Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, on climate and nuclear power
Georgia’s Presidential Primary: Biden And Sanders
On Climate WABE
Sanders and Biden agree that the U.S. should re-commit to the Paris Climate Agreement, the international accord that President Donald Trump is pulling the country out of. They also say the U.S. should be a world leader on climate change. And they have pledged to reject donations from the fossil fuel industry.
Both say that we need to make sure workers from, say, the coal industry, and their communities, aren’t left behind in a transition to cleaner energy sources.
They want to make big investments in infrastructure and in research and technology; they want to help get more electric vehicles on the roads, and improve railroads and public transit.
Timeline and Spending
Biden says he’d spend $1.7 trillion over the next ten years. Sanders proposes to spend almost ten times that amount, $16.3 trillion.
On the schedule side, Biden’s goal is net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
Different Tactics
Both candidates have extensive plans, and we’re not getting all the details in here. But here are some of the tactics where they begin to diverge.
Part of what Biden wants to invest in is carbon capture technology, to basically suck carbon dioxide out of the air and store it to help counteract emissions.
Biden wants to regulate natural gas much more strictly, and to ban new oil and gas leases on federal lands. And he’d encourage renewable energy development in those places.
Sanders wants to basically remake the country’s electric system.
He wants to expand government-run power authorities and have them generate electricity from renewable sources, to eventually drive coal- and gas-fired power plants out of business.
Beyond the regulations Biden is calling for on natural gas, Sanders wants to flat out ban fracking. He also wants to ban imports and exports of fossil fuels.
And Sanders calls carbon capture technology, which Biden supports, a false solution.
While Sanders is against all of it, Biden supports research on a new generation of smaller, cheaper nuclear reactors. And he doesn’t rule out continuing to use the existing ones. https://www.wabe.org/georgias-presidential-primary-sanders-and-biden-on-climate/
Joe Biden to encourage nuclear power, and Bernie Sanders is not all that anti nuclear
 Bernie’s nuclear plan, explained, By KELSEY TAMBORRINO Politico Newsletter 03/10/2020 BREAKING DOWN BERNIE’S NUCLEAR PLAN: Sen. Bernie Sanders has pledged to secure 100 percent of U.S. electricity from renewable sources by 2030, and he’d do so in part by ending new licenses to nuclear power plants. But his opposition to nuclear energy may not be as radical as his critics fear, Pro’s Gavin Bade reports this morning. Sanders’ campaign says he would not order the vast majority of existing reactors in the U.S. to shut down, and campaign aides privately acknowledge that Sanders will lack the tools to bring an end to nuclear power within the next decade.Sanders’ opposition to nuclear power stands in contrast to former Vice President Joe Biden, who promises to “identify the future of nuclear power,” including new waste disposal systems and small, modular reactors that the industry hopes will be safer and easier to deploy. The nuclear issue could affect upcoming Democratic primaries in states like Illinois, New Jersey, Ohio and Connecticut, where state nuclear subsidies keep plants running and employ thousands of union jobs. Sanders’ allies say the candidate would prioritize phasing out natural gas and coal-fired power before shutting any nuclear generators. The campaign declined to give further detail on how it would ensure nuclear plants are not replaced by gas, but emphasized Sanders’ call for a complete phase-out of fossil fuels and a ban on hydraulic fracking for gas. …..https://www.politico.com/newsletters/morning-energy/2020/03/10/bernies-nuclear-plan-explained-785957 |
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EXPERTS: NUCLEAR WEAPONS SHOULD BE FRONT-BURNER ISSUE IN 2020 RACE FOR WHITE HOUSE
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist Briefing Audience Told: “We Are Living in a World Where the Next President Will Decide if the Number of Nuclear Weapons Go Up or Down.”
CHICAGO, IL///March 2, 2020///Two leading experts raised serious concerns today about the lack of substantive discussion among U.S. presidential candidates about their plans for U.S. nuclear weapons and related threats around the globe. They noted that arms control agreements resulted in the number of nuclear weapons in the world being slashed from 70,000 to 14,000, with that progress now in danger of being reversed.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists briefing held one day before Super Tuesday included an appeal to both candidates and the news media to move nuclear weapons to the forefront of the 2020 elections.
Former Obama science adviser John P. Holdren said: “We live in a soundbite and Twitter culture. It’s difficult to express nuclear weapons threats in 240 words or an eight-second quote … We should be talking about embracing a no-first-use policy. We have much cheaper and safer ways to deal with conventional and biological attacks than using nuclear weapons and therefore launching a much wider nuclear war. That threat is not worth it. Candidates should be talking about their views on ‘no first use.’”
