We continue to energize and power our lives with nuclear power, while completely ignoring the harmful effects it has on poor urban communities—its been decades. People of Color are the disposable populations.  
Dixon 12, Bruce A. Dixon, Environmental racism: Is nuclear plant causing cancer for poor black residents of Shell Bluff, Ga.?http://thegrio.com/2012/01/25/nuclear-plants-and-cancer-epidemics-in-a-poor-black-georgia-town-environmental-racism-in-the-21st-ce/, January25, 2012
Environmental racism occurs when hazardous industries and facilities are placed in and near poor, minority communities. Because the resultant pollution from such installations is a cost usually paid by the immediate environment and community affected, the fall out of environmental racism is the localization of those costs in areas with the least political clout. In 2010, President Obama supported the Department of Energy’s decision to grant $8.3 billion in conditional loan guarantees for the construction of twin nuclear reactors in Burke County, Ga. at the Vogtle plant. According to Southern Company (which is building the reactors), the creation of the nation’s first new nuclear reactors in 30 years will result in an emissions-free, jobs-creating bonanza for the poor and mostly black communities around Shell Bluff and other Burke County cities. But some residents are asking, if nuclear reactors are really economic shots in the arm, why is Burke County still one of the poorest corners of the state a quarter century after Southern Company brought its first pair of local reactors online in 1987? They also want to know: If the old and new reactors will be safe, why won’t Southern Company or the federal government pay to monitor radiation levels in Burke County? And most of all, why are cancer rates more than 50 percent higher in communities near existing reactors, according to the Centers for Disease Control? Trading clean energy and jobs for the health of poor black citizens without investigating the long-term effects fits the definition of environmental racism precisely. “Some people did get jobs,” former Shell Bluff resident Annie Laura Stephens told the Grio, “but a lot of us got something else. We got cancer. I lost sisters, brothers and cousins to cancer, and every family I know has lost somebody to cancer.” Ms. Stephens’ complaint is echoed by many local residents.  Since the early 1980s, Burke County residents have experienced a veritable cancer epidemic. Located along what is already the fourth most toxic waterway in the nation, Shell Bluff is across the Savannah River from a former nuclear weapons manufacturing plant. Nearby Waynesboro residents rely on wells for bathing and drinking water, which makes them highly vulnerable to the radioactive contamination of local ground water. With the two existing reactors at Vogtle, in addition to the former weapons plant (which is a Superfund toxic site), when the new reactors are completed the number of potential sources of nuclear contamination in tiny Burke county will rise to five. But no one is closely monitoring their effects on residents. This has left Shell Bluff residents to rely on anecdotal evidence “We don’t have the best educations, but we can read and we can count,” continues Stephens regarding her observations. “We know that since 2004 there has been no testing of our water, soil or air for radiation. We drink the water, we bathe in it and wash dishes and clothes in it. We know every family has cancer… and that can’t be normal, that can’t be right. We know way too many are sick with cancer and we know why. But we can’t prove it absolutely, because nobody will test the local air or water or anything else for the radiation we know is there.

Folks in urban communities are disposable to the US government. Marginalized voices cry for help only to be ignored.
