Election 2016: Chris Christie Embraces Nuclear Energy Industry That Has Backed Him

[kristopher]

Election 2016: Chris Christie Embraces Nuclear Energy Industry That Has Backed Him
By Andrew Perez @AndrewPerezDC [e-mail] on September 17 2015

Gov. Chris Christie said Wednesday the federal government should follow New Jersey’s lead and invest in nuclear energy to address climate change. Left unsaid: Christie has received substantial support as governor from the nuclear energy industry.

During CNN’s Republican presidential debate, Christie argued against “massive government intervention” to address climate change, and said that in New Jersey “53 percent of our electricity comes from nuclear.”

“We shouldn't be destroying our economy in order to chase some wild, left-wing idea that somehow us by ourselves is going to fix the climate,” Christie said. “We can contribute to that and be economically sound. We have proven we can do that in New Jersey. Nuclear needs to be back on the table in a significant way in this country if we want to go after this problem.”

Energy companies with nuclear interests have poured money into groups affiliated with Christie since he became governor, and at least one such utility -- New Jersey’s largest electricity provider -- is backing his presidential campaign...

http://www.ibtimes.com/election-2016-chris-christie-embraces-nuclear-energy-industry-has-backed-him-2102117

[Human101948]

1. They are destined to rue the day...

that they sunk so much money into the corrupt porcine governor.

(Though sad to say, Exxon is doing a happy dance. Christie settled a multi-billion dollar case for pennies on the dollar and they only had to contribute to him and the Republican Governors Association of which he was leader at the time.)

Federal records show that the reduction, which represents a huge gift to ExxonMobil, follows a wave of campaign cash from the company to the Christie-run Republican Governors Association.

Since Christie's first run for governor in 2009, ExxonMobil has donated more than $1.9 million to the group, according to data compiled by PoliticalMoneyLine.com. That includes $79,000 during Christie’s 2009 campaign and $200,000 during his re-election campaign in 2013. It also includes $500,000 when he chaired the organization during the 2014 election cycle.

http://www.ibtimes.com/chris-christie-settles-exxonmobil-case-after-oil-giant-gave-rga-big-cash-1830752

[nationalize the fed]

2. Rocks and glass houses

make a mess

Obama Energy Official: Nuclear Plants Essential To Our Carbon Reduction Goals

...Then, last week, a top Administration energy official swept in to clear up the matter. Yes, the Administration supports nuclear power—and it thinks that the growing list of nuclear power plants being shut down or slated for shutdown is a serious climate-change threat.

...Enter Peter Lyons, the Department of Energy’s (DOE) assistant secretary for nuclear energy. Lyons, a former Nuclear Regulatory Commission member and science advisor to former Senator Pete Domenici, spoke up about the Administration’s views on nuclear power at the Platts 10th Annual Nuclear Energy Conference in Washington, D.C. last week.

And he did not hold back. He said he was gravely concerned that the loss of existing healthy nuclear plants will cost us dearly in terms of increased carbon emissions...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelkrancer/2014/02/12/obama-energy-official-nuclear-plants-essential-to-our-carbon-reduction-goals/

Obama = more fracking and more nuclear plants. But bash Christie, why not. This country is a bad joke.

[kristopher]

3. Obama's EPA took nuclear out of the Clean Power Plan

So you're a near-militant hydrogen proponent, a nuclear fan, and a Chris Christie fan? That sounds like a toxic mix to me...


Extended excerpt used with permission

EPA took nuclear out of the Clean Power Plan


Yesterday, an amazing thing happened. Yes, President Obama released the first real climate action policy in the U.S. ever. But that’s not all. The incredible thing—the one that will be most important in the years to come—is … they got it basically right.

Including on nuclear power. President Obama just made it the policy of the United States that nuclear power is not a viable climate solution. And not just that, but renewable energy can replace nuclear power just like it can replace fossil fuels.

This is a game-changer, both for reducing carbon emissions in the US, and for discrediting the deceptive Nuclear Matters bailout campaign. What is more, going into December’s global climate treaty negotiations in Paris, the U.S. government just declared that we are moving forward, and we are going to do it with renewables, not nuclear.

The upshot is that the EPA appears to have done a total 180 on nuclear in the Clean Power Plan (CPP), and their rationales reflect the concerns raised by the public in the streets of New York City, in tens of thousands of comments, letters, and petitions (THANK YOU!!), and by NIRS and other clean energy groups in conversations and a key meeting with EPA officials who, some might say unexpectedly but we’ll say with our real appreciation, listened and ultimately agreed with our position. After all, with all due modesty, it was a pretty reasoned and well thought-out approach to the climate issue.