Holdren now is the Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Co-Director of the School’s Science, Technology, and Public Policy program, Professor of Environmental Science and Policy in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, and Affiliated Professor in the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science. Holdren also is Visiting Distinguished Professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, and Senior Advisor to the President at the Woods Hole Research Center, a pre-eminent scientific think tank focused on global climate change. From January 2009 to January 2017, he was President Obama’s Science Advisor and Senate-confirmed Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).
Alexandra Bell, the senior policy director at the Center for Arms Control & Non-Proliferation, said: “There are well over 4,000 nuclear weapons in the U.S. stockpile. Anyone running for President is asking the public to trust them … The next President is going to decide if we live in a world when the number of nuclear weapons is going up or going down. If we lose the (arms control) agreements, we are definitely headed to a world where that number is going up. That is why this should be a major issue in the 2020 election cycle.”
Previously, Bell served as a senior adviser in the Office of the Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security. She has also worked on nuclear policy issues at the Ploughshares Fund.
Holdren said that the issue of “no first use” was considered at length during the Obama Administration and that a decision was deferred in the President’s second term “on the assumption that Hillary Clinton would win” the 2016 election.
Bell noted that President Trump is the first U.S. president since John F. Kennedy to fail to initiate a major arms control agreement in their first term in office. She said: “Whoever the next person is to sit behind that Resolute Desk is going to having to deal with a number of issues that have been left behind to them.”
Both Holdren and Bell agreed that the news media (except for a handful of key outlets) are not paying enough attention to nuclear weapons issues. But they also agreed that it is incumbent on experts to find a way to talk about nuclear weapons that engages presidential candidates, elected officials, the media, and the public.
John Mecklin, editor-in-chief of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, moderated the expert panel discussion.
For more background information, see Nuclear Weapons Policy and the U.S. Presidential Election, an edition of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists available free online until March 31, 2020.
ABOUT THE BULLETIN OF THE ATOMIC SCIENTISTS
December 2020 marks the 75th anniversary of the first edition of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, initially a six-page, black-and-white bulletin and later a magazine, created in anticipation that the atom bomb would be “only the first of many dangerous presents from the Pandora’s Box of modern science.” The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ iconic Doomsday Clock was reset on January 23, 2020 to 100 seconds to midnight. www.thebulletin.org.
MEDIA CONTACT: Max Karlin, (703) 276-3255 and mkarlin@hastingsgroup.com.
EDITOR’S NOTE: A streaming recording of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ briefing will be available at www.thebulletin.org/nukes2020vote as of 5 p.m. CST/6 p.m. EST/2300 GMT on March 2, 2020.
Big climate change policy unlikely no matter who wins the White House
Big climate change policy unlikely no matter who wins the White House
Amy Harder Don’t hold your breath for big climate policy changes — even if a Democrat wins the White House.Why it matters: Congress is likely to remain gridlocked on the matter, leading to either more of the same with President Trump’s re-election or a regulatory swing back to the left no matter which Democrat wins — but far short of a legislative overhaul.
The big picture: Climate change is reaching a new high-water mark as a political concern for American voters, and Democratic presidential nominees are promising aggressive policies.
- That in and of itself is a sea change from prior elections. Even still, these worries and pledges are unlikely to translate into any major new laws in the next few years (at least).
Here’s why, with potential scenarios mapped out.
Trump wins re-election
While Trump is uniquely unpredictable in presidential history, he’s made it clear since moving into the White House that he’s not interested in pursuing any sort of actual climate legislation on Capitol Hill.
More of the same is most likely, in two important ways:
- More curtailing of environmental regulations — and defending them in court.
- More pressure on other actors — like companies, states and other countries — to take bigger action on their own as the void of U.S. presidential leadership grows.
Any Democrat wins
All Democrats have aggressive climate plans, but it’s an open question whether any would first push climate legislation over other priorities — especially health care………
Regardless of congressional priority, any Democratic president would swing Washington’s executive-action pendulum far back in the other direction. …..
A progressive Democrat wins
… like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. ……This type of all-encompassing and hyper-aggressive legislation is unlikely to get universal support among Democrats (to say nothing of universal Republican opposition) — which makes them extremely unlikely to get through the Senate.
- This is because Democrats with more moderate ideologies or those representing energy-intensive states are unlikely to support the broader socioeconomic measures and such aggressive moves away from fossil fuels, partly because many of those jobs are represented by unions……..
A more moderate Democrat wins
… like Joe Biden, Amy Klobuchar or Michael Bloomberg.
I anticipate these politicians would be (relatively) more open to trying to work with Republicans on climate change than their progressive counterparts……
As Congress talks climate policy, carbon price gets no love
New lobbying urging Congress to support a price on carbon emissions is not convincing lawmakers to warm up to the policy.