Dixon 12, Bruce A. Dixon, Environmental racism: Is nuclear plant causing cancer for poor black residents of Shell Bluff, Ga.?http://thegrio.com/2012/01/25/nuclear-plants-and-cancer-epidemics-in-a-poor-black-georgia-town-environmental-racism-in-the-21st-ce/, January25, 2012
“We’ve had meetings and protests and lots of promises and more meetings,” Stephens said. “But it seems that nobody is listening, but Jesus.” At the end of 2003, when federal funding for radiation monitoring was slated to end in the area, Georgia WAND (Womens Action for New Directions) and local residents began pushing for the Department of Energy to resume radiation monitoring around the two existing nuclear plants at Shell Bluff. They met with state officials and members of Congress over several years, but got no results. Then in 2010, WAND discovered that the DOE had falsely reported to Congress that funds has been provided to Georgia for radiation monitoring since 2004. In fact the state had received no money for this purpose since 2003. After CNN investigated these circumstances at Shell Bluff and aired an April 2010 report on the cancer epidemic, federal officials pledged to reinstate funds for radiation monitoring in the area. But by August of that year, DOE was refusing to fund any proposal for this work. Since then, according to WAND director Bobbie Paul, federal officials and their contractors have stalled and made empty promises about restoring the funds. In the meantime, Southern Company has implemented plans for the two new nuclear reactors. “The NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) just approved construction permits for two new reactors right next to the old ones,” lamented Rev. Willy Tomlin, also of Shell Bluff. “They are making billions off us, but can’t spare a nickel to tell us why our cancer rates are higher than everybody else’s, or even to count them. A lot of people are scared. They see we’ve been having meetings and fighting this for a long while now. They see we haven’t won yet. “Georgia Power is (the source of) a lot of the few jobs in this area, and people don’t want to jeopardize the little they have,” Tomlin continued. “If you speak out, you can lose your job, or your relatives can lose theirs. It happens.” Southern Company is the parent company of Georgia Power. “Many people really are resigned to the cancer as the price they have to pay to keep living here,” Paul confirmed. The manipulation of the local population into accepting the terms presented by Southern Company to keep their jobs goes further. In early January 2012, WAND and Shell Bluff residents invited Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery of the Georgia Coalition for the Peoples Agenda to Shell Bluff to hear the concerns of residents, and preach about the power of voting. Dr. Lowery, a former president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), confided to meeting participants that he had met with a representative from Southern Company. He did not mention that the SCLC, which he headed until 1997, has a special relationship with Georgia Power. A former Georgia Power CEO has headed a SCLC $3 million building fund drive. Empty public meetings. Many broken promises. Bribing black communities with jobs in exchange for sickness and death. Is this what environmental racism looks like in the 21st century? The Grio asked Ms. Stephens why the election of a black president hasn’t protected the mostly black residents of Shell Bluff Georgia from such circumstances. Stephens answered: “We all vote. We have meetings and more meetings in between the elections. People are still getting sick and dying of cancer. This has been going on a long time. Right now, they [,Southern Company,] have the power.” According to CNN, the NRC and Southern Company have stated that the plants in Burke County are safe. It is the Nuclear Regulatory Commission policy to allow plants to monitor themselves. Atlanta Progressive News reports that the energy generated by the new reactors will not benefit Georgia residents, because it will be sold to Florida.

Our analysis does not end with urban communities. Nuclear waste disposal on indigenous lands continues perpetual acts of genocide on native people.
Lynch 14, Michael J. Lynch (Professor of criminology and associated faculty member in the School of Global Sustainability at the University of South Florida). “Native American People, Environmental Health and Justice Issues.” Green Criminology. 10 March 2014. JDN. http://greencriminology.org/glossary/native-american-people-environmental-health-and-justice-issues/
Native Americans face a number of environmental hazards and health issues that have been imposed upon Native lands from the outside. In her examination of cancer among Native peoples in the US, Weaver (2010) noted that in general Native Americas have the poorest health among all US population groups. The poor health of Native Americans should not simply be seen as a consequence of life choices made by Native people (e.g., smoking, alcohol and drug use), but as the result of the structural conditions that impact life on reservations. This includes the many negative environmental conditions that have been produced on Native American reservations through mining of uranium, coal, and pollution of Native lands by other industrial processes such as those that have contaminated Native lands with PCBs. Considered in this broader context, Brooks has argued that pollution