Meet the Nuclear Power Lobby

Progressive, The, June, 2008 by Diane Farsetta

The nuclear power industry is seeing its fortunes rise. Seventeen entities developing license applications for up to thirty-one new reactors did not just happen, boasted Frank Skip Bowman. It has been carefully planned.

Bowman, a retired admiral, heads the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the main lobbying group for the industry. His remarks, at a February gathering of more than 100 Wall Street analysts, were part of a presentation on reasoned expectations for new nuclear plant construction.

Bowman knew it was important to impress his audience of wary potential investors. We are where we are today because this industry started many years ago on a systematic program to identify what went wrong the last time, he said, and develop ways to eliminate or manage those risks.

NEI has certainly won bragging rights. Thanks to its persistence, a growing number of commentators and policymakers see nuclear power as the solution to global warming. Safe, secure, vital, is the mantra of the Indian Point nuclear power plant in New York the plant closest to a major U.S. population center--which was recently sanctioned by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for repeatedly missing deadlines to install new emergency warning sirens.

Industry-funded groups with names like the New Jersey Affordable, Clean, Reliable Energy Coalition keep springing up near nuclear plants applying for license renewals.

Credulous reporters describe NEI consultant Patrick Moore as a Greenpeace co-founder, even though he has a longer record of flacking for the logging, mining, biotech, and nuclear industries than his increasingly distant past as an environmental activist.

In what could be considered a double greenwash, General Electric counts its new nuclear reactor design among its Ecomagination line of environmentally friendly products.

Such public relations efforts address one thing that went wrong the last time--widespread public opposition to nuclear power. But the so-called nuclear renaissance, which NEI estimates will bring four to eight new nuclear plants online by 2016, also requires generous government support.

Accordingly, NEI has ramped up its already-substantial lobbying operations. In addition to the sixteen NEI employees registered as federal lobbyists, the group currently retains fifteen outside lobbying firms and consultants. Last year, NEI lobbyists visited thirteen federal agencies, as well as both houses of Congress. NEIs lobbying disclosure forms show that the organization helped shape more than twenty bills in 2007, from the Nuclear Fuel Management and Disposal Act to the Tax Technical Corrections Act to the Energy Independence and Security Act. All in all, NEI spent nearly $45 million on industry coordination, policy development, communications, and governmental affairs in 2006, according to its most recent financial report.

That doesnt include lobbying by individual companies with a stake in the nuclear power business, such as Entergy, Exelon, or Duke Energy. We now have a fewer number of companies operating most of the nuclear plants, and so nuclear power for those companies is a core business, NEIs Scott Peterson explained to the trade publication ODwyers

. They have to be much more aggressive in communicating about nuclear energy.

NEIs numbers also dont include utility groups, an important part of the pro-nuclear lobby. On Yucca Mountain, the controversial proposed nuclear waste repository in Nevada, utilities went to the mayors of the towns where nuclear waste was being stored, explains Anna Aurilio, the director of Environment Americas Washington, D.C., office. And even though it wasnt necessarily the best thing for those towns, the mayors were convinced by the utilities ... to support a bill that overrode a lot of protections for the environment and public health, when it comes to nuclear waste. And NEIs local lobbying got a substantial boost last year, when the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative group that brings together corporate lobbyists and state legislators, decided to promote state bills on new nuclear power plants and nuclear waste storage and reprocessing.

While nuclear industry lobbying is widespread and aggressive, its impact is not always readily apparent. Take, for example, the Lieberman-Warner climate change bill, which the Senate is expected to debate this summer. The bill--also known as S.2191, or Americas Climate Security Act--does not mention the word nuclear once in its 200-plus pages. Yet an aide to Senator Joe Lieberman called the measure the most historic incentive for nuclear in the history of the United States, according to Environment Energy Daily

.

One section of the Lieberman-Warner bill says that 25 percent of all the funds deposited into a new climate change worker training fund shall be reserved for zero and low-emitting carbon energy that has a rated capacity of at least 750 megawatts of power, notes Tyson Slocum, the research director of Public Citizens energy program. Thats a huge threshold, so thats going to exclude wind and solar right off the bat.... The only thing that could possibly meet that target would be nuclear power. Similar language in another section of the bill effectively reserves another half a trillion dollars for the nuclear industry, according to Slocum.