Why it matters: A carbon price is widely considered one of the most economically efficient ways to tackle climate change. But, economics be damned, its politics remain deeply unpopular. https://www.axios.com/climate-policy-changes-unlikely-7ecf6cc3-c42c-4d7c-b492-41d73433a015.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosam&stream=top
Trump is using Yucca Mountain to drum up Republican votes
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The waste problem continues to weigh down nuclear power
Trump is using Yucca Mountain to drum up Republican votes in the 2020 elections, Nevada Democrat says, By Benjamin J. Hulac Roll Call February 26, 2020
The U.S. has more than 90,000 metric tons of nuclear waste that needs to be disposed, the vast majority of which is so-called spent fuel from commercial reactors, meaning it is no longer efficient for power generation. Generally, all this waste is sitting where it was created: at 76 sites in 35 states. And while the tally of waste is only going to grow, there is no long-term national storage solution, and this month the Trump administration may have put the final nail in the coffin of a long-studied effort to build a permanent repository for high-level waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada…… President Donald Trump’s fiscal 2021 budget proposal released this month does not include funding for licensing of Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste repository located about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, an abrupt reversal of his administration’s policy. “Nevada, I hear you on Yucca Mountain and my Administration will RESPECT you!” Trump tweeted on Feb. 6, four days before the budget proposal was released. “Congress and previous Administrations have long failed to find lasting solutions — my Administration is committed to exploring innovative approaches — I’m confident we can get it done!” The president is using Yucca to drum up Republican votes in the 2020 elections, says Nevada Democratic Rep. Dina Titus. “I think he’s looking at the numbers,” Titus says. “He sees this as a swing issue.”……. There are more than 76 commercial reactors in the U.S. that are idling with spent nuclear fuel on site, NEI says. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 calls for waste to be stored deep in the ground, and amendments to that law bound the Department of Energy to study sites for such a repository in just one place: Yucca Mountain in the Mojave Desert. While the Bush administration greenlighted storage at Yucca, the Obama administration reversed course and established a commission, which, in 2012, called for a “consent-based” process to the problem. …… Nevada’s congressional delegation and governor firmly oppose Yucca……. An interim-storage pilot program worth $22.5 million and sponsored by Sens. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, and Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican, held some promise, but it was stripped out of the latest budget deal….. https://www.rollcall.com/2020/02/26/the-waste-problem-continues-to-weigh-down-nuclear-power/ |
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President Trump, eyeing the election campaign contradicts his administration on Nevada nuclear waste dump
One Side of a Nuclear Waste Fight: Trump. The Other: His Administration.
The president, eyeing the battleground state of Nevada, has made clear he opposes a nuclear waste site at Yucca Mountain, reversing a policy that was made in his name.
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Mr. Trump, who in recent weeks seemed to end his administration’s support for moving nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain, a proposal that had been embraced by his appointees for three years despite his own lack of interest
- “Why should you have nuclear waste in your backyard?” Mr. Trump asked the crowd at a rally in Las Vegas on Friday, to applause, noting that his recently released budget proposal did not include funding to license the site, as previous ones had. applause, noting that his recently released budget proposal did not include funding to license the site, as previous ones had.
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The story of the muddled and shifting position on Yucca Mountain is partly one of an administration focused on Mr. Trump’s re-election chances in a battleground state that he lost to Hillary Clinton by two percentage points in 2016. But it is also emblematic of a White House where the president has strong impulses on only a narrow set of issues, and policy is sometimes made in his name regardless of whether he approves of it. ………..
The president made his latest move after a monthslong policy debate inside the White House over finally breaking with support for Yucca, officials said…….
Nationally, Republicans have long favored the proposal, which was developed in the late 1980s and signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2002. But Nevada politicians of both parties have remained steadfastly opposed to the policy, which is deeply unpopular in the state…….
most Republican leaders outside of the state remained supportive. While the plans for Yucca remain law as set under Mr. Bush, Congress has never moved to fund it since…..
previous energy secretary, Rick Perry, supported the measure, and as the Office of Management and Budget listed $120 million in the president’s budget to restart the licensing process of the site. It was listed as one of the administration’s priorities. ……..
At a House energy subcommittee hearing two weeks ago, Mark W. Menezes, the president’s nominee for deputy energy secretary, prompted alarm at the White House when he said, “What we’re trying to do is to put together a process that will give us a path to permanent storage at Yucca.” After White House officials expressed concern, Mr. Menezes put out a statement saying that he fully supported Mr. Trump’s decision.
