Prologue: Who is Michael Shellenberger?
Berkeley-headquartered,
Environmental Progress (EP, est. 2016) boasts annual revenues of $1.5 million
and a dozen staffers. While their website (which doesn’t disclose financials)
lists 15 funders; Rachel Pritzker (of the billionaire Pritzkers) is EP’s
principal benefactor.
(As EP fixates
on promoting nuclear energy one must wonder if Rachel, or any Pritzkers, have investments
in that industry. There is, however, no readily available open-source evidence
of this.)
Michael Shellenberger
is EP’s founder, President and Treasurer. Advisors include: legendary enviro-entrepreneur
Stewart Brand; academic wunderkind Steven Pinker; and (climate sleuths take
note) Robert Pielke Jr and James Hansen.
Being born in 1970
unto Mennonite hippies from small-town Colorado prefigured Shellenberger’s receipt
of a Cultural Anthropology M.A. from U of Cal, Santa Cruz. His entire career
has been in the NGO milieu; beginning with a focus on Latin American peoples’
issues then drifting to forest conservationism. His start-ups received funding
from: Sierra Club, Earth-justice and Ford Foundation. He broached nuclear power
as a solution to global warming in 2010. Circa 2014 he hooked-up with Ms.
Pritzker. In 2017 he declared:
“The war on nuclear is the most important
environmental story in the world. Nuclear plants are dying, and if they go, so
too go our chances to clean the air and solve climate change.”
Shellenberger is
a Time “Hero of the Environment” and a
Green Book award winner. His writings and opinions grace Forbes, New York Times, Washington Post, Scientific American etc. He
has authored, or co-authored, several books and manifestos. His recent writings
(2016-8) consist of 100 or so articles, transcripts and letters archived on EP’s
website.
This synopsis of
Shellenberger’s takedown of anti-nuclear activism is extracted from his recent writings.
Shellenberger in a Nutshell
The anti-nuclear
campaign is rooted in Malthusian anti-humanism; i.e. in paranoia about
overpopulation and machinations to keep poor countries poor. Neo-Malthusianism is
embodied in environmentalism’s small-world, zero-population-growth, soft-energy
faction. They carry on the tradition’s signature disregard for the welfare of
the poor. Malthus wrote:
“Instead of recommending cleanliness to the
poor we should encourage contrary habits… and court the return of the plague.”
In the late-1940s
neo-Malthusianism surfaced in two best-selling books: Fairfield Osborn’s Our
Plundered Planet and William Vogt’s Road to Survival. Osborn was the son of a famous
eugenicist and “Aryan enthusiast.” Vogt would become Planned Parenthood’s
National Director.
Vogt considered progress
to be an “idiotic” idea. Overpopulation
had backed humanity “into an ecological
trap” such that catastrophe could be avoided only through austerity, sustainable
resource use, and strict limits on population and economic growth. Here’s Vogt
on India:
“Before the imposition of Pax Britannica
India had an estimated population of less than 100 million. It was in check by
disease, famine and fighting. Within a remarkably short period the British
checked the fighting and contributed to making famine ineffectual by building
irrigation works, providing means of storage, and importing food during periods
of starvation… While economic and sanitary conditions were being ‘improved,’
the Indians went to their accustomed way, breeding with the irresponsibility of
codfish… sex play is the national sport.”
Neo-Malthusians
assailed the nuclear genie before it left the bottle. From his research on
fruit flies, Nobel-winning geneticist Hermann Muller concluded there was no
safe dose of radiation. Every dose caused damaging irreversible mutations. This
is the Linear No Threshold (LNT) theory.
Upon becoming
aware of research by Ernst Caspari indicating long-term low doses of radiation
didn’t increase mutation, Muller positioned himself as a main reviewer of
Caspari’s paper; even listing himself in the acknowledgements. Muller’s
illustrious collaboration involved deleting Caspari’s key finding. This
skulduggery helped establish LNT as a “fact.”
Muller’s defense
of LNT was aided by Malthusian-environmentalists; who embellished his theory. Chief
among them, Manhattan Project scientist Harrison Brown, attained considerable influence
over environmentalists, and bared his Malthusianism in this 1950 quote:
“(Humankind) would not rest until earth is covered
completely, and to a considerable depth, with a writhing mass of human beings,
much as a dead cow is covered with a pulsating mass of maggots.”
