Pandora's Promise notes nuclear epiphany for activists, but misses an important one: John Kerry

[wtmusic]

"One of the big ideas pushed by Pandora's Promise concerns the potential of breeder reactors to provide a technological fix to the political question of what to do with used nuclear fuel. A considerable segment of the film tells the story of the Experimental Breeder Reactor II (EBR-II) project at Argonne National Laboratory in Idaho and how funding for the project was killed in 1994 at the behest of the Clinton Administration.

The film contains a brief clip of U.S. Secretary of State and former U.S. Senator John Kerry (D-MA) urging his fellow senators to end funding for the EBR-II. But what the film didn't mention is that like the five environmentalists profiled in Pandora's Promise, Secretary Kerry has undergone something of a conversion on the question on nuclear energy himself.

Back in 2010, then-Senator Kerry was a co-sponsor of the American Power Act. Though it failed to pass into law, the proposed legislation included a number of key incentives that would have encouraged construction of new nuclear power plants here at home. The following points were culled directly from the press materials announcing the introduction of the legislation:

Increasing Nuclear Power Generation

We have included a broad package of financial incentives to increase nuclear power generation including regulatory risk insurance for 12 projects, accelerated depreciation for nuclear plants, a new investment tax credit to promote the construction of new generating facilities, $5.4 billion in loan guarantees and a manufacturing tax credit to spur the domestic production of nuclear parts.
We improve the efficiency of the licensing process.
We invest in the research and development of small, modular reactors and enhanced proliferation controls.
We designate an existing national laboratory as a nuclear waste reprocessing Center of Excellence.

http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/2013/06/did-pandoras-promise-miss-john-kerrys.html

[pscot]

1. If we seriously want to reduce carbon emissions

we need nuclear power. The dangers posed by nukes are trivial compared to the havoc climate change will bring.

[kristopher]

2. Here is a contemporaneous write up of that bill

May 12 2010
By:
After half a year of delay, Sens. Kerry and Lieberman (sans their GOP partner in crime, Lindsey Graham) are set to release their nuclear energy/cap-and-trade bill today. Until we see legislative text, we have to comment on the broad outline made available yesterday and the additional summary being circulated among legislative staff and available here.

It’s not accurate to call this a climate bill. This is nuclear energy- promoting, oil drilling-championing, coal mining-boosting legislation with a weak carbon pricing mechanism thrown in. And it guts the EPA’s current authority to regulate greenhouse gases as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act.

Nuclear Power Incentives

At its core, this legislation is all about promoting nuclear power and handing taxpayers the bill. Consider:
- Sections 1101 and 1105 would prioritize the needs of nuclear power corporations over the rights of citizens to have full, public hearings about the risks and dangers of locating nuclear power plants in their communities.

<snip>


Coal

Section 1412 establishes a carbon tax paid by ratepayers and collected by utilities to fund carbon capture and storage (CCS) – with no funding for rooftop solar or energy efficiency investments. This will function like a wires charge or a rudimentary feed-in tariff with coal being the only beneficiary. Section 1431 will provide valuable emissions allowances for free to coal utilities pursuing CCS – an untested, risky strategy that benefits the coal industry and is gobbling up a lion’s share of subsidies that otherwise could go to renewable energy development.


Lots more (and it isn't very good) at : http://www.energyvox.org/2010/05/12/kerry-nuclear-energycap-n-trade-bill/


Also, Kerry loudly repudiated his earlier support for a build out of nuclear after Fukushima in 2011, saying it was unsafe and should not be done unless we developed a radically better reactor design.

[PamW]

3. Kerry led opposition to Integral Fast Reactor

John Kerry led the opposition to the Integral Fast Reactor that resulted in its cancellation.

Dr. Charles Till was the leader of the Integral Fast Reactor program at Argonne National Lab:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interviews/till.html

Dr. Till wrote this article about the demise of the IFR:

http://www.sustainablenuclear.org/PADs/pad0509till.html

The anti-IFR forces were led by John Kerry. He was the principal speaker and the floor manager of the anti forces in the Senate debate. He spoke at length, with visual aids; he had been well prepared. His arguments against the merits of the IFR were not well informed�and many were clearly wrong. But what his presentation lacked in accuracy it made up in emotion. He attacked from many angles, but principally he argued proliferation dangers from civilian nuclear power.

At the time, Lawrence Livermore did an analysis of whether IFR spent fuel represented a proliferation risk and determined it was NOT. Senators Simon and Kempthorne referred to that report in the following reply to a New York Times editorial:

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/07/05/opinion/l-new-reactor-solves-plutonium-problem-586307.html

A recent Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory study indicates that fuel from this reactor is more proliferation-resistant than spent commercial fuel, which also contains plutonium.

Some of my colleagues at LLNL; who were the USA's best experts in nuclear weapons design; performed that study and concluded that they could NOT make a nuclear weapon out of the material discharged by the IFR, as Dr. Till states in the first article referenced above. These nuclear weapons experts briefed then Senator Kerry as to the fact that the IFR did NOT represent a proliferation risk. After all, if our best nuclear weapons designers can't make a bomb out of the IFR's waste, what chance do the inexperienced scientists from a nascent nuclear proliferant nation have?

However, Senator Kerry chose to ignore the scientists and, as Dr. Till states, went on the floor of the US Senate and said the exact opposite of what the nuclear weapons scientists told him.

You don't get to high political office, like Secretary of State, by acting on the truth. No - you get to high political office because you are a "good soldier" and do what your Party leaders tell you; whether it is following the truth or not.

In Washington, political expediency trumps scientific truth any time, on any day.

PamW