Whether that will be enough to reassure Nevadans about Mr. Trump’s intentions remains to be seen. “Nevadans aren’t going to just forget that Trump spent the first three years of his administration trying to treat the state as a dumping site,” said Rebecca Kirszner Katz, a former adviser to Mr. Reid. “Donald Trump had an opportunity to be on the right side of a major issue in a huge battleground state, and he bungled it.” https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/23/us/politics/trump-yucca-mountain-nevada.html
AT THE BEGINNING Before the 2018 midterm elections, Senator Dean Heller stood with President Trump in the glittering Trump International Hotel near the Las Vegas Strip, looking out from the top floor, and pointed.
“I said, ‘See those railroad tracks?’” Mr. Heller, a Nevada Republican who lost his seat later that year, recalled in an interview. Nuclear waste to be carted to Yucca Mountain for permanent storage would have to travel along the tracks, within a half-mile of the hotel, Mr. Heller said.
I think he calculated pretty quickly what that meant,” Mr. Heller said. “I think it all made sense. There was a moment of reflection, of, ‘Oh, OK.’” Whether the waste would have traveled along those particular tracks is a subject of debate. But the conversation appears to have helped focus Mr. Trump, who in recent weeks seemed to end his administration’s support for moving nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain, a proposal that had been embraced by his appointees for three years despite his own lack of interest. bungled it.” https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/23/us/politics/trump-yucca-mountain-nevada.html
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Trump jumping into Nevada’s nuclear waste dilemma
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President Donald Trump is seeking to woo Nevada voters by abandoning the GOP’s decades of support for storing the nation’s nuclear waste under a mountain northwest of Las Vegas — a move that could drag the White House into an unsolvable political stalemate. Trump, who is targeting a state that he narrowly lost to Hillary Clinton in 2016, announced the turnabout in a tweet this month, writing: “Nevada, I hear you on Yucca Mountain and my Administration will RESPECT you!” He also pledged to find “innovative approaches” to find a new place to store the 90,000 metric tons of nuclear plant leftovers stranded at 120 temporary storage sites — an impasse that is on course to cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars. The statement surprised people involved in the debate because developing a permanent nuclear repository at Yucca has long been a priority of Republicans, and even Trump’s own budget proposals in previous years had sought money to keep it alive. Taxpayers spent $15 billion developing the nuclear site after Congress selected the location during the Reagan era, only to see the Obama administration freeze the plan amid opposition from the state’s political leaders. Trump’s Yucca reversal echoed his previous efforts to untangle a political food fight involving the federal ethanol mandate, an attempt that left both gasoline refiners and Iowa’s corn growers furious. Once again, Trump could face political risks by intervening in a politically charged, no-win energy quagmire.
Some lawmakers also fear that Trump is undermining their efforts to work out a compromise in which some states agree to host a small number of interim waste storage sites while the search for a long-term solution continues. “Not working on a permanent repository is going to make it harder to do consent-based interim storage, ’cause all of a sudden those communities are going to be going, ‘s—, we’re going to become permanent storage,’” Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), a senior House appropriator who has long-championed the Yucca project, told POLITICO. “It’s a no-win situation for anybody, that doesn’t seem to change,” said Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety for the Union of Concerned Scientists, which is neutral on Yucca but supports building a repository somewhere. Further complicating the problem, he said, was a 1982 law that prohibits the Energy Department from spending money building interim nuclear storage unless it has a construction license for Yucca Mountain. Like Iowa, where Trump championed the ethanol program while running in the 2016 Republican caucus, Nevada is a key state on the electoral map. Hillary Clinton carried the state four years ago by just 27,000 votes. ……… https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/22/trump-nevada-nuclear-waste-yucca-mountain-116663 |
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Democratic presidential candidates not well informed on nuclear weapons
2020 Dems Need To Get Up To Speed on Nuclear Weapons. Fast. https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2020/01/democratic-presidential-candidates-need-get-speed-nuclear-weapons-fast/162577/ Last week, U.S. voters had two opportunities to inspect the leading Democratic presidential candidate’s national security credentials. In both the Democratic debate in Iowa and the New York Times editorial board’s interview series, candidates were asked to explain their views on key aspects of nuclear weapons policy. Unfortunately, all three of the leading candidates flubbed some of their responses. For the existential sake of the country, the candidates need to get up to speed on nuclear weapons policy. Fast.
- Despite being a leader on a number of nuclear weapons issues, including a promise to commit the United States to a No First Use doctrine, Sen. Elizabeth Warren seemed unaware of the controversial existence of U.S. nuclear weapons in Turkey. Even though the issue made headlines as recently as October.
