nuclear-news

Biden’s Missile Crisis

The American people voted for Trump to end the wars. Biden apparently wants to end the world.

Dennis Kucinich, Nov 20, 2024, https://denniskucinich.substack.com/p/bidens-missile-crisis

When President Biden approved the use of supersonic Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) to strike Russia, he placed in jeopardy the national security of the United States, the safety of our troops abroad and violated the U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8, which provides that only Congress can declare war.

Biden has made a decision to insert the U.S. into an unambiguous, escalatory phase, using the territory of Ukraine to attack Russia directly with missiles which can reach 190 miles deep.  This is an illegal act by the President which puts our nation on a path to war with Russia.  

The American people voted for Trump to end the wars. Biden apparently wants to end the world. Trump is listening to the American people. Biden is listening to NATO’s malignant agenda. 

Trump has put America’s interests for peace and prosperity first. 

No President has the right to use unilateral executive authority to permit a U.S. missile strike against another nation. It invites a retaliatory attack.  It is an impeachable offense.

Congress, as a co-equal branch of government, must act now: 

Any Member of Congress can, under privileges of the House, ask for immediate consideration of a joint resolution which invokes Article I, Section 8, and then cuts off all funding for personnel, coordination, technical advisers, materiel, equipment and deployment of ATACMS and emplacement of any other offensive missile systems in Ukraine.

The specter of WWIII has  loomed before,  in October of 1962, when the Soviet Union used the territory of Cuba to place offensive missiles just 90 miles away from the American mainland.

Absent the wisdom of President Kennedy and the forbearance of Nikita Krushchev, the world was on a path to nuclear annihilation. 

If Krushchev had “permitted” Russian missiles to be launched at the U.S.  from Cuba, you would not be reading this.

It is magical thinking that U.S. missiles can be used to attack Russia without consequences.  Now it is Putin who must exercise forbearance.

North Korea has reportedly sent a detachment to assist Russia.  Once the North Koreans learn the Russian language and vice versa, military cooperation will be instructive.  That some in the Biden Administration use this occurrence as a bogus excuse to aim U.S. missiles at Russia, shows the neocon/neolieral addiction to war has become a tragicomic death wish. 

Western vainglorious cynicism, together with hundreds of billions of dollars for weapons, shoved Ukraine into an unwinnable conflict. Russia is not NATO’s footstool, but its undoing.

The Putin-as-Hitler narrative projected in the media accelerated fear, induced acquiescence and rallied Western support for what was essentially a long-standing war scam by the military-industrial-intelligence complex. The alchemy which turned man into monster turned blood into cash.  

Kiev has already paid a horrible price for being a US/NATO proxy: the loss of the flower of its youth, the destruction of its beautiful cities, the spoilation of its fertile farmland, and the sacrifice of its sovereignty.  

Now, as U.S. missiles rain down on Russia, a counterstrike will occur, spreading ever wider the misery which has enveloped Ukraine.  

The Biden Administration, in the face of the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle, rejected a Ukrainian-Russian diplomatic settlement more than two years ago, and continued financing the war for domestic political reasons, giving Americans a false hope for victory over Russia. 

Two weeks ago, the people of the United States voted to stop the endless wars and elected Donald Trump.   

Two months to go before the January 20, 2025 Inauguration and Joe Biden has handed Donald Trump a poisoned presidential chalice.  Trump knows better than to drink from it.

November 22, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Trump’s Election Is Also a Win for Tech’s Right-Wing “Warrior Class”

Donald Trump pitched himself to voters as a supposed anti-interventionist candidate of peace. But when he reenters the White House in January, at his side will be a phalanx of pro-military Silicon Valley investors, inventors, and executives eager to build the most sophisticated weapons the world has ever known.