of Native American lands amounts to a new form of genocide. As she notes, “In the past, buffalo were slaughtered or corn crops were burned . . . threatening local native populations; now the government and large corporations . . . create toxic, lethal threats to human health . . . this type of genocide . . . is the consequence of activities . . . carried out on and near the reservations with reckless disregard for the lives of Native Americans.” Historically, Native Americans were granted land rights through treaties. Those lands were, at the time the reservation treaties were construction, considered less valuable lands. Over time it was discovered that the lands given to Native American contained important minerals, and numerous efforts to reclaim those lands and allows corporations access to those lands were undertaken (Lynch and Stretesky, 2012). In addition, under these new “agreements” Native lands became part of the toxic waste storage mechanism, and as Robert Bullard et al (2007) noted, “the new dumping grounds” for toxic wastes, and were treated as nuclear landfills, and used for commercial toxic waste and garbage incineration. Use of Native lands in this way, a prevalent problems during the 1980s and 1990s, was a results of the relative powerlessness of Native Americans and the ability of the government and corporations to use their power to and the lack of Native American power to turn Native lands into resource and waste bins. Numerous studies indicate the extent of the environmentally related problems Native American people face. Examples of this link between externally imposed environmental conditions and Native peoples health include the following. Orr et al.’s (2002) study of birth defects for populations living in close proximity to hazardous waste sites in California found that the largest impacts were experienced by Native Americans. Malcoe et al (2002) found that soil and lead dust pollution from mining waste poses a more significant health concern for Native Americans tan other groups (Malcoe et al. 2002). Anderton (1997) found that Native Americans were more likely to live in close proximity to Superfund sites (i.e., toxic waste sites that pose a significant risk to human health and are designated to receive federal cleanup funds). Bullard et al. (2007) found that Native American were 1.8 times more likely to reside near a commercial toxic waste facility. Gowda and Easterling (2000) discovered that environmental injustice that Native lands were targeted for nuclear waste disposal sites. 

Contrary to the ideas people had before Fukushima, nuclear scientists now understand that one nuclear accident could create a domino effect, and that significant threats have gone unaddressed.
Bedard 15, Paul Bedard (the Washington Examiner's "Washington Secrets" columnist). “Report: Nuke plants unprotected from EMP, terrorists, solar meltdown.” Washington Examiner. 14 September 2015. JDN. http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/report-nuke-plants-unprotected-from-emp-terrorists-solar-meltdown/article/2571974
And unless the industry and Washington move swiftly to install some protection, the chances are growing quickly that the nation could see a long blackout that could lead to riots and deaths.  "It's going to kill us," warned David Stuckenberg, chairman of the American Leadership and Policy Foundation. His group's report, "Electromagnetic Pulse and Space Weather and the Strategic Threat to America's Nuclear Power Stations," studies the potential EMP and solar weather impact to the nation's collection of nuclear plants. The report, provided to the Washington Examiner, found that the industry and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have done little to address the threats. That's despite a 2012 solar flare near-miss that could have dismantled some plants and growing fears of terrorism, such as a small atmospheric nuclear explosion over the U.S. that could scuttle the nuke plants and fry the transformers, causing huge blackouts.  What's more, the report authors found that the industry has done little in reaction to the 2011 Japanese nuclear disaster that dismantled several power plants in a tsunami. For example, some of the backup generators needed to fuel cooling in the six Fukushima nuclear plants were destroyed, resulting in catastrophe. In the U.S., there are inadequate plans to handle similar generator losses, the report said.  A condensed version of the report is to be published in the Harvard National Security Journal Online. The report already has drawn the attention of the Union of Concerned Scientists, which agreed with the report's conclusions that, like Fukushima, U.S. facilities that host multiple nuclear plants are at high risk. "Prior to Fukushima, the consensus worldwide was that a nuclear accident would be confined to a single reactor," said a top nuclear scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists. "But the report quite properly points out that the threat could challenge multiple nuclear plants. If so, our pre-planned mitigation resources might be as ineffective as the single-reactor resources had been at Fukushima," he added. Stuckenberg, an Air Force pilot who is the unpaid chairman of the independent think tank that produced the report, suggested a stopgap plan if the issue of EMP, terrorism and solar weather continues to be ignored: Store enough food and fuel to help people get through a prolonged blackout.