- Despite giving an answer that spoke eloquently of his long abhorrence of nuclear weapons, Sen. Bernie Sanders did not seem to know how many countries have nuclear weapons. The number is nine, not the eleven or twelve the senator claimed.
- Despite his compelling recent defense of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal he helped obtain, Vice President Joe Biden seemed to mischaracterize President Trump’s North Korea policy. Speaking of the North Koreans at the Democratic debate, he said the President “weakened the sanctions we have against them.” CNN’s fact-checkers soon rebuked the Vice President. As they put it, “Trump has not weakened the sanctions his administration has placed on North Korea to date, and has in fact ratcheted them up from the Obama administration.”No one is perfect, but these mistakes matter for several reasons. Nuclear weapons are the most acute national security threat we face. From Iran to North Korea, South Asia to Russia, they are still drivers of major international dangers. Any lack of clarity on such a grave topic should be alarming. But there are also more specific implications of each of the candidate’s misstatements. With tensions between the U.S. and Turkey increasing on a number of fronts, the question of whether to keep basing U.S. nuclear weapons at Incirlik is a serious one, especially when one considers that Turkey might attempt to steal them.
- With the 2020 Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference looming, the question of how many countries have nuclear weapons is a crucial barometer for judging the success of that agreement. And by criticizing nonexistent sanctions relief, Vice President Biden ignores the real failure of the Trump administration’s North Korea policy, which has been its inability to translate summitry into productive diplomacy.Clearly, the country should expect better on this important issue from the leading Democratic candidates. Moreover, it is also to the candidates’ electoral benefit to get up to speed on nuclear weapons policy.
- First, the candidates should remember that the emerging consensus within the Democratic Party on nuclear weapons issues is politically popular. All three aforementioned candidates support a No First Use policy, as do 57 percent of voters in Iowa and 73 percent of voters in New Hampshire. All three support extending key arms control agreements with Russia, like New START. They are in the company of eight in ten registered voters, including over 75 percent of Republicans. And all three prefer the diplomacy of the Iran nuclear deal to starting another endless war in the Middle East – as do the American people.
- Second, nuclear policy issues are frequently used as ‘gotcha’ questions by the media. The media will keep asking questions on nuclear policy and it’s important for candidates to be ready. For instance, during the 2016 primaries the media infamously tripped candidate Trump up with a ‘gotcha’ question on the nuclear triad. Trump took the hit but recovered in the general election, by which time he had learned his way to a more coherent responseThird, nuclear issues simply aren’t going away. With tensions high from South Asia to the Korean Peninsula and Iran, the candidates will likely need to address a nuclear-related foreign policy crisis soon. Such moments can be politically decisive – there’s no faster way to solidify support than by handling a crisis well; it was only in the heat of the financial collapse of 2008 that Sen. Obama’s lead over Sen. McCain solidified. Candidates should do their homework in advance of such a moment.The three front-runners have each made important contributions to preventing the use and spread of nuclear weapons, although voters could use more policy specifics. Unlike some of their competitors, they have also had the courage to answer pressing questions about nuclear weapons. But with the Iowa caucus just days away, they need to do more.
Akshai Vikram is the Roger L. Hale Fellow at the Ploughshares Fund, a global security foundation. Before coming to Ploughshares, he worked as an opposition researcher for the Democratic National Committee and a campaign staffer for the Kentucky Democratic Party
Ask presidential candidates about nuclear and climate issues, says former energy secretary Moniz
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Former energy secretary urges voters to ask about nuclear issues
– 26 Jan 2020 Conversations at town halls around New Hampshire have been focused on domestic policy, like the job market and health insurance. At a forum Monday, Ernst Moniz, who served as energy secretary under former President Barack Obama and is now CEO of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, will try to convince New Hampshire voters to look beyond those kitchen table issues, and ask presidential primary candidates about nuclear weapons “The bread-and-butter issues if you like—the economy, health care, education—are typically a major focus at this time of the political season, Moniz said Saturday. Voters are typically less worried about foreign policy and security issues like nuclear weapons. “Unfortunately, catastrophic risks for our society and future gens are very, very considerable.”
Moniz said he hoped Monday’s forum would spur voters to think about nuclear proliferation when they talk to candidates, as much as kitchen table issuse. New Hampshire voters can shape candidates, he said. With the history of the political tradition in New Hampshire, where I think priorities for candidates can be shaped, we are hoping to bring those issues to the attention of the New Hampshire voters. In an interview Saturday, Moniz spoke about what he saw as a growing potential for accidents and miscalculations to be made with nuclear weapons. “Especially in the context of the current international geopolitical situation,” Moniz said, citing tensions with Russia and uncertainty in the Middle East. International treaties have a strong role to play in arms control, Moniz said, and he hopes whoever wins the 2020 election will take those treaties seriously. A treaty with Russia known as New START is due to be renewed in the next president’s term, Moniz said. “If we do not, we will have upended the entire hierarchy of nuclear arms control,” he said. If New Hampshire voters want to ask about these issues, Moniz said, it could impact how much attention is paid to nuclear weapons during the 2020 election. He recalled the 2004 election, when Nuclear Threat Initiative activists raised the specter of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorist groups. He said that issue became critical in the 2004 election.
