Smoking Gun Attack on Nuclear From Aloys Wobben, Enercon Managing Director
A couple of weeks ago, I posted an article about a Tim Wirth pep talk to the natural gas industry that I called the best smoking gun ever. When I…
A good friend sent me a link to an interesting diary on Daily Kos titled “Clean Coal”‘s Dirty Hands?. That diary entry used an article written by Peter Montague, titled INSIGHTS: Carbon Sequestration that provides some very interesting documentation of grants provided by The Joyce Foundation to a number of mainstream environmental organizations.
The essential thrust of the article was that carbon sequestration was an untested and potentially risky endeavor that was being supported by a surprising coalition of groups that shared some of the same funding sources. I personally think that Mr. Montague was a little off in his analysis – in my opinion carbon sequestration will never be implemented on a major scale – but he has done a great job in contributing valuable information to an important discussion.
I recommend that you go visit “Clean Coal”‘s Dirty Hands? and participate. It should be an interesting source of opinions and information about how fossil fuel interests use their extensive financial resources and those of long established foundations with huge investment portfolios.
For example, the article talks about the activities of The Joyce Foundation. I did a little poking around and found out that Joyce was originally endowed with a $100 million bequest from a lumber industry heiress in 1972. It now controls an unrestricted portfolio of nearly $900 million. After giving away about $40-50 million each year, they have still grown that endowment by about $35 million per year for the last few years. It can do a lot of very good charitable work and still enable some nefarious and sneaky anti-nuclear activities to protect its interests and those of its donors and leaders.
PS – I had to grin about the magic of Google Adsense when I posted this comment. The link that showed up was titled Energy From Coal. It leads to an interestingly titled organization called Americans for Balanced Energy Choices. Its main point is that coal is essential, affordable and increasing clean. Note: I did not put a hyperlink in this postscript – go ahead and click on the ad link. That is more advantageous to Atomic Insights.
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.
An article titled “US sweetens pot to study siting for spent nuke fuel storage” was published in the January 26, 2023 edition of the Washington Post. The article included a paragraph that credited “environmentalists” as being the main source of opposition to construction of consolidated interim spent fuel (CISF) storage facilities that are either licensed…
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…
In 1993, after I had made a decision to resign my active duty commission and design a small atomic engine, a colleague warned me that “the oil companies will never let you succeed.” At the time, I was pretty naive, so I didn’t heed his warning. Over the years, I have gradually learned more about…
An article titled Fukushima inspires safety features for Georgia nuclear reactors is a recent addition to CNN’s Powering the Planet series. It is packed full of misinformation about nuclear energy along with subtle and not so subtle promotion of natural gas, one of nuclear energy’s strongest competitors. The most important misinformation in the article is…
Dieter Helm’s The Carbon Crunch: How We’re Getting Climate Change Wrong–and How to Fix It has the potential to be an influential energy policy book, not just for the UK but for the rest of Europe and the United States. Helm has been making the rounds to promote the book and recently gave a concise…
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? focuses on some of the environmental aspects of the San Onofre debacle; the other, titled Closing Vermont Nuclear Bad Business for Everyone focuses on the…