Neo-Malthusians
were egged on the old Nazi, Martin Heidegger. His The Question of Technology (1954) bemoans the treatment of Earth as
a resource reservoir for human consumption.
“Modern technology… puts to nature the
unreasonable demand that it supply energy which can be stored as such… Air is
now set upon to yield nitrogen, the earth to yield ore, ore to yield uranium…
to yield atomic energy.”
Heidegger perspicaciously
added: “the wind mill does not unlock
energy in order to store it.”
On the other
side the barricades stood “atomic humanism” exemplified by President Eisenhower
whose 1953 “Atoms for Peace” speech to the UN extolled nuclear power’s
potential to provide abundant electricity and therewith lift humanity from
poverty. The speech elicited a 10-minute standing ovation.
Initially, conservationists
were conflicted regarding nuclear. According to Shellenberger:
“In the 1960s most conservationists favoured
nuclear plants as a clean energy alternative to coal plants and hydroelectric
dams and only turned away from nuclear with the rise of anti-humanism.”
The anti-nuclear
drive was instigated by anti-growth, anti-people extremists whose dread of
overpopulation betrayed racist undercurrents. They opposed nuclear power
precisely because of its potential:
“The Sierra Club and other environmentalists
hated nuclear because it held out the promise of universal prosperity.”
Mark Litton led Club
efforts against the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant (proposed 1965). According to a
contemporary:
“Martin Litton hated people. He favoured a
drastic reduction in population to halt encroachments on parkland.”
Recognising
their anti-growth, misanthropic message lacked popular appeal, antinuclear activists
incited moral panic. Propaganda consisted of jarring images of Hiroshima and of
babies with birth defects. Nuclear power plant mishaps were conflated with nuclear
warhead detonations. Later queried about his faux rage over nuclear accidents Litton
quipped:
“No, I really didn’t care because there were
too many people anyway…I think that playing dirty if you have a noble end is
fine.”
Fellow anti-nuclear
activist Doris Sloan concurred:
“If you’re trying to get people aroused about
what is going on… you use the most emotional issue you can find.”
Sierra Club Executive
Director David Brower emerged as the antinuclear field marshal. According to
Shellenberger:
“Brower wasn’t opposed to nuclear power for
safety reasons but because it would provide cheap electricity for the masses:
people he hoped to see excluded from California.”
In 1965 Brower commented:
“If a doubling of the state’s population in
the next 20 years is to be encouraged by providing the power resources for this
growth, the state’s scenic character will be destroyed. More power plants
create more industry, that in turn invites greater population density.”
Brower expended
Sierra Club resources publishing and publicising Paul Ehrlich’s sensationalist
best-seller, The Population Bomb (1967).
In 1969 Brower left
Sierra Club to found Friends of the Earth. A founding donation of $80,000 came
from oil magnate Robert Anderson. At the time Brower declared:
“There’s no more important issue in my life
now than to do everything I can, and see that Friends of the Earth does
everything it can, here and abroad to stop the nuclear experiment before it’s
too late.”
*
Ralph Nader
became a celebrity in 1965 and an anti-nuclear capo in 1971. His 1974 Critical
Mass confab in Washington DC proved a movement turning point. Among Nader’s
many flamboyant lies was:
“A nuclear accident could wipe out Cleveland
and the living would envy the dead.”
Wild exaggerations
became the norm. Activist Professor Ernest Sternglass claimed 400,000 infants
died from weapons testing fall-out. Sternglass toured America spouting
jeremiads about the hundreds of thousands who would perish from nuclear power
plant radiation. In 1976 David Brower claimed millions were dying as a
consequence of nuclear weapons testing.
Anti-nuclearists
advocated increasing coal and oil usage as alternatives to nuclear power. Amory
Lovins, an advisor to Sierra Club and Jerry Brown, recommended doubling American
coal output. Nader claimed abundant tar sands, shale oil, and coal-bed methane vitiated
the need for nuclear power. Alternatively anti-nuclearists argued that energy
efficiency improvements rendered nuclear power unnecessary; …while passively watching
coal plant construction.
Malthusians instinctively
favour feeble, intermittent, expensive power; like solar and wind. Lovins opined:
“It’d be little short of disastrous for us to
discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy, because of what we would do
with it.”
Ehrlich chimed
in:
“In fact, giving society cheap, abundant
energy at this point would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine
gun.”
