What anti-nuclear power groups in the US have any political power?

Great Debates
1

This might be a GQ question, but I figured it would end up being a debate anyway.

I was watching a debate between Steven Pinker and Paul Krugman and they both came out strongly pro-nuclear power. Basically, nuclear power has to be part of any solution to trying to minimize the effects of climate change. Those guys are both pretty lefty, Krugman more than Pinker, I guess.

I hear on this board that it’s those darn liberals that are anti-nuke power, but this board is pretty strongly pro. Is it Democrats? I don’t think so, and in any case, the Democrats were out of power in the Senate and House for a while. The Obama administration was pro-nuclear power (cite) as part of a clean energy strategy. I’m sure the Trump administration is fine with nukes.

More lefty liberals than we have on this board may be opposed, but they’ve never had any real political power in the US. Greenpeace is (stupidly) opposed to nukes, but they really don’t have a foothold here.

So, I’m left wondering – why isn’t nuclear power expanding here? Both parties seem to be OK with it, the Republicans pro and the Democrats either pro or indifferent. The presidents, current and former, seem to be pro.

I almost have to come to the conclusion that maybe it’s not that efficient or easy to expand. With no strong anti-nuke presence here with any political power, and actually quite friendly administrations and legislatures, there must be efficiency, cost, competitive, or other reasons why it’s not flourishing. Maybe NIMBY? Lots of pro-nuke people, as long as it’s somewhere else? Is there some political constituency that I’m missing? Big anti-nuke?

2

NIMBY would be my guess.

3

I think this is one of those few issues that really is “both sides do it”. Many Democrats are opposed to nuclear power because of irrational fears of environmental damage. Many Republicans are opposed because of irrational fears of terrorism and proliferation. And of course, NIMBY applies to all political parties.

4

This is new to me. Could you name one Republican politician who thinks this or a handful of Republican voters?

Nuclear power plants are expensive. It’s not necessarily the direct cost of the plant. That is a calculable number. The regulatory cost requirements are not as easy to calculate.

The last nuclear plant in my state went so over budget that they simply stopped building it and went with a conventional power plant.

If global warming were ever to rise to a political level (beyond sound bites) it would be easy enough to fast-track the process. There are a number of new designs that take into consideration any shortfalls of older designs. They need to be able to move forward without endless environmental studies and court challenges,

5

I don’t understand why the Republicans, for example, didn’t try to ease the way and reduce the regulatory hurdles when they had the House, Senate, and a sympathetic president in Obama, or during the first two years of the current term. Or, even under GWB. That is, if they are really serious about supporting it.

Trump has overturned rules and regulations that were making coal less attractive - where’s the love for nuclear?

There doesn’t seem to be a real pro-nuclear constituency, other than people on the internet. Or, it really just is too expensive.

6

Anybody else here remembers when nuclear power was supposed to be “too cheap to meter”?

7

I certainly remember when it was going to be too cheap to meter.

Getting back to the OP, there are a couple of issues. Chernobyl and the Japanese disaster showed that nuclear power is safe only when subject to real regulatory oversight and Republicans are strongly opposed to that. Look at them allowing the pork produces to monitor safety of their product. Second, there is the question of nuclear waste disposal, which has not really been faced (partly NIMBYism of course). There is a solution to that. What are called traveling-wave reactors, a totally different design. It would produced a smaller quantity of relatively short-lived (half lives in the tens of years, instead of the hundreds of thousands), would produce about ten times the power from a given charge of uranium, and, best of all, can be charged with the waste from standard reactors.

So why aren’t they being built? A couple reasons. As a new design, they would have to be designed and built at the beginning of the learning curve and also closely studied for safety issues. New design, new approval process. Second, the military is opposed because they want a ready source of plutonium for more bombs.

I have read somewhere the suggestion that the Chinese are undertaking this design challenge. It used to be you would look to the US for innovation.

8

Greens and other environmentalist whackos are what is stopping nuclear energy, and they are all lefties or progressives. Democrats are afraid to stand up to the greens. It’s easier to indulge in fantasies about solar power than actually address the problem of AGW, which is why we aren’t going to do much about AGW except point fingers after the fact.

Regards,
Shodan

9

That’s why the Republicans who controlled Congress for the past nine years (until this past January) put in laws help establish Nuclear power plants. They seem to be popping up all over in particular in those 21 states where Republicans hold the governorship and both houses in the legislatures. Let’s see there’s Tennessee’s Watts Bar Unit 2, which began operation in June 2016 and … oh that’s it since 1996.

10

Cite, please?

My point is that the Greens, etc., don’t have any real political power. Coal is being deregulated, federal lands are being opened up for exploration - are the Greens and other environmentalist wackos not opposed to that?