During his last term, the U.S. tech sector tiptoed skittishly around Trump; longtime right-winger Peter Thiel stood as an outlier in his full-throated support of MAGA politics as other investors and executives largely winced and smiled politely. Back then, Silicon Valley still offered the public peaceful mission statements of improving the human condition, connecting people, and organizing information. Technology was supposed to help, never harm. No more: People like Thiel, Palmer Luckey, Trae Stephens, and Marc Andreessen make up a new vanguard of powerful tech figures who have unapologetically merged right-wing politics with a determination to furnish a MAGA-dominated United States with a constant flow of newer, better arms and surveillance tools.

These men (as they tend to be) hold much in common beyond their support of Republican candidates: They share the belief that China represents an existential threat to the United States (an increasingly bipartisan belief, to be sure) and must be dominated technologically and militarily at all costs. They are united in their aversion, if not open hostility, to arguments that the pace of invention must be balanced against any moral consideration beyond winning. And they all stand to profit greatly from this new tech-driven arms race.

Trump’s election marks an epochal victory not just for the right, but also for a growing conservative counterrevolution in American tech that has successfullyrebranded military contracting as the proud national duty of the American engineer, not a taboo to be dodged and hidden. Meta’s recent announcement that its Llama large language model can now be used by defense customers means that Apple is the last of the “Big Five” American tech firms — Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Meta — not engaged in military or intelligence contracting.

Trump’s election marks an epochal victory not just for the right, but also for a growing conservative counterrevolution in American tech.

Elon Musk has drawn the lion’s share of media scrutiny (and Trump world credit) for throwing his fortune and digital influence behind the campaign. Over the years, the world’s richest man has become an enormously successful defense contractor via SpaceX, which has selling access to rockets that the Pentagon hopes will someday rapidly ferry troops into battle. SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet has also become an indispensable American military tool, and the company is working on a constellation of bespoke spy satellites for U.S. intelligence agency use.

But Musk is just one part of a broader wave of militarists who will have Trump’s ear on policy matters……………………………………………………………………………  https://theintercept.com/2024/11/17/tech-industry-trump-military-contracts/

November 20, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Restart of Three Mile Island tests US appetite for nuclear revival

Legal threats, skills shortages and regulatory challenges complicate reopening of plant at site of nuclear accident

Ft.com Jamie Smyth in Middletown, Pennsylvania, 17 Nov 24

A group of veteran community activists is planning legal action to block the reopening of Three Mile Island nuclear plant in a test of whether the American public will back an atomic energy boom financed by Big Tech and US taxpayers. Three Mile Island Alert, a group founded almost half a century ago to lobby for the closure of the plant in Middletown, Pennsylvania — site of the worst nuclear accident in US history — said it would challenge government licences required by operator Constellation Energy, which is targeting a restart in 2028.

 The legal threat is one of several obstacles facing the utility as it races to meet the terms of a 20-year power supply deal struck with Microsoft. The $1.6bn project could become a potent symbol of the revival of nuclear energy in the US.

Constellation must obtain numerous regulatory approvals, train hundreds of staff and upgrade equipment at a time when nuclear supply chains are stretched. It must also persuade the local community — and the incoming administration of Donald Trump — that the benefits of restarting the plant outweigh the risks.

“The restart is not going to happen by 2028: that is pure fantasy,” Eric Epstein, a 64-year old former history professor and chair of TMI Alert, told the Financial Times. “We haven’t even cleaned up Three Mile Island unit two, the site of the accident is still highly radioactive . . . and now we’re going to generate more nuclear waste. It’s disappointing and it’s manifestly unfair.”

TMI’s second reactor was closed in 1979 after a partial meltdown caused a radiation leak, prompting a chaotic response from then operator Metropolitan Edison Company and public authorities that dented public trust. The plant’s first reactor was shuttered in 2019 for economic reasons when the US shale revolution produced so much cheap gas that nuclear energy could not compete. 