In the 1970s a
coalition centered on Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council and
Environmental Defense Fund hired lawyers, lobbyists and marketing wonks to
execute a secretive, lavishly-funded campaign of lawsuits, political
arm-twisting, and hysterical fear-mongering. They concealed their Ivy League
composition amidst gaggles of innocuous hippies. They capitalised on the
post-Vietnam, post-Watergate zeitgeist by conjecturing a conspiracy on the part
of electrical utilities and government regulators to cover-up nuclear power’s
dangers.
In 1979 their China Syndrome hit cinemas 12 days before the Three Mile Island mishap. A
perfect storm arose despite the fact that the Three Mile Island accident hurt
no one. A person standing at plant gate would have received one sixth the
radiation of a chest x-ray.
1980s activism
shifted to the Midwest, notably Ohio where six nuclear plant proposals were
defeated. The most telling victory, at Zimmer Ohio, involved a multi-year,
multi-faceted campaign orchestrated out of New York and San Francisco. Victory
came in 1985 when, with construction 97% complete, it was announced Zimmer
would burn coal. Opposition ceased.
*
Two-time
California Governor and climate superhero, Jerry Brown has shilled for fossil
fuels his entire life. His father, Edmund “Pat” Brown, (California Governor
1959-67) raised billions of dollars for Indonesia’s state-owned oil company,
Pertamina. In exchange Pat received a 50% stake in Pertamina’s Hong Kong
trading office and exclusive rights to sell Indonesian oil in California.
(California burned oil to generate electricity.) The Browns entered Indonesia’s
oil business while Indonesian generals were committing one of history’s worst
massacres.
Pertamina
donated $70,000 to Jerry’s 1975 gubernatorial campaign. Jerry never
acknowledged receiving any of his father’s ill-gotten oil money, although his
sister Kathleen candidly did. (Kathleen still owns oil and gas leases and oil
company shares. She’s also a director of green energy banker: Renew
Financial.)
Not all the
Browns’ fossil fuel ventures bore fruit. Pat and Jerry lobbied unsuccessfully
for a Liquid Natural Gas terminal in California that would have burned
Indonesian gas. They colluded with Mexican tycoon, Carlos Bustamante, to build
a natural gas-fired electrical plant south of San Diego. (This plan collapsed
amidst an FBI investigation.) As Governor, Jerry lobbied Mexican Government
officials to drill for gas on the Baja peninsula.
Governor Jerry
handed the Air Resources Board to his campaign manager, Tom Quinn who promptly scuttled
a Chevron oil refinery proposal that might have displaced Pertamina oil with
Alaskan oil. Another Brown appointee, Richard Maullin, used his position as
Chair of the California Energy Commission to block nuclear power and burn more
oil. Brown ally (and Getty Oil executive), Bill Newsom, ascended to the State
Supreme Court.
In 1977 San
Diego Gas and Electric proposed a five generator nuclear facility in Sun
Desert. Brown and co shot this down. They low-balled California’s future
electricity needs then contended oil and coal could meet this demand. Jerry bragged
about killing Sun Desert.
At a 1979 “No Nukes”
music fest protesting Diablo Canyon, Brown delivered an impassioned tirade concluding
with the Governor leading the crowd in chants of “No on Diablo.”
Another Brown
crony introduced a bill blocking new nuclear plants until a nuclear waste
repository was completed. Brown pressured utilities into acquiescence by
threatening more stringent measures. Thereafter, effective frustrating of waste
repositories precluded nuclear plant construction.
California’s
electrical utilities truly wanted to go nuclear but Jerry kyboshed proposal
after proposal:
“Between 1976 and 1979, Brown and his allies
killed so many nuclear power plants that, had they been built, California would
today be generating most of its electricity from zero polluting power plants.”
During his
interregnum, Jerry chaired the California Democratic Party. In 1989 his allies
Bob Mulholland and Bettina Redway organised a ballot initiative to close the
Rancho Seco nuclear plant. Mulholland was rewarded with a posting as Democratic
Party Senior Political Strategist. Redway’s husband became President of the
California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC).
During his
second reign as Governor (2011-8) Jerry doubled-down on his fossil loving ways.
He fired two regulators whose by-the-book enforcement of fracking rules
hampered gas extraction. He pressured CPUC into approving a gas-fired plant. He
issued an executive order suppressing the cause of the colossal Aliso Canyon
gas blowout. His CPUC henchmen destroyed documents related to a San Bruno gas
explosion that killed eight. Jerry even had his Oil, Gas and Geothermal
Division assess the gas extraction potential of the Brown family’s ranch
lands.