Here is a quick synopsis of what the rule actually does with respect to nuclear power:

1. Not only are nuclear reactors under construction not counted on in setting emissions goals, but neither are existing nuclear plants. By the same token, relicensing nuclear reactors won’t count either.

2. Just as significantly, EPA recognized that there is no need to “preserve” nuclear reactors that are “at risk” of closure, because they can be replaced with renewables just as fossil fuels can.

3. EPA will only allow actual, new/increased nuclear generation to count toward complying with the emissions goals. That means, states can only count new reactors that actually operate before 2030 (the five in construction or any others) and power uprates of existing reactors toward meeting their emissions goals.

4. That means there is no incentive under the CPP to keep uneconomical reactors operating and no incentive to complete building new reactors. States can meet their goal with new nuclear (but not with existing nuclear), but they are given no justification for preferring nuclear over renewables. In fact, there are several statements in the rule that indicate just the opposite.

5. And only those new/additional amounts of nuclear can qualify to sell emissions offset credits in cap-and-trade programs. Existing reactors cannot qualify as emissions offsets for fossil fuel generation, because they do not actually reduce carbon emissions.

6. The CPP does not prevent states from creating subsidies for nuclear, but there is absolutely no incentive for them to do so.

The impacts of the EPA’s decision are already being felt far and wide. ...

http://safeenergy.org/2015/08/04/epa-took-nuclear-out-of-the-clean-power-plan/


Text from the EPA Clean Power Plan

...Like generation from new RE generating capacity, generation from new nuclear generating capacity can clearly replace fossil fuel-fired generation and thereby reduce CO2 emissions. However, there are also important differences between these types of low- or zero-CO2 generation. Investments in new nuclear capacity are very large capital-intensive investments that require substantial lead times. By comparison, investments in new RE generating capacity are individually smaller and require shorter lead times. Also, important recent trends evidenced in RE development, such as rapidly growing investment and rapidly decreasing costs, are not as clearly evidenced in nuclear generation. We view these factors as distinguishing the under-construction nuclear units from RE generating capacity, indicating that the new nuclear capacity is likely of higher cost and therefore less appropriate for inclusion in the BSER. Accordingly, as described in section V.A.3., the EPA is not finalizing increased generation from under-construction nuclear capacity as a component of the BSER.

The EPA is likewise not finalizing the proposal to include a component representing preserved existing nuclear generation in the BSER. On further consideration, we believe it is inappropriate to base the BSER on elements that will not reduce CO2 emissions from affected EGUs below current levels. Existing nuclear generation helps make existing CO2 emissions lower than they would otherwise be, but will not further lower CO2 emissions below current levels. Accordingly, as described in section V.A.3., the EPA is not finalizing preservation of generation from existing nuclear capacity as a component of the BSER.

Pgs 344 and 345 of Aug 3. 2015 prepublication release of CPP.

[nationalize the fed]

14. Other sources disagree

Including Obama

"We'll need to increase our supply of nuclear power"

Obama pushes nuclear power plan

New Nuclear Power Seen as Winner in Obama’s Clean Power Plan
Bloomberg Business 8/3/2015

The Obama administration gave the struggling U.S. nuclear industry a glimmer of hope this week by allowing new reactors to count more toward meeting federal emissions limits.

States can take more credit for carbon-free electricity to be generated by nuclear power plants under construction as they work to comply with emission-reduction targets set in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan released Monday. Cuts from existing reactors won’t count, casting the fate of units at risk of premature retirement in doubt...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-03/new-nuclear-power-seen-as-big-winner-in-obama-s-power-plan

Obama's Clean Power Plan: Can Nuclear Power Beat The Global Threat Of Coal?
Forbes 8/6/2015

Nuclear power plays a role in the Clean Power Plan, along with renewable energy sources such as solar power and wind. According to the plan, states will receive credits for emission reductions related to new nuclear power plants – including both those under construction and those still in prototype stages...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/hbsworkingknowledge/2015/08/06/obamas-clean-power-plan-can-nuclear-power-beat-the-threat-of-coal/

Obama administration stands by nuclear power
3/16/2011 CBS News

The Obama administration on Tuesday insisted that nuclear power plants in the United States are safe even as they kept an eye on the unfolding nuclear crisis in Japan.

"The American people should have full confidence that the United States has rigorous safety regulations in place to ensure that our nuclear power is generated safely and responsibly," Energy Secretary Steven Chu said in testimony before Congress...
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/obama-administration-stands-by-nuclear-power/


I think I understand your ...uh... confusion on the issue- You support a pro nuclear power President but want to paint the R's as the enemies because, well, they're R's. Even though there really isn't a whole lot of difference in Nuclear policy. It would frustrate and confuse me too.