Read more …………  https://www.ft.com/content/b90f6e21-bb8d-4606-9e5e-c4acb56b86ce

: Restart of Three Mile Island tests US appetite for nuclear revival

November 19, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Ultra-Conservative War Hawks Dominate Trump Cabinet

Trump quickly fills cabinet positions with Zionists, warhawks, and personal friends all unified under an ultra-conservative agenda and total loyalty to Trump

November 14, 2024 by Peoples Dispatch, https://peoplesdispatch.org/2024/11/14/ultra-conservative-war-hawks-dominate-trump-cabinet/

Peoples Dispatch has compiled a list of notable appointments below: 

Thomas Homan: “Border Czar”

Homan was the head of ICE during Trump’s first term, and has been selected to lead up Trump’s campaign promise to conduct mass deportations of 15 to 20 million people. Homan pledged at the Republican National Convention that he would “run the biggest deportation operation this country’s ever seen” and promised to “flood sanctuary cities” with agents to conduct mass arrests, and carry out massive raids targeting workplaces. He was given the “Presidential Rank Award” by Barack Obama in 2015 for his work in “enforcement and removal operations.” Obama himself was dubbed the “Deporter in Chief” by immigration activists for deporting more people than any president who came before him.

Stephen Miller: Deputy chief of staff for policy

Miller is another pick that signals that Trump is serious regarding his campaign promise to carry out the largest mass deportations in US history. Miller is the architect of the cruelest anti-immigrant policies of the first Trump administration, such as family separation, and a key bridge between the Trump administration and the “alt-right” fascist movement. Miller supports deploying military units of the National Guard to hunt down undocumented people, and advocates for the construction of massive camps to detain immigrants rounded up in raids.

Marco Rubio: Secretary of State

Trump’s choice of Florida Senator Marco Rubio for Secretary of State has surprised some who wanted to believe Trump’s campaign promise of “preventing World War III”. Rubio is a notorious warhawk, known for promoting an aggressive foreign policy approach towards countries that do not tip-toe around the US, including Iran, China, Russia, and Venezuela. Rubio’s appointment could be a test of whether the Trump administration will lean more neoconservative than promised or whether Rubio will be forced to toe a more isolationist foreign policy line.

Rubio, who is of Cuban descent, has a particular hostility towards the socialist state and is a key promoter of harsh sanctions against the island. Rubio has also attacked left-wing social movements within the United States, attempting to use the power of the state to harshly sanction the BDS movement and pro-Palestine and leftist organizations. 

Michael Waltz: National Security Adviser

US Army colonel and Florida Representative Michael Waltz is also a notorious warhawk, particularly on China and Iran. During Trump’s first administration, after he almost provoked war with Iran with his assassination of General Qassim Suleimani in 2020, Waltz was one of a small group invited to the White House to receive a briefing on the strike. 

Matt Gaetz: Attorney General

Trump loyalist and Florida Representative Matt Gaetz is a prominent figure in the ultra-conservative wing of the Republican Party, leading the charge to overthrow the more established Republican Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House—who was replaced with Mike Johnson in 2023. Gaetz, like Trump, is no stranger to scandal, being embroiled in a three-year long federal sex trafficking investigation that ended in 2023. 

Pete Hegseth: Secretary of Defense

Hegseth is a controversial Fox News host and military veteran, who is known for his advocacy on behalf of former members of the military who have been convicted of war crimes. This includes lobbying in defense of Navy SEAL Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher, who was accused of stabbing a teenaged prisoner of war to death and shooting a teenage girl and elderly man while deployed in Iraq. Since Trump picked Hegseth, his collection of right-wing tattoos has gotten some media attention, which includes a tattoo across his arm of the medieval crusader slogan “Deus Vult,” which translates to “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword,” and signals his political leanings towards the Christian far right.

Kristi Noem: Secretary of Homeland Security

Noem is the current Governor of South Dakota who’s known for her total loyalty to Trump. Noem’s deeply anti-migrant agenda has led her to claim that the “United States of America is in a time of invasion” as a consequence of immigrants “waging war against our nation.” Noem supported the Muslim ban during Trump’s first term because it would restrict refugees from “terrorist hotbed areas.”