In February 2013
a Jerry appointee to CPUC entered into a secret agreement with Southern
California Edison allowing the company to raise rates in exchange for closing the
San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS). The rationale for SONGS’ closure
– the need for a new steam generator – doesn’t add up. The electricity
replacing SONGS output is gas-fired. As part of a criminal investigation into
SONGS’s closure the US Department of Justice and the California Department of
Justice raided CPUC offices. A Jerry-appointed Attorney General is obstructing
the investigation. CPUC refuses to disclose 60 emails.
In January 2018
CPUC voted to close California’s last nuclear plant – Diablo Canyon. Despite
misinformation, Diablo Canyon’s output will be mainly replaced with gas-fired electricity.
Since SONGS’s closure California derives 61% of its electricity from gas. This
will rise to 70% after Diablo Canyon’s closure. California’s electricity prices
are rising four times faster than the national average.
*
Sierra Club,
Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) lead
US anti-nuclear activism. EDF’s annual revenues of $158 million are bested by
NRDC’s $186 million haul. Sierra Club’s annual $122 million budget is
supplemented by the Sierra Club Foundation’s $75 million yearly take.
These three NGOs
own bank accounts and stock portfolios cumulatively worth hundreds of millions
of dollars. NRDC is directly and heavily invested in natural gas and
renewables. NRDC launched, and then invested $66 million in, Black Rock’s
Ex-Fossil Fuel Index Fund.
In 2012 Sierra
Club admitted to having received $26 million in secret donations from gas companies.
Sierra Club has taken $100 million from natural gas and renewables investor,
Michael Bloomberg. Sierra also takes money from solar energy companies, notably
Sungevity. Likewise, NRDC and EDF welcome donations from gas and renewable energy
companies.
Strung together,
a list of these three enviro-NGOs’ current and recent donors and directors would
include:
1.
The founder and CEO of Sunrun (plus
several Sunrun officials);
2.
A manager of Barclays’ renewable
energy investment division;
3.
The director and assistant
general counsel of Solar City;
4.
The founding manager of both
Walden Capital Management’s and Boston Common Asset Management’s enviro-investment
funds;
5.
A partner in Healthy Planet
Partners (renewable energy);
6.
The CEO of Solaria;
7.
A managing partner at D.E. Shaw
– a $37 billion fund with gas and solar holdings (this person, Max Stone, is
NRDC Vice Chairman);
8.
The owner and CEO of Umoe (gas
and renewable energy);
9.
A major investor in solar panel
manufacturing;
10.
A major investor in Haliburton (gas);
11.
An administrator of Getty Oil;
12.
A registered renewable energy
lobbyist;
13.
A former director of Hess (gas);
and,
14.
The owner of Northeast Energy (gas)
Over 40% of NRDC, Sierra Club and EDF directors and top
donors are employed by, invested in, or somehow connected to natural gas and/or
renewable energy corporations.
These NGOs never
publicise their gas and renewable energy connections. Anti-nuclear hawks at Union
of Concerned Scientists (UCS) swoop down shrieking “conflict of interest” onto any
pro-nuclear group with real or imaginary connections to nuclear companies. (UCS’s
website reveals nothing about the sources of their $33 million annual revenues.)
At the same time the Sierra
Club/NRDC/EDF conflict of interest is flagrant. They openly lobby for renewable
energy subsidies. They openly work to close nuclear plants in full knowledge
that the replacement electricity will come mainly from natural gas. Here’s
Shellenberger:
“Environmental Defense Fund, Natural
Resources Defence Council, and Sierra Club have revealed themselves to be
utterly unconcerned about increasing air pollution – and totally obsessed with
killing our largest source of clean energy.”
Gas-fired plants
have an edge over nuclear plants with their ability to quickly ramp-up and
thereby complement renewable energy’s intermittency. (Wind power operates 40%
of the time; solar 20%.) The gas-plus-renewables combo is the juggernaut behind
the nuclear phase-out. Consequently, environmentalists work hand-in-glove with
gas companies. Enviro-radicals Bill McKibben and Bernie Sanders rejoiced in the
Vermont Yankee nuclear plant’s replacement by gas-fired power.
Gas suppliers,
however, are precisely the Big Oil conglomerates long diabolized by
environmentalists. The nuclear phase-out is the direct, premeditated consequence
of Big Oil’s market manipulations and gaming of the regulatory system.
