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.
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…
UBS Investment Bank holds a large portfolio of loans to companies involved in extracting natural gas using the combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. Because of the healthy fees associated with generating those loans initially, UBS, along with several other large investment banks, supported drilling programs for production that was not justified by the…
I have recently been introduced to a fascinating energy industry information source called European Energy Review. It is useful to find new perspectives on a topic as broad and as important as the large and lucrative energy supply business. The situation in Europe has always been substantially different from that in the US, because it…
Conventional wisdom tells us that “Environmentalists” worried about one or more of the below complaints have influenced world opinion and encouraged the current negative investment perception that surrounds new nuclear power plants: Nuclear plants are not completely safe Nuclear energy technology leads to dispersal of nuclear weapons capability Nuclear energy plants are massive and lead…
Dick Armey is a former US Congressman (Republican) who now serves as the chairman of FreedomWorks, a conservative, issues-based organization founded in 1984 that includes “full time staff in ten states and over 800,000 grassroots volunteers nationwide.” (quote from the organization’s “About Us” page). The tag line for the group’s web site is “Lower taxes,…
I have recently become an active participant on TheEnergyCollective.com. It is an interesting site that is aggregating commentary and blog feeds from diverse source that include Dan Yurman’s Idaho Samizdat and Joe Romm’s Climate Progress. This morning I ran across a fascinating “inside baseball” post from Henry Gentenaar a managing partner at Reluminati, LLC. Henry…
This site uses a cookie for Google Analytics. Accept or decline — your choice.