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White House Reportedly Exploring Wartime Rule To Help Coal, Nuclear (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: According to reports from Bloomberg and E&E News, the Trump Administration has been exploring another way to help coal and nuclear generators: the Defense Production Act of 1950. The Act was passed under President Truman. Motivated by the Korean War, it allows the president broad authority to boost U.S. industries that are considered a priority for national security. On Thursday, E&E News cited sources that said "an interagency process is underway" at the White House to examine possible application of the act to the energy industry. The goal would be to give some form of preference to coal and nuclear plants that are struggling to compete with cheap natural gas.
If the DOE decides not to invoke Section 202(c), the president may turn to the Defense Production Act. According to a 2014 summary report (PDF) from the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the act would allow the president to "demand priority for defense-related products," "provide incentives to develop, modernize, and expand defense productive capacity," and establish "a voluntary reserve of trained private sector executives available for emergency federal employment," among other powers. (Some even more permissive applications of the Act were terminated in 1957.) Using the Act to protect coal and nuclear facilities would almost certainly be more controversial, as the link between national defense and keeping uneconomic coal generators running is not well-established. The Administration could apply the Act to "provide or guarantee loans to industry" for material-specific deliveries and production. "The president may also authorize the purchase of 'industrial items or technologies for installation in government or private industrial facilities,'" reports Ars.
If the DOE decides not to invoke Section 202(c), the president may turn to the Defense Production Act. According to a 2014 summary report (PDF) from the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the act would allow the president to "demand priority for defense-related products," "provide incentives to develop, modernize, and expand defense productive capacity," and establish "a voluntary reserve of trained private sector executives available for emergency federal employment," among other powers. (Some even more permissive applications of the Act were terminated in 1957.) Using the Act to protect coal and nuclear facilities would almost certainly be more controversial, as the link between national defense and keeping uneconomic coal generators running is not well-established. The Administration could apply the Act to "provide or guarantee loans to industry" for material-specific deliveries and production. "The president may also authorize the purchase of 'industrial items or technologies for installation in government or private industrial facilities,'" reports Ars.
Once upon a time, not long ago, I was generally headed for Vermont and was prepared to encourage my children to settle there also. As a place of natural beauty it ranks highly with many other places, but in uncertain times I felt drawn there for another reason, one in keeping with my technical interests and survivalist tendency.
You see, I wanted to join the folks at Vermont Yankee. Vermont Yankee was the greatest jewel mankind had yet produced: a nuclear power plant connected by direct and exclusive feeder to a nearby hydro station with the capacity to black-start it. This duo (by happenstance) was our grid's most disaster resilient corner, a shining light of engineering. In any scenario without copious liquid hydrocarbons or gas infrastructure damaged beyond repair, these two would have lit an area sufficiently large to empower enough people to successfully defend the region -- for years -- and achieve stable governance. And that region would serve as a beacon of hope to surrounding areas during reconstruction.
But Vermont Yankee has been destroyed by corporate vandals and clueless politics. Now if the worst comes to pass in that area there will be only the ~35MW output of the Vernon Hydro plant. This is sufficient to support a totalitarian feudal barony right around the dam that quickly evolves into an item of tribal conquest with a 'shoot on sight' policy for outsiders. A great place to stay away from.
My June 2017 letter to Energy Secretary Perry was focused on the vulnerability of US natural gas. It is a great pain to state the obvious, but necessary because utility wind and solar has made faux-environmentalists into useful idiot 'crypto-advocates' of gas grid generation. We are on the cusp where a coordinated attack on the gas distribution network in a few places would trigger cascading grid failure, as distant gas plants operating directly from the pipelines drop offline and stay offline for days or weeks. This sentiment has since taken shape as the Trump Administration proposes ways to protect utilities able to stockpile 90 days of fuel on site, and encourages them to do so. It is plain common sense. It comes down to a simple question: Can you supply a compelling reason why the United States electric grid should fail completely within hours of a relatively simple attack?
This letter of mine has been in Donald Trump's possession since May 2, 2016 . If you read it you may discover why I considered Trump the only candidate worthy of such a message. In his pronouncement to pursue energy self-sufficiency in general and consider nuclear an essential part of the mix, there is hope. The others offer nothing but more years of bad road and an obscenely stupid fixation on base load irredeemables (wind and solar). Trump is literally the only one with the courage to stand up to the tripe.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Nuclear is very powerful! Listen carefully to what the President of the United States of America has to say about that:
Look, having nuclear—my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart—you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I'm one of the smartest people anywhere in the world—it’s true!—but when you're a conservative Republican they try—oh, do they do a number—that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune—you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged—but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me—it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are (nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what's going to happen and he was right—who would have thought?), but when you look at what's going on with the four prisoners—now it used to be three, now it’s four—but when it was three and even now, I would have said it's all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don't, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years—but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.