Moniz said this year, he would ask candidates what they would you do to re-starting dialogue between the Russia and the United States nuclear weapons, what they would do to stabilize North Korea, how they would protect against cyber attacks that could affect the United States’ early warning systems “If the New Hampshire voters are asking these questions, if the media are putting these questions out in front and getting responses from the candidates, that raises those issues in the priorities of these candidates,” he said. “This is the right time in places like Iowa and New Hampshire, where the people the voters are so much closer to the candidates. They do in fact have influence in how these issues can be talked about now and addressed over the next several years. Moniz will speak at 6:30 p.m. Monday at Southern New Hampshire University, in the Hospitality Center Salon Rooms. Register online at https://wacnh.org/event-3673124. |
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Fact check: Amy Klobuchar falsely claims Iran is ‘announcing’ it will develop a nuclear weapon https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/07/politics/fact-check-klobuchar-iran-nuclear-weapon/
Elizabeth Warren caves in to the nuclear lobby. Bernie Sanders stands firmly anti nuclear
‘We need to keep some’: Warren backtracks on nuclear power plants, Washington Examiner, by Josh Siegel, December 19, 2019 Elizabeth Warren would keep existing nuclear plants online to combat climate change, she said at Thursday night’s presidential primary debate, marking a shift in her position on an issue that has divided the Democratic field……..
Warren’s liberal rival Bernie Sanders is perhaps the most skeptical of nuclear, citing concerns about storing nuclear waste, and the high cost of building new plants, in opposing it.
Tom Steyer, the billionaire environmentalist, seemed to echo that position at Thursday night’s debate, saying nuclear costs too much and presents too many risks.
Magical thinking of the nuclear lobby as it jumps on the Green New Deal bandwagon
Unfortunately, the case for nuclear as a green technology is not so simple—the technology faces a spate of environmental and economic challenges, while its track record as a bridge fuel shows it may be more rivalrous than concomitant with renewables. In fact, it may be the nuclear industry that needs the Green New Deal, not the other way around.
For as long as it’s existed, nuclear has been an aspirational technology as much as an extant one
the magical thinking of the nuclear industry has taken different forms. Over decades, breeder reactors, salt reactors, large-scale fusion have all been the nuclear future just over the horizon. “The industry that people talk about is a theoretical industry,” says Jaczko. “The actual industry is not that.”
So the enthusiasm for the public investment of the Green New Deal is primarily a tactical one, with the promise of a massive outlay of public funds enticing an industry in need of a lifeline.
The Tantalizing Nuclear Mirage, Many see nuclear power as a necessary part of any carbon-neutral mix. The reality isn’t so simple. The American Prospect, BY ALEXANDER SAMMON DECEMBER 5, 2019
It took seven months on the campaign trail for Cory Booker to emerge as the Democratic Party’s foremost champion of nuclear power. In September, after he unveiled a signature climate plan replete with “$20 billion dedicated to research, development and demonstration of next-generation advanced nuclear energy,” he embraced the technology with unprecedented ardor. “I didn’t come to the United States Senate as a big nuclear guy,” Booker told Grist in an interview. “But when I started looking at the urgency of climate change … nuclear has to be a part of the blend.”
To hear Booker tell it, his evolution on the subject was the product of scientific rigor and anti-ideological clarity on decarbonization. He related this narrative during a media blitz, comparing anti-nuclear Democrats to Republican climate deniers over their rejection of an incontrovertible science, while pledging to usher in a nuclear future that no right-minded person could deny. “Where the science is going, to me, at first sounded like science fiction … new nuclear actually portends of exciting things where you have no risk of the kinds of meltdowns we’re seeing,” he proclaimed at CNN’s climate town hall.
Grandiosity aside, Booker isn’t alone in his nuclear embrace. He’s part of an unlikely pro-nuclear political alliance, an emergent accord that spans the centrist think tank Third Way, Andrew Yang, Jay Inslee, environmental activists, and progressive commentators alike. “The left should stop worrying and learn to love existing nuclear power plants,” wrote New York’s Eric Levitz in a subsequent send-up of Bernie Sanders’s and Elizabeth Warren’s twin commitments to phase out the technology.
