nuclear-news

Trump using inappropriate Defense Production Act to prop up failing coal and nuclear power plants.

USA Today 25th July 2018 For all the serious national security threats currently facing our country,
it seems like a waste of time and resources to use a nearly 70-year-old
defense law to rescue failing, outdated industries.

Yet that is precisely what the Trump administration is planning to do. The administration
indicated last month that it intends to use the Defense Production Act of
1950, enacted as a drastic national-security measure to be deployed in time
of war, to prop up failing coal and nuclear power plants.

Invoking this act would be a blatant misuse of the law, which came into effect at the outset
of the Korean War and with the intent of ensuring rapid mobilization of
U.S. industries within the larger context of the Cold War. And it will be
costly for anyone who pays an electric bill.

Today, the president wants to rely on the act to intervene in the energy market and bail out unprofitable
power plants that can no longer compete against natural gas and renewables.
The administration claims these plants are necessary to prevent blackouts
on the grid — a claim nearly all experts say is untrue. The
administration is instead motivated largely by politics — Trump promised
repeatedly on the campaign trail and while in office to bring about a
renaissance in an industry that is in irreversible decline.
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/07/25/donald-trump-energy-plan-save-coal-cost-consumers-column/792523002/

July 28, 2018 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA