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Obama Makes Nuclear Compromise to Pass Clean Energy Bill
The Obama administration endorsed a revival of America's nuclear industry yesterday in an effort to build forward momentum for climate change legislation before the Senate.
Steam billows from the cooling towers at Exelon's nuclear power generating station in Byron, Illinois, in 2006. Climate change is rapidly expanding the size of the world's tropical zone, threatening to bring disease and drought to heavily populated areas, an Australian study has found.(AFP/Getty Images/File/Scott Olson) The seal of approval for nuclear power - a cause embraced by Republican senators - came on day one of a full-on lobbying effort by the White House for one of Obama's signature issues.
Obama sent four of his top lieutenants to the Senate - his secretaries of energy, interior, agriculture and the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) - to try to drum up support for a global warming bill.
The PR effort saw direct appeals to the farming and nuclear lobbies - some of the fiercest critics of Obama's clean energy agenda - with Steven Chu, the Nobel-winning energy secretary, calling for new nuclear plants to re-establish America's technological dominance in the world.
"I think nuclear power is going to be a very important factor in getting us to a low carbon future," Chu told the Senate's environment and public works committee. "Quite frankly, we want to recapture the lead on industrial nuclear power. We have lost that lead as we have lost the lead in many energy technologies and we want to get it back."
The endorsement of a nuclear revival - a generation after the last reactor was commissioned - suggests the Obama administration is open to further compromises as it seeks to find a path through the Senate. The House of Representatives narrowly passed a climate change bill late last month.
Republicans in the Senate, who are almost universally opposed to action aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, as well as Democrats from rust belt states, have been clamouring for a "nuclear renaissance" in America, which would see the construction of 100 new nuclear power plants by 2030.
The administration officials also tried to make inroads among the powerful farmers' lobby, saying they hoped the effort could help ensure passage of the bill through the Senate.
Yesterday's hearing marks the opening round of a second major push by the White House for Obama's climate and energy agenda.
Obama is in Europe where he hopes to persuade the G8 to commit to limiting global warming to 2C, and to persuade Russia to make its lumbering industries more efficient.
But the White House acknowledges it must also demonstrate American willingness by ensuring passage of a climate bill through both houses of Congress by December, when international climate change negotiations end in Copenhagen. It is widely believed that the international community will not sign up to action on climate change without evidence of US commitment.
The Democratic leadership in the Senate hopes to use the house bill as a template. It has pencilled in a schedule that would see the bill clear the committee process by mid-September and move to vote by late autumn.
But the way ahead is daunting. Despite the Democrats' 77-seat advantage in the house, the bill gained just 219 votes - one more than a bare majority - and the reform package had swollen to more than 1,427 pages. Much of that bloat was in the political sops to ensure the bill's support: concessions to farmers that ultimately damage the bill, protectionist measures to help heavily polluting industries - and even a hurricane centre in Florida.
The administration's case is also damaged by rising criticism of the bill, from environmentalists who say it does not go far enough as well as those opposed to any action.
Lisa Jackson, head of the EPA, stopped short of endorsing the package yesterday, saying: "It sends the right signal and you all in the Senate have work to do."
But she said the Senate had little choice, and that inaction on climate change could lead to America's global economic decline.
"Clean energy is to this decade and the next what the space race was to the 1950s and 60s and America is behind," Jackson told the Senate. "Governments in Asia and Europe are ahead of the United States in making aggressive investments in clean energy technology."
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Corporate welfare for the nuclear industry in this bill comes as no surprise considering that Rahm Emanual and Obama have recieved boatloads of campaign contributions from Exelon and other nuclear industry players.
Madness!
Lisa Jackson expresses concern that "lack of action will lead to America's global economic decline".
Subsidized nuclear power will accelerate America's global economic decline.
what the hell do we need all this electricity for? automatic butt wipers? artificial brains and eyes and bionic cocks? bigger flying robotic deathrays? tinier little robotic deathgerms? lifesized custom hologram generators for virtual sex and sightseeing? atom builders or remodelers? personal tasers?
could we ever use less?
how might one go through one's day, one's life, and enjoy it, without electricity?
