Editorial: Don't let the Planet Bern ...

Uranium (Nuclear Minerals) / Nuclear Power - Economics, Design, & Industry

Date posted: 03/10/16

Ted Nordhaus reports that an anti-establishment candidate for his party presidential nomination proposes to scrap the Clean Power Plan, phase out the nation largest source of zero-carbon power, and implement policies that will offer the dying coal industry a second life. Donald Trump, you say? Hardly. The candidate in question is Bernie Sanders, and he promises to do so with the support of some of the most prominent environmentalists in the country. Sanders has fashioned himself a climate crusader. He has been officially endorsed by Friends of the Earth and is supported by 350.org. Sanders talks tough on the environment, promising to investigate ExxonMobil for its crimes against the climate, keep fossil fuels in the ground, reduce American carbon emissions 80% by 2050 and transition the country rapidly to an electricity grid powered by wind, solar and geothermal energy. But a careful look at his actual proposals tells a different story. He proposes to retire all the nuclear reactors, which are the largest source of zero-carbon energy and generate 20% of the electricity and 60% of its zero-carbon power. Doing so would result in power sector emissions rising over 20% by 2050. Sanders has vowed if elected to rewrite the Obama Clean Power Plan (which primarily restricts coal use) to make it tougher on natural gas. Doing so would gut the rule. Regulation of carbon emissions from the power sector under provisions of the Clean Air Act depends almost entirely on the EPA determination that cheap natural gas generation is the best available alternative to coal power plants. When the U.S. stopped building nuclear power plants after Three Mile Island, anti-nuclear environmentalists said we would get renewables and energy efficiency, but what we got instead was more coal and gas. If that seems like ancient history, it is also what happened when Germany and Japan shuttered their nuclear plants after the Fukushima accident in 2011, i.e., more coal and renewables. Read on.