John Ratcliffe: CIA Director

Ratcliffe was Trump’s director of national intelligence during his first term. This pick was praised by Republican Representative Mike Turner, who has accused fellow Republican colleagues of repeating Russian propaganda, for helping “counter the serious threats posed by China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.”

Tulsi Gabbard: Director of national intelligence

Trump’s pick of veteran and former Democrat Tulsi Gabbard as the pick to oversee 18 spy agencies has been welcome news to those more critical of the foreign policy establishment. Gabbard endorsed Trump last month, claiming that Trump would transform the Republican Party “back to the party of the people, and the party of peace.”

Steven Witkoff: Special envoy to the Middle East

Witkoff is a Zionist multi-millionaire real estate investor and close personal friend of Trump’s, with zero prior experience in politics in the Middle East/West Asia region. 

Mike Huckabee: Ambassador to Israel

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and ardent Evangelical Christian is likely to continue his long career of defending Israel in his new post. Huckabee once argued that there was “no such thing as a Palestinian” and recently claimed that the US would back an Israeli attempt to annex the West Bank. 

Elise Stefanik: United Nations ambassador

The conservative New York representative went viral for her role in orchestrating the downfall of several prominent university presidents, including former Harvard President Claudine Gay, over the accusation that these presidents were not repressing pro-Palestine students enough. Stefanik is viewed as one of the most prominent enemies of the student movement in the US. 

Lee Zeldin: Environmental Protection Agency Administrator

Trump’s pick of Zeldin as EPA Administrator signals that Trump is ready to make good on his campaign promise to attack key environmental protections that are one of the few ways the US government attempts to mitigate the effects of climate change. 

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy: Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)

The world’s richest person, who in many ways directly bought votes for Trump in key swing states such as Pennsylvania, has been promised a formal role in Trump’s administration alongside entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, through the new commission dubbed the Department of Government Efficiency (the acronym referencing an internet meme). DOGE is in many ways designed to help the ultra-rich including Musk slash through government regulations that may place a limit on power and profit.

November 17, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Trump’s Appointments Reflect a More Openly Hawkish Face of US Empire

In appointing Marco Rubio, Mike Waltz and Pete Hegseth to his administration, Trump emboldens volatile warmongers.

By Sam Rosenthal , Truthout, November 14, 2024

After mounting his comeback win against Kamala Harris, Donald Trump has already announced a slew of administration appointments. Compared to other presidents-elect, and to his own first term, Trump is ahead of the typical timeline in announcing these appointments, giving observers an earlier-than-usual view into how the second Trump administration could function, both in the domestic and foreign policy arenas.

On the foreign policy front, Trump will inherit several major international crises and tensions that Joe Biden has been unable to resolve during his time in office, chief among them Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, Russia’s war in Ukraine and escalating U.S. rivalry with China over Taiwan. Trump has already named several high-profile cabinet members who will shape much of his foreign policy and could oversee the consequential conclusions of those conflicts.

Marco Rubio, the senator from Florida, has been tapped for the coveted secretary of state position. Rubio is a well-known China hawk who has recently led the charge against TikTok and other Chinese-based tech companies, a stance that dovetails well with Trump’s promise to impose a 60 percent tariff on all goods exported from China. Beyond economic warfare, Rubio has called China the “threat that will define this century” and pushed repeatedly on known pressure points in U.S.-China relations, including the status of Taiwan.

Rubio — the grandson of Cuban immigrants who moved to the U.S. before the Cuban revolution but hated Fidel Castro from afar — is an ardent anti-communist who has argued vociferously against the legitimacy of the sitting governments in Cuba and Venezuela and supported devastating sanctions on both……………………

Rubio’s aggressive stance toward China will no doubt be compounded by Trump’s newly announced pick for national security adviser, Mike Waltz, currently a House representative from Florida. Waltz has pushed his anti-China rhetoric even farther than Rubio, …………………………………….

