Umair Irfan, for Scientific American, reports that a group of environmental activists, a legendary scientist and a camera crew embarked on a quixotic rescue effort. Their goal ... saving Illinois nukes. We should not be taking them off the table, in my opinion, said Dr. James Hansen, a former scientist at NASA famous for raising the alarm about climate change before Congress in 1988. It is our biggest source of carbon-free energy at this time.
Hansen and the bandwagon headed for Clinton, 160 miles southwest of Chicago, to meet employees at the Clinton Power Station, a sky blue and gray 1-gigawatt nuclear power plant. The 29-year-old boiling water reactor future is grim as the Illinois Legislature missed the deadline yesterday to pass new energy rules and rates that would extend Clinton a lifeline.
Exelon Corp., the plants operator, punted last October on a decision to close the plant, but previously said if it did not get to raise electric rates for customers by May 31, it would shut down the money-losing facility by 2017.
Pro-nuclear activists want lawmakers to treat the Clinton plant and other fission reactors as some of the most powerful weapons in the fight against global warming, a rationale that would give them a new lease on life. The rules of the game are so rigged against nuclear in Illinois, said Michael Shellenberger, a nuclear energy supporter and founder of Environmental Progress who rode with Hansen. He pointed out that nuclear energy is excluded from the state renewable portfolio standards and that wind energy is subsidized at more than double the rate Exelon was seeking.
However, the push to extend lifelines to nuclear power has collided with the goals of other environmental activists who have spent decades railing against reactors as expensive and unsafe, creating cracks in the coalition that helped bring nations to an international agreement to fight climate change.
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