In a world where the rapid deployment of zero-carbon energy production is urgent, nuclear power, the argument goes, represents the only proven bet.
……..With 11 years, per the U.N.’s 2018 IPCC report, to overhaul our energy system, to be serious about decarbonization is to find a place at the table for nuclear.
It’s an alluring idea. Already, this logic has been embraced in states like Ohio and Booker’s New Jersey, which have been allocating green tax subsidies to nuclear projects. And while it’s largely played out in the background, the question of what to do about nuclear has vexed Green New Dealers since the rollout of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s framework in February. While plane travel and hamburgers raised hackles in the press, one of the first clauses to be deleted from the initial proposal pledged to phase out the technology altogether.
So does the Green New Deal need nuclear to achieve its lofty goals? Does zero-carbon energy infrastructure necessitate a nuclear buildout, or at least an embrace of already-existing nuclear as a bridge fuel, as countries like Sweden have done? Unfortunately, the case for nuclear as a green technology is not so simple—the technology faces a spate of environmental and economic challenges, while its track record as a bridge fuel shows it may be more rivalrous than concomitant with renewables. In fact, it may be the nuclear industry that needs the Green New Deal, not the other way around.
DESPITE THE NEWFOUND exigency of overhauling the country’s energy mix, this is not the first time America’s energy system has arrived at a crossroads in the last ten years, nor is it the first time nuclear has been trotted out as its last, best hope. In the late aughts, with oil prices soaring and production stagnant, policymakers made a commitment to expanding American nuclear generation. An era of so-called “nuclear renaissance” began, with four next-generation reactors commissioned at two plants, one in Georgia and the other in South Carolina.
Now, over a decade later, that project managed to bankrupt its construction company, Westinghouse, nearly taking down the entire Toshiba conglomerate, Westinghouse’s parent company, with it. The two reactors in South Carolina were abandoned, while the Southern Nuclear and Georgia Power utility companies assumed control of the remaining two reactors in Georgia, the Vogtle 3 and 4. But even a cash infusion from Georgia ratepayers, who began subsidizing the completion of the project in 2011, was not enough to keep the project close to its budget or timeline. Initially expected to come online in 2016-2017, the Vogtle plant has run some $14 billion over budget. Its completion dates have been deferred to 2021-2022. There’s currently no other active nuclear development in the United States.
That timeline should be particularly alarming for nuclear enthusiasts………
WHEN DID NUCLEAR get this environmental rebrand? Until very recently, the industry hadn’t led with its environmental chops. In fact, for years, nuclear buddied up with the coal industry, courting the Trump administration for subsidies, while the Nuclear Energy Institute supported the Department of Energy’s failed coal and nuclear bailout, and lauded Ohio’s controversial coal and nuclear subsidy package earlier this year.
For as long as it’s existed, nuclear has been an aspirational technology as much as an extant one. Since Eisenhower first announced nuclear energy generation as a civilian project in 1953, its promises of worldwide abundance have far outpaced its production. Twenty years later, in 1973, Richard Nixon pledged to have 1,000 nuclear plants online by 1980, a goal that never approached realization. Since then, the magical thinking of the nuclear industry has taken different forms. Over decades, breeder reactors, salt reactors, large-scale fusion have all been the nuclear future just over the horizon. “The industry that people talk about is a theoretical industry,” says Jaczko. “The actual industry is not that.” Since the development of nuclear weapons, the non-military nuclear energy program has always been a PR charge as much as it was a serious proposal. “Historians have determined that the rollout of civilian nuclear power in the 1960s had as much to do with Cold War PR as the need for electricity,” says Brown.
Nuclear’s pivot to unlikely environmental champion and running mate of the Green New Deal is far from a happy accident. It’s a deliberate posture, informed as much by shrewd marketing as Booker’s data-driven rationale. With the rapid development of solar and wind, nuclear is now far more expensive to produce in terms of dollars per kilowatt hour. With the rapid growth of renewables, nuclear now finds itself on the wrong side of free-market forces, in dire need of public subsidy to stay afloat.
So the enthusiasm for the public investment of the Green New Deal is primarily a tactical one, with the promise of a massive outlay of public funds enticing an industry in need of a lifeline. “Of course the nuclear industry is trying new alliances; they are desperate.” says Bill Snape, senior counsel at the Center for Biological Diversity. Cutting them in would be an unforced error for GND legislation—the money that would be spent making nuclear viable, shielding it from an array of climate disasters, and figuring out what to do with its waste would be much better spent figuring out battery storage or something else to stitch in the gaps in renewable generation.