Arguably Trump’s most surprising pick so far has been his choice for secretary of defense. …………………………….. For his second term, in an apparent attempt to institute more accommodating leadership at the Pentagon, Trump has nominated Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host who served in Afghanistan and at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, to lead the Department of Defense.

During his time at Fox News, Hegseth has become known for advocating for leniency for military personnel found to have committed war crimes abroad while serving. Hegseth has no governmental experience whatsoever, nor has he served in any command role within the U.S. military…………………………..

During Trump’s last term, he encouraged the then-president to bomb cultural sites in Iran. As head of the Department of Defense, he might focus on internal house cleaning, seeking to remake the military into a more homogenous, more overtly male-dominated entity, with even less care for international law and a firmer belief in U.S. supremacy.

…………………………………………….Tulsi Gabbard, chosen as director of national intelligence……….. has also frequently trafficked in anti-Muslim rhetoric, repeating right-wing talking points about “radical Islamic ideology” that are often used to justify the criminalization and surveillance of Muslim communities…

………………………….Trump has also begun to announce high-profile ambassadorships. Among these early picks, the most consequential is likely to be his selection of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee to serve as U.S. ambassador to Israel. Huckabee, whose daughter, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, served as Trump’s press secretary in his last term, is well-known for his Christian evangelicism. …..

Huckabee’s pick as ambassador to Israel likely portends an even more openly hostile stance toward Palestinian human rights and comes with possibly apocalyptic consequences for the West Bank. Huckabee, an avowed Zionist (like President Biden), has long supported Benjamin Netanyahu. ……………………………………..  He has said that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are not illegal, contradicting the overwhelming consensus of international law experts…………………………..

Beyond that, though, Huckabee ascribes to a particular brand of Christian evangelical thought, rooted in the belief that the existence of modern Israel is ordained by God. Huckabee has close ties to Christian Zionist organizations, including Christians United for Israel (CUFI), one of the largest of its type in the U.S., which is already celebrating his nomination.

But Huckabee’s connection with Hagee and CUFI isn’t just alarming because of its founder’s overt antisemitism; Hagee is part of an extreme segment of the Christian Zionist tradition that believes that a cataclysmic war in Israel and Palestine will be the precipitating event for the second coming of the Christian messiah. Hagee and others in this line of thinking, therefore, encourage the hastening of violent conflict between Israel and its neighbors as much as possible.   Whether Huckabee himself is aligned with this particular strain of Christian Zionism is not clear, but his close connection with the broader movement, and with Hagee in particular, should be enough to raise the highest level of alarm about what policies Huckabee intends to support toward an Israeli state that is already deeply enmeshed in the bloodiest campaign of its entire existence.

It is not a foregone conclusion that all of these nominees will make it through the Senate confirmation process. Although Republicans now control the chamber, more moderate caucus members, or those with more traditional views of how the federal government should be run, might be hesitant to confirm some of Trump’s most unorthodox picks. Hegseth and Gabbard, in particular, could face strong headwinds. However, that is dependent on whether Republicans are willing to risk antagonizing Trump, who is infamous for his ability to hold and prosecute personal vendettas, at the outset of his second term. If these nominees are confirmed, they will comprise among the most unusual, and unpredictable, stewards of U.S. foreign policy that the country has ever had.

November 16, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Caitlin Johnstone: The Incoming Trump Administration Is Already Filling Up With War Sluts,

Caitlin Johnstone, Nov 12, 2024  https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-incoming-trump-administration?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=151534941&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Donald Trump has named Republican congressman Mike Waltz as his next national security advisor, a position that was held by ultrahawk John Bolton in the last Trump administration.