         
Time to act now, subjugated bodies are the ones most at risk to these large scale accidents. It’s just waiting to happen.  
Carleton Environmental Studies, Nuclear Power and Environmental Justice:
A Mixed-Methods Study of Risk, Vulnerability, and the Victim Experience Elicia Cousins, Claire Karban, Fay Li, and Marianna Zapanta Carleton College, Environmental Studies Comprehensive Project Northfield, MN, USA , 41-42
From a Rawlsian perspective, there are injustices in the distribution of harms posed by nuclear reactor siting in the United States. We investigate this matter through both quantitative and qualitative analyses. Our spatial analysis improved upon an earlier study by using a distanced-based GIS method and found that there are disproportionate numbers of non-white Hispanics, women, children under the age of 10 and adults over the age of 65 located near nuclear power facilities in the Eastern U.S. Additionally, the population surrounding the Vogtle reactors in Georgia (where there are two new reactors in construction) is disproportionately African American and low-income, even though Southern Nuclear Operating Company refuses to acknowledge it as such. A subsequent qualitative analysis examined how the proximity to nuclear reactors would translate into actual experience in the case of an accident, with a focus on 42 the social dimension of risk. In previous nuclear accidents, victims struggled with uncertainty, displacement, cultural pressures, and social rejection. Those who are already more vulnerable (e.g. women, poor people, and people of color) are likely to face more difficulties in dealing with these hardships. Under a Rawlsian framework, this is unjust, and the government is responsible for rectifying this injustice through policy that protects the most vulnerable populations from further harm. However, in analyzing nuclear safeguarding policy, we found that nuclear safeguarding policy lacks such focus largely because of its basis in utilitarianism. We argue that a Rawlsian approach to justice would lead to better recognition of existing problems of injustice, and guide policy to create appropriate solutions. 

Plan Text: The United States federal government should prohibit the production of nuclear power. We reserve the right to clarify.
Ross 11, Timothy J. Ross, Avoiding Apocalypse: Congress Should Ban Nuclear Power, Dec. 14, 2011, http://www.law.buffalo.edu/content/dam/law/restricted-assets/pdf/environmental/papers/ross12.pdf, 1
For almost as long as fission-produced nuclear power has existed as a viable energy source, there has been unending debate over whether or not, or to what extent, it should be used as a source of energy. Many see nuclear power as an efficient source of energy that is dependable, cost efficient and clean. That view fails to appreciate the true costs of nuclear power. The risks presented by nuclear power to human health and the environment are unparalleled. Nuclear power is not clean or safe when one considers the byproducts that come of its production or the potential ramifications of a nuclear accident. Nuclear power is also unnecessary to fulfill this nation’s energy needs. There are alternative sources of power, such as wind power or hydroelectric power, that should be used to a fuller extent in generating the nation’s electricity. Congress should 1) ban production, in the United States, of nuclear material for use in fission power plants, 2) prohibit the building of any new nuclear plant, and 3) phase out currently operating nuclear plants. If, at some point, a method is developed for producing fuels or processes that would eliminate instability and radioactive waste, then nuclear power might be acceptable. But so long as the only reliable method of producing nuclear power is through fission, which is unstable and produces radioactive waste, we should not place its convenience before the risks posed to health or environment.
Part 2 Solvency 

Nuclear phase out solves immediate harms of nuclear power and enables a culture shift towards renewables.