Sierra Club,
NRDC and EDF help impose regulatory regimes favouring wind and solar but
discriminating against nuclear. They denounce “bailouts” of nuclear while
demanding subsidies for renewables. Renewables receive 100 times more
subsidization than nuclear. The Obama Administration threw $150 billion at
wind, solar and electric cars. (Elon Musk raked in $10 billion in subsidies
from NASA, USAF and other government entities.)
Nuclear
subsidies yield far more electricity than do renewable subsidies. New Jersey’s
subsidies to solar are double its subsidy to nuclear, yet nuclear produces ten
times more electricity in that state than does solar. Similar watts-per-subsidy
ratios can be found in New York, Illinois and elsewhere.
Renewable energy
means: shortages and surges, exorbitant battery costs, extravagant transmission
lines, extraordinary land requirements and expensive electricity.
Sierra Club,
NRDC and EDF oversee a network of regional NGOs. Illinois is Environmental Law
and Policy Center’s (EPLC) turf. ELPC has fought nuclear power for 20 years.
EPLC’s founder/leader, lawyer Howard Learner started suing nuclear power companies
and state regulators 35 years ago.
ELPC takes in $6
million a year and runs a separate political action committee. ELPC has
received hundreds of thousands of dollars from natural gas and renewable energy
companies, notably from Invenergy. ELPC belongs to BEST; a front for coal giant
NRG.
Together with
Environmental Illinois and Illinois Environmental Center, EPLC steers a
state-wide “clean jobs coalition.” They lobby for a 2.3 cent per kW/h top-up
for wind power while opposing the 1 cent kW/h “bailout” for nuclear. Legislation
aimed at preventing early closures of Illinois’ Quad and Clinton nuclear plants
was squelched by this coalition. Replacement power will come from coal and gas.
Learner crows:
“Everyone looks with excitement when a new
natural gas plant gets built.”
Food and Water
Watch (FWW), a prominent New York State-based anti-nuclear group, is currently
shunting some of their $14 million annual revenues towards a slick campaign
denouncing subsidies to nuclear power. This is part of a multi-pronged attack
on the Indian Point nuclear plant. FWW claims Indian Point’s replacement power
will be renewable; …it will come from gas.
Another prong in
the effort to close Indian Point wrought federal criminal indictments against
Governor Cuomo’s aides for accepting bribes from the gas company, Competitive
Power Ventures.
In 2010 Cuomo
accepted at least $140,000 from energy companies. Larger sums of renewable
energy and natural gas largesse are channelled through legal and engineering
firms retained by these companies.
Arizona recently
endured an uncivil war over Proposition 127 – a ballot initiative calling for
50% of Arizonan electricity to come from renewables by 2030. The plan excluded
nuclear power from its clean energy mandate and would have prematurely closed
the Palo Verde nuclear plant; replacing its output with gas-fired power.
(Proposition 127 was resounding defeated on November 6, 2018.)
Proposition
127’s bankroller, Tom Steyer, is the founder of Farallon Capital Management, – a
company with substantial gas investments: BP, Fuel Systems Solutions, and
Westport Innovations (gas engines). Steyer stepped down from Farallon
management but continues to be a passive investor in the firm. He remains a
financier of Greener Capital – an investor in renewable energy start-ups.
Big Oil is blanketing
Ohio and Pennsylvania with propaganda denouncing “bailouts” to nuclear power.
Five nuclear plants in Pennsylvania and 2 in Ohio are at risk. These 7 plants
produce 30% more electricity than all America’s solar panels. These plants
won’t be replaced by solar though; they’ll be replaced by gas.
Shellenberger
challenges environmentalists to name one nuclear plant closing where the main replacing
power source has not been coal or gas.
*
Overseas anti-nuclear
efforts are led by Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and Netherlands-based World
Information Service on Energy (WISE). The latter emerged in 1978 to create a nuclear-free
world. WISE is funded by 4 renewable energy firms: Greenchoice, Pure Energie,
Qurrant and Huismark Energie
South Korea, a battleground
country, imports $94 billion a year in fuels. Less than 1% of this ($500
million) is spent on uranium. Liquid Natural Gas imports are expected to rise 50%
by 2030.
The nuclear
phase-out became a key issue in their recent Presidential election with successful
candidate Moon Jae-in staking out the anti-nuclear position. Moon claimed 1,600
Japanese citizens died in the 2011 Fukushima disaster. In fact, all who died
did so as a result of the unnecessary evacuation. Moon’s claims about Korea’s
vulnerability to earthquakes are equally erroneous.
