How Stephen Colbert might advise the nuclear lobby

What the EPA’s Clean Power Plan means for nuclear energy, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 24 Sept 15 Peter A. Bradford “…….Imagine Nuclear Power in America as a person—a character like Trout Fishing in America, the person in Richard Brautigan’s 1967 novel by the same title—being interviewed by Stephen Colbert, the host of the former “Colbert Report.” As Nuclear Power in America lists its usual woes—a timid public, antinuclear activism, lack of a national energy policy, overregulation, lack of a waste repository, Jimmy Carter’s presidency—Colbert grows visibly agitated. Finally he bursts out, “How can we give you what you really need if you never tell us what it is—hundreds of billions in subsidies and suppression of competition. These other things are just distractions. Take them all away and you still wouldn’t have completed a single additional reactor in the United States in this century.

“All you do is simper about ‘level playing fields,’ ‘poorly designed power markets,’ ‘gas volatility,’ ‘clean, safe, reliable baseload,’ ‘jobs and taxes,’ ‘converted environmentalists,’ ‘Harry Reid,’ ‘French industrial wisdom,’ ‘German fecklessness.’ How is the US public supposed to understand that if it wants 100 new reactors, it can’t just burn Helen Caldicott at the stake? It has to put up $500 billion in new nuclear subsidies along with guaranteeing that no other technology—not even another nuclear technology—can come along and steal its electric customers in the 10 years that it may take to build each plant?

“Nuclear power requires obedience. Demand what you really need. Just look at Donald Trump. What can possibly go wrong?”…..http://thebulletin.org/what-epa%E2%80%99s-clean-power-plan-means-nuclear-energy8763