Klein 14, Naomi Klein ,This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, January 1st , 2014, print, 119-120
As we have already seen, the latest research on renewable energy, most notably by Mark Jacobson’s team at Stanford, shows that a global transition to 100 percent renewable energy-“wind, water and solar”-is both technically and economically feasible “by as early as 2030.” That means lowering greenhouse emissions in line with science-based targets does not have to involve building a global network of new nuclear plants. In fact that could well slow down the transition, since renewable energy is faster and cheaper to roll out than nuclear, critical factors given the tightness of the timeframe. Moreover, says Jacobson, in the near-term nuclear is “not carbon-free, no matter what the advocates tell you. Vast amounts of fossil fuels must be burned to mine, transport and enrich uranium and to build the nuclear plant. And all that dirty power will be released during the 10 to 19 years that it takes to plan and build a nuclear plant. (A wind farm typically takes two to five years .)” He concludes that “if we invest in nuclear versus true renewables, you can bet that the glaciers and polar ice caps will keep melting while we wait, and wait, for the nuclear age to arrive. We will also guarantee a riskier future for us all.” Indeed, renewable installations present dramatically lower risks than either fossil fuels or nuclear energy to those who live and work next to them. As comedian Bill Maher once observed, “You know what happens when windmills collapse into the sea? A splash.”II. 32 That said, about 12 percent of the world’s power is currently supplied by nuclear energy, much of it coming from reactors that are old and obsolete.33 From a climate perspective, it would certainly be preferable if governments staggered their transitions away from high-risk energy sources like nuclear, prioritizing fossil fuels for cuts because the next decade is so critical for getting us off our current trajectory toward 4-6 degrees Celsius of warming. That would be compatible with a moratorium on new nuclear facilities, a decommissioning of the oldest plants and then a full nuclear phase-out once renewables had decisively displaced fossil fuels. And yet it must also be acknowledged that it was the power of Germany's antinuclear movement that created the conditions for the renewables revolution in the first place (as was the case in Denmark in the 19805), so there might have been no energy transition to debate without that widespread desire to get off nuclear due to its many hazards. Moreover, many German energy experts are convinced that the speed of the transition so far proves that it is possible to phase out both nuclear and fossil fuels simultaneously. A 2012 report by the German National Center for Aerospace, Energy and Transport Research (DLR), for instance, demonstrated that 67 percent of the electricity in all of the EU could come from renewables by 2030, with that number reaching 96 percent by 2050.34 But, clearly, this will become a reality only if the right policies are in place.        

Alternatives to nuclear reactors are preferable.  
PSR, http://www.psr.org/resources/nuclear-power-factsheet.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/  Dirty, Dangerous and Expensive: The Truth About Nuclear Power
It is clear that alternatives to fossil fuels must be developed on a large scale.  However, nuclear power is neither renewable nor clean and therefore not a wise option.  Even if one were to disregard the waste problems, safety risks and dismal economics, nuclear power is both too slow and too limited a solution to global warming and energy insecurity.  Given the urgent need to begin reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the long lead times required for the design, permitting and construction of nuclear reactors render nuclear power an ineffective option for addressing global warming. Taxpayer dollars would be better spent on increasing energy conservation, efficiency and developing renewable energy resources.  In fact, numerous studies have shown that improving energy efficiency is the most cost-effective and sustainable way to concurrently reduce energy demand and curb greenhouse gas emissions. Wind power already is less expensive than nuclear power.  And while photovoltaic power is currently more expensive than nuclear energy, the price of electricity produced by the sun, as with wind and other forms of renewable energy, is falling quickly.  Conversely, the cost of nuclear power is rising.(3,11) When the very serious risk of accidents, proliferation, terrorism and nuclear war are considered, it is clear that investment in nuclear power as a climate change solution is not only misguided, but also highly dangerous.  As we look for solutions to the dual threats of global warming and energy insecurity, we should focus our efforts on improving energy conservation and efficiency and expanding the use of safe, clean renewable forms of energy to build a new energy future for the nation

Nuclear power prohibition recognizes value of the earth- only prohibition puts the necessary pressure on renewables.  The plan is a pragmatic shift in the right direction and certainly a necessary one.