The anti-nuclear
disaster flick Pandora appeared in Korean
cinemas in late-2016; perfectly timed for the election. Five million South
Koreans (20% of the electorate) saw the movie.
Pandora’s producers claim
production costs of $500,000. Pandora employed
A-list actors, thousands of extras, and contained expensive scenes involving
multiple helicopters and giant explosions. A $10 million price tag is more likely.
Greenpeace International denies funding Pandora
but admits to paying for screenings, publicity and lawsuits. With its annual
revenues of $400 million, and stealthy accounting practises, Greenpeace easily could
have financed this film’s production.
Pandora ends in nostalgic
reverie about Korea’s good ole’ days of rustic farming and fishing villages.
*
Nuclear power’s profound
unpopularity is the product of protracted, well-broadcasted lying.
Nuclear energy
is said to inevitably lead to weapons production. Somehow North Korea, without
nuclear energy, managed to build nuclear bombs; while South Korea has nuclear
energy but no bombs.
Nuclear power is
defamed as unsafe. It’s actually the safest source of electricity. Collapsing
hydro-dams kill thousands. Lethal gas explosions occur regularly. Coal mining
fills graveyards. As well, our celebrity scientists casually disregard the myriad
advancements made in nuclear safety over the last 40 years.
Uranium mining,
refining and transport are said to generate significant CO2 emissions. Looking
holistically at production processes, nuclear power produces fewer CO2
emissions than either solar or wind.
Most environmentalists
claim climate goals can be achieved without nuclear power. The Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change and the US National Academy of Sciences both say
otherwise. Nevertheless, enviros who concede nuclear is part of the climate
solution, continue to oppose local nuclear plants.
The most devious
lie circulating is that the crisis in the nuclear industry results merely from the
playing out of competitive market forces. In fact, the nuclear industry’s
travails result from “regulatory capture.” Crippling over-regulation has been
the main anti-nuclear strategy since at least 1974 when, in a confidential
memo, Sierra Club Executive Director Michael McCloskey wrote:
“Our campaign stressing the hazards of
nuclear power will supply a rationale for increasing regulation… and add to the
cost of the industry.”
McCloskey
re-affirmed this strategy in a secret 1976 memo to Sierra’s board:
“We should try to tighten up regulation of
the (nuclear) industry with the
expectation that this will add to the cost of the industry and render its
economics less attractive.”
The result has
been decades of ever-more burdensome regulation. The final straw for nuclear
plant builder, Westinghouse (Toshiba), occurred when their AP-1000 model,
itself a procrustean accommodation, was imposed upon by the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission to adhere to the new Aircraft Impact Rule. This directive, long
sought by anti-nuclearists, requires nuclear plants to be able to withstand
dive-bombing passenger airliners. Westinghouse’s attempts to satisfy this rule,
amidst construction, caused cost overruns, delays and lawsuits. France’s Areva
experienced similar regulatory sabotage on its EPR design.
Over-regulation
and defamation have succeeded. In the USA the anti-nuclear movement has
cancelled 107,000 MW of proposed nuclear power and closed 54,000 MW of existing
plant capacity. Of the remaining 99,000 MW, half will close in a decade.
Globally, nuclear’s
share of electricity generation has been declining since 1996. Forty of Japan’s
42 nuclear plants remain shuttered since Fukushima (2011). In 2013 the French
government rescued France’s nuclear plant builder, Areva, to the tune of $5.3
billion, only to have Areva fail again in 2015. Westinghouse failed in 2017 and
now plans to vacate the nuclear business. Entergy is leaving the nuclear plant
operating business.
China, Russia
and South Korea soon will be the only nuclear plant builders. Regarding nuclear
plants built for the export market, Rusatom enjoys a near 60% market share.
South Korea’s
state-owned KEPCO shows us the path forward. KEPCO settled upon a standard,
not-too-fancy model (APR 1400) then built this model sufficient times to lower
construction costs by 40% even with size increases. KEPCO beat out all
competitors to win the massive United Arab Emirates contract.
Epilogue: Earth to Shellenberger, come in!