Like Bolton, Waltz is a warmongering freak. Journalist Michael Tracey has been filling up his Twitter page since the announcement with examples of Waltz’s insane hawkishness, including his support for letting Ukraine use US weapons to strike deep into Russian territory, criticizing Biden for not escalating aggressively enough in Ukraine, advocating bombing Iran, opposing the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan, and naming Iran, North Korea, China, Russia and Venezuela as “on the march” against the United States toward global conflict. The mainstream press are calling Waltz a “China hawk”, but from the look of things he’s a war-horny hawk toward all the official enemies of the United States. 

Trump has also confirmed that Republican congresswoman Elise Stefanik will be taking on the role of US ambassador to the UN, a role previously held by warmonger Nikki Haley in the last Trump administration. Again, there doesn’t seem to be much difference between the old hawk and the new one.

Stefanik is best known for her congressional efforts to stomp out free speech on college campuses, making a lie of Trump’s lip service to the importance of First Amendment rights. As explained by Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp, she’s a hawkish swamp monster whose political career was primed in some of the most odious neoconservative think tanks in Washington, and opposes placing any limits on US military support for Israel. Earlier this year Stefanik actually flew to Israel to give a speech before the Israeli Knesset vowing to help stop the “antisemitism” of protesters against Israel’s genocidal atrocities at American universities. 

And now we’re getting reports throughout the mass media that deranged war slut Marco Rubio has been tapped as Trump’s new secretary of state. It’s really hard to imagine anyone worse for the role of Washington’s top diplomat than a warmonger who has spent his entire political career pushing for more wars, sanctions and slaughter at every opportunity.

This should dash the hopes of Trump supporters everywhere that this time their guy really will end the wars and drain the swamp. Trump’s appointment of Iran hawk Brian Hook to help staff the State Department for the next administration and his rumored consideration of Mike Rogers for secretary of defense are likewise bad signs, as is Tucker Carlson’s claim that virulent China hawk Elbridge Colby is likely to play a role in the administration.

Trump’s anti-interventionist supporters loudly applauded the other day when he unexpectedly announced that Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley would not be playing a role in the next administration. In response to the announcement, libertarian comedian and podcaster Dave Smith said on Twitter that stopping Pompeo was not enough and that “we need maximum pressure to keep all neocons and war hawks out of the Trump administration.” In response to Smith’s post, Donald Trump Jr tweeted, “Agreed!!! I’m on it.”

When I saw this, I tweeted the following:

“Ignore their words and watch their actions. Been saying it for years, and I’m going to keep on saying it. Ignore their words, watch their actions. Talk, as they say, is cheap.”

Their actions are telling us a lot more than their words right now.

November 14, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Nuclear sector’s views on second Trump administration mixed as Rogan interview raises questions

Donald Trump enacted pro-nuclear policies during his first term and supported an “all-of-the-above” energy policy during the campaign, but some advocates fear a “divide between words and actions.”

Utility Dive, By Brian Martucci. 8 Nov 24

Dive Brief:

• President-elect Donald Trump in August vowed to “approve new drilling, new pipelines, new refineries, new power plants [and] new reactors” on “day one” of his administration.
• But Trump has more recently sounded skeptical about federal backing for large-scale nuclear builds like Vogtle, which he said in an Oct. 25 interview with podcaster Joe Rogan “get too big, and too complex and too expensive,” raising questions about his second administration’s willingness to support the industry.
• The nuclear sector has mixed views on the incoming administration’s potential support, with some expressing optimism that Trump would build on pro-nuclear policies enacted during the Biden and first Trump administrations and others concerned about a pullback in federal funding for advanced nuclear development.

Dive Insight:

The second Trump administration is likely to “pursue an overall domestic energy agenda focused on energy production and dominance in the United States” but may not continue the Biden-Harris administration’s “massive appropriations” to the nuclear sector, American Nuclear Society Director of Public Policy John Starkey said.

At least one prominent Trump ally, environmental lawyer and former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has an anti-nuclear track record. Kennedy, a Trump ally who is expected to have an official role in the incoming administration, fought for years to close New York’s Indian Point nuclear plant. More recently, he has voiced opposition to federal nuclear energy subsidies.

