President Obama and Nuclear Power

Dear Friends,

In a prior post I referred to President Obama's $8 billion loan guarantee for the first nuclear power plant to be built in over 30 years.  I was not happy with that decision, but given the other things that he was doing, it didn't make me really angry.  Now, however, I am really angry.

My wife is a faithful fan of Amy Goodman's Democracy Now program.  One of the segments on her show today was entitled: " 'A Bad Day for America': Anti-Nuclear Activist Harvey Wasserman Criticizes Obama Plan to Fund Nuclear Reactors".  (here)  After my wife told me about the segment, there were a couple of things that got my attention.

First, is the odd bedfellows against building more nuclear power plants.

HARVEY WASSERMAN: Well, this is a big difference now. Not only the Heritage Foundation, but the Cato Institute and the National Taxpayers Union, these have all come out against these loan guarantees for fiscal reasons. And the fact is that the economic reasons, the economic basis for building nuclear plants, is worse than it ever has been. So we really have no explanation for this.

Second, is speculation about why President Obama has made this decision to pursue additional nuclear power plants.  Harvey Wasserman again,

You have to remember that the Obama administration started off with Van Jones and a whole program for green jobs, and it’s abandoned that now in favor of going with a failed technology, nuclear power...And it’s interesting, because we started off with Van Jones. We started off with an industry that was going to make these strides forward. And now we see a complete reversal on the part of the Obama administration. The only explanation we have is that Obama was an Illinois politician. He was backed by Exelon, which is a major nuclear utility. And he seems to have basically completely abandoned the premise on which he was elected, that he would lead a green power revolution. And now he’s gone to an obsolete, dangerous technology with no solution to the nuclear waste problem.

So I decided to see what the relationship between President Obama and Exelon is.  Google is an amazing tool.  I found many references to the various ways that the Obama Administration is tied to Exelon and its CEO John Rowe.  The most succinct article I found was at Counterpunch (here) by Karl Grossman entitled "Obama Goes Nuclear".

The beginning of the article points out candidate Obama's position on nuclear power which seemed very reasonable to many of us:

Before taking office, including as a candidate for president, Obama not only was negative about atomic energy but—unusual for a politician—indicated a detailed knowledge of its threat to life.
“I start off with the premise that nuclear energy is not optimal and so I am not a nuclear energy proponent,” Obama said at a campaign stop in Newton, Iowa on December 30, 2007. “My general view is that until we can make certain that nuclear power plants are safe, that they have solved the storage problem—because I’m opposed to Yucca Mountain and just dumping…in one state, in Nevada particularly, since there’s potentially an earthquake line there—until we solve those problems and the whole nuclear industry can show that they can produce clean, safe energy without enormous subsidies from the U.S. government, I don’t think that’s the best option. I am much more interested in solar and wind and bio-diesel and strategies [for] alternative fuels.”

So President Obama had it right - no nuclear power until (1) they are safe, (2) the waste storage problem is solved, and (3) they do not need huge government subsidies.  So how is he doing with the $8 billion of guarantees.  Nuclear power plants are no safer now than they were in December 2007.  There is no solution for the storage of the nuclear waste.  The huge ($8 billion of loan guarantees) government subsidies are necessary for the project to move forward.

What happened to candidate Obama?  Here is the answer that Karl Grossman gives:

In his first year as president, nuclear power proponents worked to influence him. Among nuclear opponents, there has been anxiety regarding Obama’s two top aides, both of whom have been involved with what is now the utility operating more nuclear power plants than any other in the United States, Exelon.
Rahm Emanuel, now Obama’s chief of staff, as an investment banker was in the middle of the $8.2 billion merger in 1999 of Unicom, the parent company of Commonwealth Edison of Chicago, and Peco Energy to put together Exelon. David Axelrod, now a senior Obama advisor and formerly chief campaign strategist, was an Exelon consultant. Candidate Obama received sizeable contributions from Exelon executives including from John Rowe, its president and chief executive officer who in 2007 also became chairman of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the U.S. nuclear industry’s main trade group.
It’s not only been nuclear opponents who have seen a link between Exelon and the Obama administration. Forbes magazine, in its January 18th issue, in an article on John Rowe and how he has “focused the company on nuclear,” displayed a sidebar headlined, “The President’s Utility.”  It read: “Ties are tight between Exelon and the Obama administration,” noting Exelon political contributions and featuring Emanuel and Axelrod with photos and descriptions of their Exelon connections.
The Forbes article spoke of how last year “Emanuel e-mailed Rowe on the eve of the House vote on global warming legislation and asked that he reach out to some uncommitted Democrats. ‘We are proud to be the President’s utility,’ says Elizabeth Moler, Exelon’s chief lobbyist,” the article went on. “It’s nice for John to be able to go to the White House and they know his name.’”
Chicago-based Exelon’s website boasts of its operating “the largest nuclear fleet in the nation and the third largest in the world.” It owns 17 nuclear power plants which “represent approximately 20 percent of the U.S. nuclear industry’s power capacity.”

If you want to read the Forbes article it is here.

Whatever happened to "Change we can believe in" candidate Obama?

Thanks for reading and please comment,

The Unabashed Liberal