So you're a near-militant hydrogen proponent,

Yeah, I force E&E group members to click on hydrogen articles

a nuclear fan,

You're assuming facts not in evidence. But this isn't exactly new for you, is it. Just for the record (I don't really care what you think I support or don't support) I think building anything that requires future generations to baby sit the waste is nothing short of criminal behavior and despise nuclear energy.
There *are* a few nuclear supporters here though, as you well know. The difference b/w you and I is that I don't go and piss all over nuclear energy threads.

and a Chris Christie fan?

Now your little ridicule train has jumped the tracks. A Christie fan? How in the world did you "imagine" that? I wouldn't vote for that obese jackass if someone held a gun to my head.

That sounds like a toxic mix to me...

Of course it does...

[NNadir]

4. If Donald Trump declared that the sky was blue, it wouldn't make it green.

And if Bishop Tutu declares that so called "renewable energy" is "green," that doesn't mean that the two trillion dollars squandered on the enterprise in the last ten years resulted in meaningful energy.

Irrespective of what Bishop Tutu thinks, the squandering of two trillion dollars on toxic materials to make so called "renewable energy" facilities has further impoverished, and not enriched the poor, particularly because it is poor people who have to dig cadmium, for instance, to make cadmium based solar cells.

Whatever.

What I have observed of anti-nukes in general, is that they can't think clearly and frequently appeal to logical fallacies.

In this case the transparent case of bad thinking is the fallacy known as Guilt by Association.

I have never met a rote anti-nuke, on line or anywhere else, who can think clearly or, for that matter, make even a stab at a rational argument. They are the sort of people who cause the burning of coal, oil and gas to run computers to tell us about an atom of Fukushima cesium in a tuna fish while 7 million people die each year from air pollution.

Lancet 2012, 380, 2224–60: For air pollution mortality figures see Table 3, page 2238 and the text on page 2240.

As Jim Hansen pointed out, nuclear energy saves lives, approximately two million since the commercial nuclear enterprise became the largest, by far, source of climate change gas free, and air pollution free energy.

Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 4889–4895

It follows that anti-nuke bad thinking, insipid rhetoric, and mindless regurgitation of junk of paranoid fantasies from their self referential circle of fools, cost lives.

It is a moral imperative to confront ignorance wherever it raises its ugly head.

[kristopher]

5. Yep, those rabid "anti-nukes" in the EPA

vs the Earth Friendly Environment Loving Chris Christie types.

I think you've sorted things out perfectly for everyone.

[NNadir]

6. Um...um...um...

One usually expects an incoherent response from an anti-nuke and one almost always gets it.

For the record, the oldest operating nuclear reactor in the United States is located in New Jersey. Chris Christie was a child when it was built.

It came on line in 1969, with construction beginning in 1965. The plant has operated up to the present day without a single loss of life, a condition that would not have been obtained had a coal plant been built instead.

The plant has undoubtedly saved tens of thousands of lives in New Jersey, despite the efforts of exceedingly stupid people to shut it.

In 1965, the President of the United States was Lyndon Johnson, and one of his chief advisers was Glenn Seaborg, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, negotiator of the nuclear test ban treaty, discoverer or co-discoverer of more elements in the Periodic Table than any other human being in history. Seaborg had served at the head of the Atomic Energy Commission, and was instrumental in the construction of the vast majority of nuclear reactors in this country.

The reactor cost (2007 dollars) $488 million dollars, showing that it is possible - or was possible before stupidity took over - to save lives with nuclear energy at a very low cost. That investment by my parents generation is still protecting the lives of their grandchildren's generation.

Both President Johnson and Glenn Seaborg were Democrats; although both would die before the Democratic Party would develop a wing of anti-science dunderheads as odious as the creationists in the Republican party, the sort of people who simply ignore all evidence to cite their tiresome dogma repeatedly. (I am, of course, referring to the dumb ass anti-nuke wing of our party.)

When the ground was broken Oyster Creek nuclear reactor, which has been saving lives for almost half a century in New Jersey by preventing the use of dangerous fossil fuels to generate electricity, the Governor of New Jersey was Richard Hughes, a Democrat.

There was a time when science held high esteem in the Democratic Party, and it is disturbing that there now is a wing of this party that consists of blithering fools muttering vague and essentially meaningless statements.

The EPA...

The first Secretary of Energy in the current administration was also a Nobel Laureate in science, this time physics. He has noted repeatedly that he is proud of getting the first construction of a nuclear reactor started under his administration of the DOE.

Secretary Chu's Remarks at Vogtle Nuclear Power Plant

Now, nuclear power isn't saving lives because Steven Chu supports it. It would be saving lives if he came out as another dumb anti-nuke, although clearly he isn't a dumb anti-nuke, if one reads his remarks.