I hope your cite will be better than the one supposedly showing how crime was lower in the good old days - if it’s not too much trouble, please quote the relevant parts of the cite if possible. Thanks in advance.

11

Nuclear plants are too expensive because of all the safety regulations, etc. I’m not downplaying the importance of strong safety regulations, but nobody wants to be the one to say “OK, that’s safe enough, I oppose this new safety reg that you want to add.” Bad optics no matter what side you’re on.

Then there’s the perception that the nookular takes jobs away from honest hardworking coal miners, and gives them to egghead academic elites.

Then of course there’s NIMBY.

12

If you want to see who supports and who opposes nuclear power in government, here’s GovTrack’s list of nuclear power bills:

GovTrack.com list of bills regarding nuclear power

I can tell you that the vast majority of ‘pro-nuclear’ bills are proposed by Republicans, while the bills that would impose new regulations or costs on nuclear power come primarily from Democrats.

This is in accordance with what I’ve seen my entire life. I’ve been fighting for nuclear power since the 1980’s, and the opponents at a national level are always on the left. You do get some bipartisan NIMBYism in local issues, but all the organizsed opposition is on the left. Greenpoeace, the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, Dr. Helen Caldicott’s bunch, the Union of Concerned Scientists and other large anti-nuclear groups are all on the far left. The anti-nuclear movement itself got a big boost when a bunch of Hollywood lefties made “The China Syndrome” to scare people.

The anti-nuke positions of the left really hardened in the 1970’s and 1980’s when they coincided with the international ‘peace’ organizations and the nuclear freeze movement. Anything nuclear was considered to be bad. Around this time Jimmy Carter signed an executive order banning fuel reprocessing in America, which forced nuclear plants to store their waste on-site instead of sending it for reprocessing. That’s helped create the mess the U.S. has today, while other countries like Canada, Sweden, France, Germany and others managed to build and employ nuclear plants without the same problems. You can blame the anti-nuke left for that.

The Green Party in the U.S. and the various green parties around the world got their start from the movement to prevent nuclear power from growing. The socialist international, which includes AOC’s Democratic Socialists of America, is formally opposed to nuclear power. Here in Canada, the Pembina Institute is another left-wing group trying to shut down all non-renewable energy, including nuclear. They have tremendous power in Canada, and recently had big influence over Alberta’s decision to stop the planned construction of a nuclear plant to power the steam for the oil sands, and they helped successfully block pipelines out of Alberta.

The Cassini Mission, one of the most successful space missions of all time, was almost stopped due to protests and legal attacks by Friends of the Earth and other environmental groups because it had a plutonium RTG on board.

Current anti-nuclear groups who have considerable finances and influence:

Friends of the Earth (chapters in 77 countries)
Greenpeace
The Sierra Club
The Socialist International
The Pembina Institute
Various Green Parties around the world

In Europe, the anti-nuclear groups are so powerful that countries like Belgium, Germany, Spain and Switzerland are not just freezing new construction of nuclear plants, they are decommissioning the current plants they have. Italy has already decommissioned all its nuclear plants and vows to build no more. Anti-nuke demonstrations still take place constantly in Europe. Pretty much all of it driven by the environmental left.

I did a search for right-wing anti-nuclear groups, and could not find a single one.

Anyone who thinks that opposition to nuclear power comes equally from the left and right is either engaging in historical revisionism or is ignorant to the history of nuclear power.

13

To reiterate my point, there really is no anti-nuke group in the US with any power. The Sierra Club? The Socialist International? Give me a break.

The Republicans had control of both houses and a nuke-friendly Democratic president from 2010 onward, then a Republican president for two more years – all they needed was a few Democrats to sign onto their bills to get to 60 – it’s not like Obamacare, where the Democrats would be a solid bloc. There are Democrats from energy states that would likely sign on.

That list of bills proposed is equally useless. Proposing a bill and not getting people to sign on, not pushing it through, not getting committee approval is basically just signalling. If McConnell wanted to get some attention on a nuclear power bill, he could make it happen.

Off the top of my head, here are things the Trump administration has done or is doing that would set the Sierra Club’s hair on fire:

Reduced the size of the Bears Ears and other national parks
Relaxed mileage standards on cars
Relaxed coal CO2 requirements, mercury, and other pollutants
Various executive orders for pipelines

Those are positions that Obama definitely would not have signed onto. However, he signaled that he was pro-nuclear power.

This was passed by congress in December: https://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2019/1/what-they-are-saying-the-nuclear-energy-innovation-and-modernization-act

There are plenty of Democratic supporters. It’s still waiting on Trump to sign it – I assume he will eventually. What took so long to get to this point? Where was this bill in 2012, after Obama said he was pro-nuclear power?

