I am waiting for the chorus of Republicans decrying the need for the government to bailout another noncompetitive industry because it just is welfare to subsidize the losers.
I’m still waiting.
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You’re gutsy—that’s a controversial position to take in some circles we all sometimes travel in. 
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And, to be fair, long term storage and disposal of nuclear waste. I see it as a transition technology, not a viable long-term solution…
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Let’s bring back steam engines on the railroads, too.
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I can highly recommend a book called Atomic Accidents by James Mahaffey, a former nuke engineer who became a writer because that career became a dead end. He’s a good writer, and he is pro-nuke as you would expect, but except for the end of the book, where he says as much, and the very beginning where he describes a Russian dam, completely destroyed when a log got through a penstock killing about 100 people, it’s not obvious at all. The book really puts things in perspective. He has another cool book called Atomic Adventures which is about all the crazy stuff that’s been tried with nuclear power - like nuke-powered airplanes.
https://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Accidents-Meltdowns-Disasters-Mountains/dp/1605986801
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In trial-minded legal terms, his demand for “immediate steps” to keep coal plants open is an giant baboon-ass-red admission that all his previous claims to have saved coal and created thousands of new coal jobs were falsehoods and that he actually failed.
Watch how fast our Fourth Estate fails to ask him about that.
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Welp, donnie, open up yer checkbook and buy yerself some coal mines and a nuke facility or two. You got the money and who cares about the ethics of doing it while in office and alla that liberal bullshit. C’mon donnie, be a man and go for it, ya putz. Yer base’ll love ya for it.
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Who the fuck is he demanding this from, one wonders? Isn’t he the motherfucking president?
Typical. He can’t keep it straight.
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If they do ask it’ll be a milquetoast question with which he can cast blame anywhere but on himself.
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Yes, you’re right. Atomic energy is a real Pandora’s box. China and Russia are constructing state-sponsored nuc power plants in their own countries and selling them around the world. The Finns are building a storage site designed to last 100k years. Anyway…a complex issue.
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Don’t hold your breath.
Thanks for this.
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Speaking of Pandora’s Boxes … Russian nuke power plants do not have great operating records. Their designs suck to put it mildly. Cast your mind back to Chernobyl and the now abandoned town of Pripyat who’s people left so fast they left meals on plates and coffee in cups in their haste to leave. The core melted down. Saddam’s Iraq had a Russian nuke plant for a while…until the Russians took the rods back for fear of what Saddam had in mind. There have been other accidents in Russia that never made the news.
We had the accident at Three Mile Island. So when nuke plants fail it is not a good thing…
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A great question for Republicans running in this year’s election - Do you support Donald Trump’s socialist intervention in the US power grid to subsidize out-of-date power plants?
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Alla this demanding by trump recently…is he trying to be a dictator like his current bff in N. Korea?
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Maybe replace “socialist” with “soviet style” no reason to let a chance at another jab slide.
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I have been following this story for over a year. The Fed Regulatory Commission practically laughed off Perry’s idiotic proposal last year, and again this Jan. This is a gimme to Murray Energy and First Energy, who are huge! Trump $ supporters. Its as blatant as can be.
(sorry, posted elsewhere today…)
Trump is pushing for forced purchase of electric utilities to buy from archaic polluting coal plants for “National Security” reasons.
Rick Perry, at Dept of Energy has been laughingly pushing this since day1, and Federal Regulators have repeatedly said it makes no damn sense. Coal barons Robert E. Murray and Joseph Craft, who donated millions to the Trump campaign/inauguration are all for it. Big surprise.
“Opponents of the new plan contend bailouts are a solution in search of a problem. They argue there are many ways to back up the grid that won’t cost ratepayers billions of dollars. A coalition of natural gas and renewable power advocates told Perry that “power plant retirements are a normal, healthy feature of electricity markets,” and therefore there is no emergency that would justify Energy Department action.”
The Bloomberg article does not spell out the history of this fiasco, but is decent enough:
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Brilliant. In fact, I think we should apply that language to a bunch of other things.
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Not just socialist intervention into energy …what about his “King of Debt” approach to the national budget? That is certainly not a republican heart felt value right there. It used to be, not so very long ago, that any sort of debt, national or otherwise was anathema. Trump’s tax cut is bowing an enormous hole of debt in all of that. Boehner is right, this is the trump party, not your proverbial mom 'n dad’s GOP.
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So is trump offering to spend his own money in this “lifeline” to coal plants?
Yup, thought not.
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