Nuclear energy is saving lives because has prevented the burning of billions of tons of coal, not there is any dumb anti-nuke on the face of the planet who cares a whit about the tens of millions of people who die each decade from dangerous coal waste.

All the barely literate muttering, whatever it should actually mean, about Chris Christie, who is certainly as dumb as an anti-nuke whether he claims to support nuclear energy or not is meaningless.

As for the EPA...I've met lots of EPA scientists over the years in various professional settings. Having done so, I really can't say that I've met many who are dumb anti-nukes. There may be some, but of the hundreds I've met, they're concerned about things like, pollution and, um, climate change.

Anti-nukes are spectacularly unconcerned with climate change, since by definition, they oppose the most successfully demonstrated technology for fighting it.

If the EPA is an anti-nuke organization, someone should have informed Stephen Chu about it.

Anti-nukes are not environmentalists. To be an environmentalist, one must know something about biology, chemistry (physical, organic, and inorganic), meteorology, mathematics and physics, unless one simply wishes to issue insipid platitudes. In general I have never observed a single anti-nuke online or elsewhere who is even remotely competent to discuss these subjects, meaning of course, that these are precisely the people who do the most damage to the environment, simply because that is all they are capable of providing, insipid platitudes, this at a time of growing danger to the environment.

Have a good week. It's been, um, "enlightening" to hear this stuff, as always, although probably not for the reasons you might think.

[kristopher]

7. Your mewling notwithstanding, nuclear isn't a good way to decarbonize the world's energy systems

You can misrepresent, misinform and be as obnoxious as you like, but in the end the data speaks for itself.

Text from the EPA Clean Power Plan

...Like generation from new RE generating capacity, generation from new nuclear generating capacity can clearly replace fossil fuel-fired generation and thereby reduce CO2 emissions. However, there are also important differences between these types of low- or zero-CO2 generation. Investments in new nuclear capacity are very large capital-intensive investments that require substantial lead times. By comparison, investments in new RE generating capacity are individually smaller and require shorter lead times. Also, important recent trends evidenced in RE development, such as rapidly growing investment and rapidly decreasing costs, are not as clearly evidenced in nuclear generation. We view these factors as distinguishing the under-construction nuclear units from RE generating capacity, indicating that the new nuclear capacity is likely of higher cost and therefore less appropriate for inclusion in the BSER. Accordingly, as described in section V.A.3., the EPA is not finalizing increased generation from under-construction nuclear capacity as a component of the BSER.

The EPA is likewise not finalizing the proposal to include a component representing preserved existing nuclear generation in the BSER. On further consideration, we believe it is inappropriate to base the BSER on elements that will not reduce CO2 emissions from affected EGUs below current levels. Existing nuclear generation helps make existing CO2 emissions lower than they would otherwise be, but will not further lower CO2 emissions below current levels. Accordingly, as described in section V.A.3., the EPA is not finalizing preservation of generation from existing nuclear capacity as a component of the BSER.

Pgs 344 and 345 of Aug 3. 2015 prepublication release of CPP.

[Duckhunter935]

8. FYI

On Mon Sep 21, 2015, 05:29 AM an alert was sent on the following post:

If Donald Trump declared that the sky was blue, it wouldn't make it green.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1127&pid=91327

REASON FOR ALERT

This post is disruptive, hurtful, rude, insensitive, over-the-top, or otherwise inappropriate.

ALERTER'S COMMENTS

Read this reply and decide if this is how we want to have a discussion here on DU.

You served on a randomly-selected Jury of DU members which reviewed this post. The review was completed at Mon Sep 21, 2015, 05:37 AM, and the Jury voted 1-6 to LEAVE IT.

Juror #1 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #2 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: I see nothing wrong with this posting.
Juror #3 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: Doesn't even come close to violating DU standards. Stop using the jury system to fight your battles.
Juror #4 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: Yes, that is what discussion is about
Juror #5 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: Feel free to refute the poster's arguments with facts, but don't abuse the alert system to censor some snark you don't like.
Juror #6 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: What is it about these alerts lately? This isn't even that bad-no personal namecalling, per se, and keeps on point. Alert when it's obscene or when someone is personally attacking, not when you just disagree with a point of view.
Juror #7 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: No explanation given

Thank you very much for participating in our Jury system, and we hope you will be able to participate again in the future.

[xmas74]

10. I posted exactly the same.

I'll delete my post.

[Duckhunter935]

11. The alerts just can be crazy

Waste of time and that alerter should be ashamed

[xmas74]

12. I had grown tired of the alerts

and had been turning them down until the recent round of alert stalking. Now I'm accepting every single one.

[Duckhunter935]

13. It's a pain

but I try and do all of the juries I get. Having had been stalked before.