To me, this is evidence of two things – there really isn’t a pro-nuclear industry out there waiting for the leash to come off and nuclear power must be pretty iffy commercially.

14

Really?

H.R. 1551 (115th): Orrin G. Hatch-Bob Goodlatte Music Modernization Act
H.R. 1 (113th): Tax Reform Act of 2014
H.R. 5401 (113th): Protecting the Homeland Act

These are nuclear power bills?

Do people even read their own cites anymore?

15

Well, one can disregard that, in a very recent discussion it was clear that the energy industry is the one that is not seeing an economical advantage by keeping nuclear power plants open. As usual, a lot is missed by the right so as to continue blaming the left and progressives.

16

Now, another thing that is missed, solutions like carbon trading with cap-n-trade and taxation of emissions have been declared as tool of the devil by many conservatives, we came to that sad state of affairs when powerful interests convinced many conservatives that that was the case.

Now the sad part, it is clear that if cap-and-trade and other mechanisms like a tax on emissions had been in place, it is very likely that industry would had found that nuclear was still economically viable.

17

Can I just call out my favorite thing about this board? This guy.

18

This seems to argue against the idea that regulations are keeping new plants from opening up. An existing plant would already be operating within the regulations and wouldn’t have permitting and other hoops to jump through, and yet this plant closed because natural gas was cheaper.

Part of the problem, of course, is that natural gas shouldn’t necessarily be cheaper, since it’s still spewing carbon into the atmosphere for free. If that externality were priced, maybe it would be more expensive, but since cap and trade seems to be a non-starter, nuclear power seems less competitive than it should be.

Since there are prominent Democrats and progressives that have come out for nuclear power and few if any Republicans that have come out against it, I’m left with two conclusions. First, there’s no powerful pro-nuke lobby – if conditions were this favorable for coal, for example, they would see even more regulations melting away, through legislation and not just through executive orders. Second, nuclear power may just not be that competitive, especially since we’re not properly valuing the damage that CO2 will be doing to the planet.

It has to be the case that coal is cheaper than nuclear power in Russia and China, since they wouldn’t have to deal with any Green parties protesting the building of new plants, but apparently China is all in for coal these days, although they are moving to using more hydro, solar, and wind (cite). One interesting quote:

They say they are moving to use more nuclear power as well, but I don’t know how much progress they’ve made:

However, if nuclear power is really that efficient, then why are they so dependent on coal?

The graphs on that page are really telling as well, with a huge surge in coal use starting around 2000.

19

As mentioned, this is why we aren’t going to do much about AGW. The poster quoted above claims to oppose Bernie Sanders’ position on nuclear energy, but replacing a nuclear power plant that emits no GHG with a natural gas plant that does, emissions go up, and :crickets:

And it’s all the Republicans’ fault.

Regards,
Shodan

20

I’m trying to have a friendly, but serious, conversation here – why put “And it’s all the Republicans’ fault” at the end of your note? Did anyone say that here? Seriously, WTF?

I think there are several factors at play, which I’ve mentioned above, plus one new one that the Vermont closing seems to point to:

  1. No real pro-nuclear lobby, like the coal, pharma, cable, energy, etc., lobbies. Or, if there is one, it’s not very powerful.
  2. NIMBY.
  3. Resistance by misguided (idiotic) environmental groups who either don’t understand climate change or don’t care about it. This has some effect on Democratic politicians, to be sure, although not at the highest levels as far as I can tell.
  4. Nuclear power may just be more expensive than its proponents claim. Otherwise, why would China get so big into coal? They don’t have Democrats and Republicans to blame, and certainly wouldn’t be slowed by any Green protesters.
  5. (New one) Resistance by politicians (mostly Republicans, I think) to properly pricing the effect of CO2 on the environment. For years (and continuing), they have denied or minimized the existence and dangers of climate change, so nuclear power seems less competitive that it should compared to CO2 emitting energy like natural gas. Some of this is due to the powerful coal and petroleum lobbies. The unintended consequence of climate change denial is that nuclear power may end up unable to compete with “cheaper” carbon-intensive energy.

That last one is longer not because I’m saying Republicans are mainly at fault, but rather because I hadn’t mentioned it before and wanted to flesh it out a bit more.

Shodan, I’d love to keep this thread more civil than your last snarktastic comment would seem to allow. Also, anytime you want to provide cites for your first post here would be great – the basic premise of this thread is that those environmental groups don’t really have power in the US and haven’t for years. If you’re going to claim otherwise, I think you should provide cites.