“We should have no subsidies … all the companies should internalize their costs in the way that they internalize their profits,” Kennedy told Tesla CEO and fellow Trump backer Elon Musk in an online discussion last year.

But the first Trump administration was broadly supportive of the U.S. nuclear industry……………………………………………………….

…………………………………..the incoming administration’s likely focus on reducing federal discretionary spending — Musk called for at least $2 trillion in spending cuts last month after Trump in September floated his appointment to a new “government efficiency commission” — “is a concern for a lot of potential customers” for advanced nuclear, said Jessica Lovering, co-founder and executive director of the Good Energy Collective, a pro-nuclear advocacy group. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/nuclear-energy-sector-mixed-views-second-trump-administration-joe-rogan/732

November 13, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Nuclear sector’s views on second Trump administration mixed as Rogan interview raises questions

Donald Trump enacted pro-nuclear policies during his first term and supported an “all-of-the-above” energy policy during the campaign, but some advocates fear a “divide between words and actions.”

UTILITY DIVE, By Brian Martucci, Nov. 8, 2024

Dive Brief:

• President-elect Donald Trump in August vowed to “approve new drilling, new pipelines, new refineries, new power plants [and] new reactors” on “day one” of his administration.
• But Trump has more recently sounded skeptical about federal backing for large-scale nuclear builds like Vogtle, which he said in an Oct. 25 interview with podcaster Joe Rogan “get too big, and too complex and too expensive,” raising questions about his second administration’s willingness to support the industry.
• The nuclear sector has mixed views on the incoming administration’s potential support, with some expressing optimism that Trump would build on pro-nuclear policies enacted during the Biden and first Trump administrations and others concerned about a pullback in federal funding for advanced nuclear development.

Dive Insight:

The second Trump administration is likely to “pursue an overall domestic energy agenda focused on energy production and dominance in the United States” but may not continue the Biden-Harris administration’s “massive appropriations” to the nuclear sector, American Nuclear Society Director of Public Policy John Starkey said.

At least one prominent Trump ally, environmental lawyer and former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has an anti-nuclear track record. Kennedy, a Trump ally who is expected to have an official role in the incoming administration, fought for years to close New York’s Indian Point nuclear plant. More recently, he has voiced opposition to federal nuclear energy subsidies.

“We should have no subsidies … all the companies should internalize their costs in the way that they internalize their profits,” Kennedy told Tesla CEO and fellow Trump backer Elon Musk in an online discussion last year.

But the first Trump administration was broadly supportive of the U.S. nuclear industry. It provided billions in loan guarantees to facilitate construction of Plant Vogtle units 3 and 4; supported the failed Carbon Free Power Project at Idaho National Laboratory, a proposed 462-MW plant that would have used NuScale’s small modular reactor technology; and advanced the pro-nuclear Partnership for Transatlantic Energy Cooperation, the Trump presidential campaign said in 2023.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….But the incoming administration’s likely focus on reducing federal discretionary spending — Musk called for at least $2 trillion in spending cuts last month after Trump in September floated his appointment to a new “government efficiency commission” — “is a concern for a lot of potential customers” for advanced nuclear, said Jessica Lovering, co-founder and executive director of the Good Energy Collective, a pro-nuclear advocacy group. 

…………………………….In addition, Trump has vowed to repeal Inflation Reduction Act tax credits for electric vehicles, offshore wind and other cleantech sectors. But the production tax credit benefiting many existing nuclear generators could be more durable given its bipartisan origins, Constellation Energy CEO Joe Dominguez suggested Monday on the company’s third-quarter earnings call.

……………………….. utilities are unlikely to invest in new large light-water reactor construction during the second Trump term without further federal policy support…………………  https://www.utilitydive.com/news/nuclear-energy-sector-mixed-views-second-trump-administration-joe-rogan/732407/

November 10, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA | Leave a comment