I know some of you will answer: slaughtered by one's enemies...
what if we all tried it together?
Well, presently, I medically need electricity for my CPAP machine. Other than that, give me a lamp and some awesome books, and I'll live. But then there is the problem of preserving food beyond a day or two.
Solar, wind, wave and other relatively clean technologies can produce all of the energy needed. The economic viability of clean sources is diminished when the government uses taxpayers' money to subsidize expensive nuclear plants, uranium mines, processing facilities and disposal sites, all of which require a lot of fossil fuel to construct and maintain.
Yep.
What is the cost of a new nuclear plant INCLUDING decommissioning and eternal safe storage for the spent nuclear fuel?
What is the cost to build the solar power and wind power equivalents?
We can NOT discount the costs of decommissioning nuclear plants and storage of spent fuel, and, guess who gets to shoulder all of that non-productive cost.
Nuclear fueled production of electricity is the stupidest endeavor on the face of the planet. Warmongering governments like it though because it is an excellent source of plutonium for building nuclear weapons. And, I surmise, that if you dig to the very bottom of the issue, that is the answer you will find.
Absolutely we should use less! There is much waste with all our toys. But no electricity as enticing as that is... how could we communicate with each other as we are right now?
The proposition that nuclear energy is clean is completely preposterous, as the waste from nuke plants (and the plants themselves once their useful life has ended) is poisonous beyond belief with a half-life of at least 500,000 years. Both fossil fuels and nuclear energy are clearly much more dangerous than they are worth to the planet long term.
The US taxpayers will be providing great job security for workers in the nuclear industry for the next 500,000 years.
I was employed at an engineering firm during the 1990s that had contracts at nuclear waste sites at Rocky Flats CO and Hanford WA. Had I stayed with the firm I could have had job security for 500,000 years.
And we thought that with the people Obama put in place as advisors and cabinet members would be able to show him the light.
Ahem... "WE" did not think that.
Obama bought into the "clean coal" and "safe nuclear" propaganda last year so I'm not surprised at Obama's betrayal on siding with the mountaintop removal and nuclear weasals. The Republicans and Democrats in rustbelt and rural areas are also doing their constituents a total disservice of siding with Big Nuclear. There's no point in passing a new bill when the end result is more of the same or in fact worse.
On the bright side, Peak Oil followed by Peak Oil will make nuclear energy far more expensive than it artificially is today thanks to government subsidization. Nuclear energy guzzles up more water and fossil fuels and I don't think we can afford it.
Obama wanted nuclear all along. Even as a senator he was in bed with nuclear. He appointed Steven Chu as energy secretary, who went to bat for nuclear.
Nuclear power has zilch to do with saving energy, because over the nuclear life cycle a plant can eat more energy than it produces. Only by cutting a few safety corners can the plant turn an energy profit. How would you like to handle nuclear waste with a 10 foot pole, like they used to do in India? In the meantime, the plant requires a huge upfront energy expenditure, so the plant locks us into a global warming path quite successfully. The nuclear industry's paid boiler room bloggers will of course disagree with all of these views.
Just kill this bill. Without the bill, the EPA is legally required to regulate Carbon Dioxide and other greenhouse gases. With this bill, the EPA is relieved of that duty.
Steven Chu keeps proving his inability to identify solutions. He recently recommended painting roofs white to save energy.
While it makes sense to replace roofs with lighter color material when the existing roof wears out, painting the roof would be a conservation loser and add pollution.
I've been lobbying various officials, and I personally wrote Steven Chu and others, giving that particular example of geoengineering that doesn't involve an ecological disaster. No, it isn't really effective, but yes, it's been enacted by the State of California and it has a slight effect, so it's one better-than-nothing example of geoengineering.