Shellenberger
uncovers a nest of miscreants. In his words these scoundrels are: liars,
people-haters, agents of Big Oil, and “so-called
environmentalists.” Shellenberger names his devils:
Natural
Resources Defense Council, Ralph Nader, Greenpeace International, Michael
Bloomberg, Sierra Club, Tom Steyer, German Government, Jane Fonda, Environmental
Defense Fund, Bernie Sanders, 350.org, Al Gore, William Vogt, Helen Caldicott,
Environmental Law and Policy Center, Jerry Brown, Martin Heidegger, Elon Musk,
Friends of the Earth, Fairfield Osborn, Union of Concerned Scientists, David Brower,
World Information Service on Energy, Paul Ehrlich, Bill McKibben, Food and
Water Watch, Amory Lovins, Environmental Illinois, Harrison Brown et al.
This is not a
list from environmentalism’s co-opted periphery. This isn’t environmentalism’s
lunatic fringe. This is mainstream environmentalism! This is Big Green! These
folks didn’t just bring us anti-nuclear hysteria; they brought us global
warming hysteria as well.
Sources
1.
Environmental Progress, Dark
Money behind Food &Water Watch ad blitz attacking clean energy in New York,
June 9, 2017.
2.
Environmental Progress, Fossil-Enviro
Alliance Wins Anti-Nuclear Victory in Illinois, March 31, 2017.
3.
Environmental Progress. Working
for Natural Gas Interests Former Cuomo Aides lobbied to kill Indian Point
nuclear plant; January 6, 2017
4.
Environmental Progress. Why
Nuclear is in Crisis, Environmental Progress
5.
Kharecha, P. A., Hansen, J. E. Prevented
mortality and greenhouse gas emissions for historical and projected nuclear
power, Environmental Science and Technology, 2013.
6.
Markandya, Anil, Wilkinson, Paul. Electricity Generation and Health, September 13, 2007
7.
Nelson, Mark. Russia set to
Dominate new nuclear export by 2030; September 28, 2017; Environmental
Progress.
8.
Shellenberger, Michael. Atomic
Humanism as Radical Innovation: Michael Shellenberger’s Keynote to the American
Nuclear Society 2017, June 12, 2017; Environmental Progress
9.
Shellenberger, Michael. Big Oil is trying to
kill Clean Energy in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Here’s who will pay the price. April
26, 2017; Environmental Progress.
10.
Shellenberger, Michael. Billionaire
Energy Speculator Tom Steyer bankrolls Arizona Initiative that would close
America’s Single Largest Source of Clean Energy, Environmental Progress,
April 10, 2018.
11.
Shellenberger, Michael. Enemies
of the Earth: Unmasking the Dirty War against Clear Energy in South Korea by
Friends of the Earth (FOE) and Greenpeace, October 16, 2017; Environmental
Progress
12.
Shellenberger, Michael. Greater Transparency by Environmental Groups
is Needed, April 19, 2017; Environmental Progress.
13.
Shellenberger, Michael. Greenpeace’s
Dirty War on Clean Energy: Part 1 South Korean Version, July 25, 2017;
Environmental Progress.
14.
Shellenberger, Michael. If
Nuclear Power is so Safe, Why are we so afraid of it? Forbes, June 11,
2018.
15.
Shellenberger, Michael. Jerry
Brown’s Secret War on Clean Energy, Environmental Progress, January 11,
2018.
16.
Shellenberger, Michael. Please
don’t climate march; April 28, 2017, Environmental Progress.
17.
Shellenberger, Michael. Saving
Power in Danger, Keynote Address Given to IAEA October 30, 2017, Environmental
Progress
18.
Shellenberger, Michael. Why I
Changed My Mind about Nuclear Power (Transcript of Shellenberger’s TEDx
Berlin 2017), November 21, 2017
19.
Shellenberger, Michael. Why is
California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom seeking to kill our largest source
of clean energy? November 9, 2017. Environmental Progress.
20.
Shellenberger, Michael. Why
its Big Bet on Westinghouse Nuclear is bankrupting Toshiba, February 13,
2017; Environmental Progress.
21.
Shellenberger, Michael. Why
the War on Nuclear threatens Us All, March 28, 2017; Environmental
Progress.
22.
Shellenberger, Michael. Zero
Dark Energy, April 4, 2018, Environmental Progress.
Five organization profiles on Environmental
Progress’s website:
1.
Environmental Defense Fund
2.
Environmental Law and Policy Center
3. Natural Resources Defense
Counsel
4.
Sierra Club
5.
WISE International
No comments:
Post a Comment