NEI Nuclear Notes

Jon Breed The following guest post is from Jon Breed, manager of state and federal advocacy at NEI. On April 1st, 2016, Governor Scott Walker signed a bipartisan bill ending Wisconsin’s 33-year moratorium against building new nuclear energy facilities . After signing the bill, Walker said that “nuclear energy sustains Wisconsin’s economy two ways, both in employing a skilled, well-paid workforce to run a nuclear plant, and in providing the affordable, reliable source of emission-neutral power on which all businesses and employers rely.” The passage of the bill is a testament to the power of coalitions and grassroots advocacy and will serve as a model for how pro-nuclear advocates drive policy outcomes in the future. A lot has changed in American politics in the past fifteen years. The age of shoe-leather lobbying has been supplemented by a new kind political influence: the power of coalition advocacy. This shift began with the rise of the internet and was refined by group...

Mike McGarey The following is a guest post from Mike McGarey, senior advisor for local and state government affairs at NEI.  Over the weekend, at a governors conference here in Washington, I greeted a friend whom I’d met 10 years earlier when she was a staffer to then-Wisconsin Assemblyman (now Wisconsin Public Service Commission Chairman) Phil Montgomery. My friend’s former boss was among the early advocates for repealing Wisconsin’s longstanding moratorium on new nuclear, and we high-fived last week’s bipartisan state Senate passage of the repeal bill . The bill now awaits Governor Scott Walker’s promised signature. Enactment will ensure that reliable, zero-emissions nuclear will be among a host of technologies Wisconsin’s utilities and policymakers can consider going forward to meet the state’s energy, environmental and economic needs. Looking back, I recall a number of key players and events that slowly turned a polarizing issue – viewed by some as partisan, and a long ...

West Virginia is the largest coal producer east of the Mississippi and generates nearly all of its electricity with coal-fired plants . Even so, some state legislators, mindful of both environmental and economic factors, think the state's 1996 ban on nuclear energy should be overturned. Sen. Brooks McCabe says the ban is inconsistent with West Virginia's position as an “energy state”: If we’re an energy state, we ought to say we’re an energy state and not exclude anyone. While McCabe doesn’t see a nuclear plant in West Virginia’s future anytime soon, even if the ban were overturned, he believes the United States needs to become self-sufficient where energy is concerned and that “nuclear will have some part of that equation.” In particular, he envisions small, scalable nuclear plants being built: I would suggest that at some point in the future … you’re going to see much smaller, in some ways more mobile, nuclear power plants—little mini-plants, almost like you see in some of ...