I have something else in mind. I have a patent pending on a way to restore the original ice thicknesses of the Arctic and Antarctic ice packs, 10 square kilometers at a time. My method has few detrimental ecological effects. My devices run on wind. I estimate that a $10B total price tag would inhibit a runaway Arctic methane release, blunting the worst effects of global warming.
In this case, Chu is not proving his inability to identify solutions.
When Nuclear power is truly non-polluting and not just a way for some corporation to make money off the US taxpayers and the coal is actually clean, I will support this bill. Until then, It is a no-go for me. Coal is clean if it remains in the ground. Perhaps that is what they mean?? There is no such thing as clean nukes. All nuclear power plants and bombs need to be destroyed NOW. THey haven't figured what to do with the toxic waste from the old nuke plants - what the hell are they going to do with the stuff from more nuke plants? Make more DU bombs with which to kill more civilians and our soldiers and marines?
chu: "Quite frankly, we want to recapture the lead on industrial nuclear power. We have lost that lead as we have lost the lead in many energy technologies and we want to get it back."
what, chu, might those other "many energy technologies" be? wind? solar? certainly you don't expect any of us, most certainly me, to believe that you political whores would or could or should be a proponent for either of these technologies. gee, after my initial investment in wind turbines and solar panels you fuckers can build all the nuclear plants you want. i'll enjoy my monthly energy bill with its credit showing in the amount due column.
it is truly a sad state of affairs that this country continues to elect con artists to lead the sheople down the path of destruction. i'd scream wake up america, but it's really too late.
This nuclear deal is the Ultimate Double-cross by Obama.
It is high time for Obama to admit that Bubba Clinton and
the Bush Family sold out our industrial base to China in
the biggest doublecross yet to the working classes.
Clinton achieved what the Republicans have been wanting to do
for the past 70 years, destroy the working classes and kill
social security, and the unions. We are fast becoming a
third world country. The people in the State of Maine are
fast accepting the fall of the class, by being lured into
min wage jobs after the loss of the high paying jobs in the
Paper mills etc. Senator Collins is on record as being against
a Single Payer System, as proof that the public has been
programed to accept the lower class living.
Insurers will NOT insure nuclear power plants. They want no part of this, and insist that we have a single-payer program. This IS a weapon of mass destruction waiting to happen.
Obama gladly obliges.
Who are the representatives in Congress raising hell?
Corporate Media will pretend to object... maybe.
Can't fund Solar but we pour money into Corporate cronies' pockets!
Just as the US taxpayers are underwriting Obama's multi-trillion dollar bank and insurance company bailouts, US taxpayers are insuring nuclear power plants, whatever the cost ends up being.
That's the last straw.
Before they break ground on even one of these "new nukes", we could demonstrate the feasibility of Plan B--the non-nuclear, non-carbonaceous, solution to the "electricity crisis".
Contact AVEtec at http://vortexengine.ca and express your support and, if possible, pledge a contribution to fund the next stage of development.
All you Celebrities who are always expressing your concern about the future of the planet--it's time to stop talking and to step up and put your money where your mouth is.
The AVE-Force has the potential to CHANGE EVERYTHING!
Looks like fools are still in charge which is after all not surprising. Nuclear is dangerous, uneconomic and a horrible legacy for future generations. As seas rise with global warming what happens to all those nuclear power plants barely above sea level like those in Salem, NJ, for example?
The only way out is to reduce our population on a global basis by adopting a one-child per couple policy and reduce our energy consumption per capita. The other way out is to do business as usual and suffer strife, wars, famines and pestilence and human misery on a scale heretofore unknown.
As in the previous eight years, the GOP is making the decisions.
A two-fifths minority rules, and we can't do a thing about it.
The GOP doesn't have the only conservatives in Congress.
0 could veto the thing. Kucinich had the measure. This is no energy bill, and there's no way it should have passed.
Message: No gov't involvement in clean energy beyond what's necessary to stop it.
Resistance will have to move outside of legislation.
