuters dependent on them’ (union or rail?) but to represent the interests of railroad workers. This includes maintaining and expanding rail roads in the United States, which is a good thing, not a bad thing. Commuter rail is vitally important to most of the big urban centers of the US and they too need to be expanded and invested in. I’ve experienced cities with no commuter rail. It’s not pretty.
@JohnGalt:
Thanks for your response, that is rather more of what I was after. Something to discuss. As for building nuclear power plants on time and in budget, that was a concept that worked here in the U.S. back in the seventies and early eighties. But we are currently a bit rusty, and out of practice.
The Chinese and Russians are not. China is (relatively) new to reactor construction and is still coming up to speed. But six years isn’t shabby so long as the quality isn’t. Russia, otoh, has now achieved serial production. I personally think that good for world economy and climate, but am disappointed that they have done so and we haven’t. Can’t help but reflect this wasn’t the sort of thing an old cold-war civil engineer meant when he predicted “We will bury you.”
I still think we can do it, but that will be for the bean-counters to decide as they go through the logistical post-mortems as Vogtle and VC Summer finish up. Thorcon, of course, has in mind very serial — even parallel — production on a global scale, but there’s the question about how to license their — or any — Gen IV reactor: What is the mechanism? Who pays?
But enough of me — please. This is about you:
“I support no new taxes or fees, and no panic.”
—Hoookay. How about old taxes and fees? Or mass hysteria?
“In energy, I support free choices, transparent information – both pros and cons – and not taxes, credits, fees, trickery or propaganda to influence or coerce. I also support “fair” grid access and payments for small, modular, power generators. I could go on…”
… oh please do! [/snark]
I assume “fair” in quotes means you recognize a can of worms when you open one. 😉
As for the other, its been something I’ve been considering the past week since some of the presidential candidates have begun formulating energy policies, some of which some even promote as “clean”.
At this point Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley appear to equate “clean energy” with renewables. O’Malley thinks we should eliminate fossil subsidies and use the savings to subsidise renewablaes, biofuels, make permanent the wind PTC, and shore up our transmission infrastructure. This of course in his run-up to Iowa.
Perhaps these will evolve. And Hillary Clinton says such wondrous things!
Jim Web and Lindsey Graham I don’t know. I’m curious. But their polls are in the tank….
Jeb Bush has simply proposed eliminating all energy subsidies. Nothing “clean” about it. But whether such might be more climatically beneficial than anything the Democrats have thus far proposed is what has me wondering. Standalone, I dunno. Coupled with NRC licensing reform, probably (my probables, you’re welcome to yours). Coupled with even a modest CFD, certainly.
The question is how long would it take. Not to go all widespread panic on you, but time and atmospheric ghg capacity really are running out.
There’s also philosophical issues about the role of government fiscal, monetary, and tax policies in promoting the “public interest and well-being”. ‘Nother can of worms, but that’s politics. Thanks.
Nuclear Has One of the Smallest Footprints ( http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/programs/energy-and-climate/nuclear-has-one-of-the-smallest-footprints )
– Good starting point although they don’t seem to fairly factor in right of way access, power infrastructure, creating, regulating and maintaining new markets and control systems for “renewables.” Certainly we now know more about the reliability issues with solar thermal and its interactions with avian species and habitats and its nothing close to what it was sold as. I still cant believe the biomass numbers. In what universe was that a good idea? Agriculture remains the single largest contributor to species extinction. Even after climate chage worsens it likely will still be a combination of agriculture, encroachment, acidification and climate chage contributing most to species extinction.
There is always going to be some “subsidy” for any large industry. Its silly to claim otherwise. Our infrastructure favors large central providers without significant new investment, which means higher rates or government investment. Large central providers are more efficient and the alternative is layer upon layer of interconnected and regulated ENRON type marketplaces. So the distributed free market cheap electricity thing doesn’t really work in energy reality.
I haven’t seen an effective argument against any of that.
Sanders is also probably a nice guy, but he has no real practical energy policy. Indeed all I have seen is the opposite.
@JohnGalt
Your opinion has been noted and assigned its appropriate value.
BTW – if you persist in your accusations that I am unfairly singling out your comments, I really will begin treating them differently. So far, that hasn’t been happening.
The commenting capability here is a straightforward implementation of a standard package offered by the same company that supplies the blog software.
“Yet…. not. Are we *that* stupid?”