Looking closer at Booker’s proposal, it’s not clear even he believes the sales pitch he’s making. Despite his lofty pronouncements, the climate plan, which sums to $3 trillion, allocates just two-thirds of 1 percent to nuclear development. The $20 billion is barely enough to cover the cost overruns of the two reactors at Georgia’s Vogtle plant. The notion that such a paltry sum would finally put the industry over the top after decades of malaise, indeed, sounds like science fiction. https://prospect.org/greennewdeal/the-tantalizing-nuclear-mirage/
Support candidates in 2020 who will work for nuclear disarmament
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Support candidates in 2020 who will work for nuclear disarmament, https://www.thetimesnews.com/opinion/20191202/letter-support-candidates-in-2020-who-will-work-for-nuclear-disarmament?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter Anne Cassebaum It was good to hear Mikhail Gorbachev given some air time to speak of the unspoken. Current tension and permanent war, he warned, make the danger of nuclear weapons “colossal.”Nuclear weapons rarely make the news; recent worry about ours in Turkey was fleeting, so the danger is pushed back in many Americans’ consciousness. The result: Pentagon spending balloons, and the Trump administration carries forward President Obama’s plan to modernize our nuclear forces.
Modernization may sound good and even inevitable; it is neither. In fact, it will set off a new arms race of smaller nuclear weapons that are, imagine, “more usable.” And smaller means reduced to Hiroshima and Nagasaki-sized bombs that killed more than 200,000 people. The price tag for this 30-year modernization is $1.2 trillion and rising. The beneficiaries will be weapons producers, such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing, for whom the Pentagon budget acts as an ATM, as one researcher quipped. We could be pursuing disarmament treaties and diplomacy. Money siphoned for endless oil wars and weapons buildup could instead create jobs in green energy and deal with climate change, which, like radioactivity, respects no borders. Any nuclear exchange would be a climate crisis of its own. As Gorbachev put it, ” … nuclear weapons should be destroyed. This is to save ourselves and our planet.” The 2020 elections offer a time to consider candidates who see a new arms race as insanity, not security.
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US presidential candidate Deval Patrick’s ignorance about nuclear weapons
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Deval Patrick: the latest presidential candidate to be uninformed on nuclear weapons, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, By John Krzyzaniak, November 20, 2019 Deval Patrick, the former governor of Massachusetts, became the latest latecomer to the 2020 presidential campaign when he entered the fray last week. At the time of this writing, he does not have very many clear policy positions, or even a campaign website. But anyone running for president—even someone who’s still on the honeymoon period of his announcement—should expect to be asked tough policy questions, especially on important issues like nuclear weapons. Was Patrick prepared? Well, not really……….
Overall, Patrick is woefully uninformed about what is a hugely important—dare I say existential—issue. But he’s not alone: A whole slew of 2020 candidates have either pleaded ignorance on certain nuclear policies or given answers that were borderline incomprehensible. In 2016 things were hardly different. In a debate with Hillary Clinton, then-candidate Donald Trump made two contradictory statements on this issue in almost the same breath, saying both that he would “certainly not do a first strike” and that he “can’t take anything off the table.” The next Democratic presidential debate is on Wednesday evening. If we’ve learned anything from the debates, it’s that disproportionate attention to one or two issues, such as healthcare or immigration, has driven candidates to put serious thought into their own stance on those issues. If the moderators can carve out 10 minutes for a question or three on America’s nuclear weapons policies, it would mark a welcome change. https://thebulletin.org/2019/11/deval-patrick-the-latest-presidential-candidate-to-be-uninformed-on-nuclear-weapons/ |
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Senator Elizabeth Warren questions Holtec Exemption from Emergency Planning Requirements at the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station
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Senator Warren Statement on Holtec Exemption from Emergency Planning Requirements at the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/senator-warren-statement-on-holtec-exemption-from-emergency-planning-requirements-at-the-pilgrim-nuclear-power-station 4 Nov 19, Boston, MA – United States Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) released the following statement today following news federal regulators at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) plan to exempt Holtec International from emergency planning regulations as the firm works to decommission the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station:
“I’m disappointed to learn Holtec will be exempt from important emergency preparation and planning safeguards as it decommissions the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station,” said Senator Warren. “The Southeastern Massachusetts community has rightly continued to raise important questions about the plant’s decommissioning and they deserve answers, not more strong-arming.”
In October 2018, Senator Warren raised concerns about safety and lack of public input during Pilgrim’s shutdown last year and raised similar concerns regarding communications with local residents in her statement. In August 2019, she called for community concerns to be addressed before Pilgrim was allowed to change hands from Entergy Nuclear Operations, Inc. to Holtec.
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