Okay, I'll go out on a limb, again, and propose that the core issue here is a concept called "entropy." For my entry into understanding this concept, I give you Henry & Brooks Adams' circa 1910 little book, "Degradation of the Democratic Dogma." For those of us on this site over 50 this little book is to my slender mind MUST reading, for it tells us what our elders' elders knew but never sent down to us except in a few valuable libraries.
To put the Entropy Issue into perspective as then viewed (and perhaps viewed today), the Earth System, recently called Gaia, is running out of energy to support Life. Henry Adams was in thrall to the huge size of dinosaurs as his generation had recently found them, and postulated that such huge animals with such small brains were not going to solve the problem of Entropy.
What is the "evolutionary purpose" of the human's big brain?
It is to make the Life Force FECUND.
Henry Adams was aware of Einstein, but at the time almost nobody envisioned what was coming.
As we contemplate a Congress and an Executive that seem to be promoting "nuclear energy" as a salvation against an overheating planet, perhaps we should review the physics and the chemistry of almost all nuclear cycles even down to individual dental X-rays. For example, let's start with the fact that nuclear power plants are designed, specifically, to GIVE OFF HEAT to drive steam powered turbines to convert the heat into electricity which loses efficiency over high-voltage long transmission lines (converting, again, to heat lost into the atmosphere). Etc.
Let's put it bluntly, and CALL OUT those corporations and "defense industrialists" who have used the "waste products" of nuclear power plants to create "depleted uranium" weapons which they have used against otherwise helpless people. These weapons do not merely CHANGE the genetic pool of all organisms: Do you really think that the destruction of the gene pool in Iraq will not, and is not, also contaminating us?
Oppenheimer was right to call upon the gods of India at seeing Trinity. He had helped create a Monster that it is now up to us to kill. By any means necessary to all species. Or do you want nuclear power to FLOWER as it consumes the Life Force?
Really, we have nothing to lose here but life as we know it, on our Planet. It is time for carefully scored Citizen Intervention. What is occurring in Washington and New York and Los Angeles is a collective psychosis and an IGNORANCE of our World. OTOH Los Angeles may be an exception... Hollywood.
We are being taken for suckers. It is time to rise up and Eat the State. And learn to digest it. Hard Times are acomin. Nuclear Power offers absolutely no solutions.
***
And speaking of expert pundits like Princeton Professors and others who use tautologies, could they please form a Truth Commission to at least discuss the War Crimes of the previous Administration, or would this commit the current Administration to indicting itself???
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Eat the rich, the poor are tough and stringy.... but don't you honestly believe that we've already overshot the cascade point and are just waiting for the downward curve?
I believe you are correct but its still going to be lots of fun monkey-wrenching those new nuclear plant construction sites. It's time to draw some lines in the sand.
"We're idiots babe/ It's a wonder that we still know how to breathe . . . "
nobodyknown replies:
"...but don't you honestly believe that we've already overshot the cascade point and are just waiting for the downward curve?"
I'm not sure what you mean by "cascade point," but it seems to contain the concept of "peak oil."
As for "...just waiting for the downward curve," I think we are in the midst of it, not waiting for it, while at virtually every theoretical and practical level the issue is NOT a matter of "resources," other than the lack of Political Will. We know how to enhance energy resources to make life more fecund, yet our government works to prevent it and instead wages war and turns olive and fig groves into desert.
We need a bloodless revolution but a Revolution nevertheless. The people now in charge---despite Obama's individual brilliance---ARE the small-brained dinosaur who think they are "too big to fail." It is probable that they are too big to succeed. Their implosion is now like that of a Black Hole, sucking all of us down into their redefinition of the Universe. Or, to mix metaphors, the only reason these dinosaurs have big heads is because they have big teeth, not big brains. They also have big tails that can thrash around and destroy big trees, and even mountaintops in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio. We Lilliputians need to first tie them down and then hold them to account. We really need a Truth Commission. [It might could start with the history of the so-called Korean War, which was an undeclared war that Ike ended as he promised to do. (The Last Real Republican...)]
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