In Ian Bank’s story, “The State of the Art” at the end of a decade long mission to assess Earth and decide whether to offer it membership in the galaxy wide interstellar “Culture” the main character reflects that the single word that best describes Earthlings is “gullible”.
A wise and insightful man, Ian Banks. He’ll be missed.
@Joris von Dorp
Oh quite, quite. Although CFD is a bit more air (but not carbon) tight than that, as it includes cross-border adjustments that
taximpose import duty upon goods from countries that do not play ball with similar carbontaxfees of their own, and tosubsidisefinancially protect energy-intensive exports destined for such unsportsman-like markets.(At this point some nameless lurker will indignantly demand exactly who’s to expand the gubmint to support that sort of non-productive bureaucracy — pay him no mind. Jobs is jobs.)
I think that CFD has been studied thoroughly enough — and not just by REMI — that it could be made to work. Also that something of that sort will be necessary to prompt US to conserve adequately anyway, even with the best of all technologies. The question will be how much? But hit enough people long enough and hard enough where it hurts enough, maybe enough of them will recognize it doesn’t have to be this way, that they actually do have a choice.
Who knows? Perhaps some folk will get together, throw up their hands aghast and demand Dept. of Energy and the Congressional Budget Office collaborate to make reasonable assessment of all possible alternatives before pulling the legislative trigger and applying the screws. And making the models publicly accessible so other interested competent parties can check their results; perhaps even better them.
Ed, I agree that CFD is certainly worth a good push. I support it, if only because other incentive system are not nearly as good.
And your right I neglected the part about the import tariffs which combat carbon leakage.
Yet still, todays economic expansion going forward is occurring mostly in emerging economies, and I’m not sure import tariffs on the US (and EU) borders are going to be too much of a reason for those nations to adopt CFD.
So I suppose the problem remains that CFD is going to make it easier for clean energy and efficiency to compete in CFD adopting regions, but at the same time it will reduce (somewhat? a lot?) the incentive for developing truly competitive technologies, which unfortunately are exactly what non-CFD regions are probably going to require.
@ Joris van Dorp
“So I suppose the problem remains that CFD is going to make it easier for clean energy and efficiency to compete in CFD adopting regions, but at the same time it will reduce (somewhat? a lot?) the incentive for developing truly competitive technologies, which unfortunately are exactly what non-CFD regions are
probablygoing to require.”Thanks, I think we agree. Except for the “(CFD) will reduce the incentive for developing truly competitive technologies” part.
I think CFD will not reduce such incentives. It will increase them. The question is whether it will increase them enough, fast enough. And in absence of US NRC licensing reform and public education (hi Rod!) I agree that it probably won’t.
Between US and Canada we’ve got at least three SMR outfits targeting world markets:
Terrapower
Terrestrial Energy
Thorcon
G4M
See Investors pour 1.3 billion into advanced nuclear industry. But how do we license them? How and where do they build prototypes?
In absence of such reforms, CFD will give US incentive to build more — perhaps substantially more — large GW-scale light water reactors. But they alone will not solve the world’s dangerous fossil fuels problem.
It’s no coincidence that RMT leader Bob Crow was one of a very few successful union bosses of post-Thatcher Britain, as London’s increasing population (due to the privileging of City finance at the expense of the industrial North) made the city ever-more dependent on its Tube (subway) network.
Big CBDs need commuter rail to avoid being choked by traffic congestion — that’s why car-oriented big cities (such as LA and Houston) tend to be very decentralized. However, most affordable cities (in terms of the ratio between median house prices and median incomes) tend to be of the car-oriented type, at least in the English-speaking world where public opinion doesn’t support outright confiscating land from speculators.
Anyway, back to my original question — if fossil fuel interests can stealthily fund environmental groups (that claim to be against fossil fuels) to attack nuclear energy, couldn’t urban landowners fund environmentalist groups (that claim to be socially progressive) in order to fight affordable housing?
@George Carty
Yes. There are many such segments of our economy that benefit from artificially created scarcity. The effort to make urban land more valuable by restricting development in surrounding areas has been going on since the days of walled cities. “Environmentalism” is an effective recent invention with that aim.
I was once close to an environmental group that did a lot of good work in helping to clean up one of my favorite bodies of water. One of their major tenants was to impose restrictions on waterfront development – thus adding substantial value to waterfront properties that were already developed. I had good anecdotal information about their donor base; not surprisingly, the list included a number of major local landowners whose property was either developed or specifically grandfathered to be allowed to be developed even after the passage of the setback laws.