Mez 16, Lutz Mez, Berlin Centre for Caspian Region Studies, Freie Universität Berlin “The experts on nuclear power and climate change” the Bulletin asked top energy and environmental experts to comment on the role they think nuclear energy should (or should not) play in efforts to implement the climate plans that countries around the world 18 FEBRUARY 2016 http://thebulletin.org/experts-nuclear-power-and-climate-change8996
The electrical power production sector accounts for about 28 percent of global anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions and constitutes by far the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. That is why supposedly carbon dioxide-free nuclear power plants have frequently been praised as a panacea for addressing climate change. However, in 2013 nuclear electricity contributed just 10.6 percent of global electricity generation, and because electricity represents only 18 percent of total global final energy consumption, the nuclear share is just 1.7 percent of global final energy consumption. Even if generation in nuclear power plants could be increased significantly, nuclear power will remain a marginal energy source. Therefore, the turnaround in energy systems has to prioritize energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy technologies and cogeneration plants, which do not cause any more carbon dioxide emissions than nuclear power plants. From a systemic perspective, nuclear power plants are by no means free of carbon dioxide emissions. Today, they produce up to one third of the greenhouse gases that large modern gas power plants produce. Carbon dioxide emissions connected to production of nuclear energy amounts to (depending on where the uranium used in a reactor is mined and enriched) between 7 and 126 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per kilowatt hour, according to an analysis by International Institute for Sustainability Analysis and Strategy co-founder Uwe Fritsche. For a typical nuclear power plant in Germany, the specific emission estimate of 28 grams has been calculated. An initial estimate of global carbon dioxide emissions through the generation of nuclear electricity in 2014 registered at about 110,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent—or roughly as much as the carbon dioxide emissions of a country like the Czech Republic. And this data does not even include the emissions caused by storage of nuclear waste. In the coming decades, indirect carbon dioxide emissions from nuclear power plants will increase considerably, because high-grade resources of uranium are exhausted and much more fossil energy will have to be used to mine uranium. In view of this trend, nuclear power plants will no longer have an emissions advantage over modern gas-fired power plants, let alone in comparison to the advantages offered by increased energy efficiency or greater use of renewable energies. Nuclear power plants may also contribute to climate change by emitting radioactive isotopes such as tritium or carbon 14 and the radioactive noble gas krypton 85. Krypton 85 is produced in nuclear power plants and released on a massive scale in the reprocessing of spent fuel. The concentration of krypton 85 in Earth's atmosphere has soared over the last few years as a result of nuclear fission, reaching a new record. Krypton 85 increases the natural, radiation-induced ionization of the air. Thus the electrical balance of the Earth's atmosphere changes, which poses a significant threat to weather patterns and climate. Even though krypton 85 is “one of the most toxic agents for climate,” according to German physicist and political figure Klaus Buchner, these emissions have not received any attention in international climate-protection negotiations down to the present. As for the assertion that nuclear power is needed to promote climate protection, exactly the opposite would appear to be the case: Nuclear power plants must be closed down quickly to exert pressure on operators and the power plant industry to redouble efforts at innovation in the development of sustainable and socially compatible energy technologies and especially the use of smart energy services.

Empirics prove. Countries that prohibit nuclear power shift to renewables.
Shankleman 16, Jessica Shankleman, Germany Just Got Almost All of Its Power From Renewable Energyhttp://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-16/germany-just-got-almost-all-of-its-power-from-renewable-energy, May 16, 2016
Clean power supplied almost all of Germany’s power demand for the first time on Sunday, marking a milestone for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s “Energiewende” policy to boost renewables while phasing out nuclear and fossil fuels. Solar and wind power peaked at 2 p.m. local time on Sunday, allowing renewables to supply 45.5 gigawatts as demand was 45.8 gigawatts, according to provisional data by Agora Energiewende, a research institute in Berlin. Power prices turned negative during several 15-minute periods yesterday, dropping as low as minus 50 euros ($57) a megawatt-hour, according to data from Epex Spot. Countries around Europe are building increasing amounts of renewable capacity in order to reduce their carbon emissions and boost supply security. Last year Denmark’s wind farms supplied 140 percent of demand, while the U.K. had no coal-fired power stations meeting electricity demand for about four hours on May 10 as a result of plant breakdowns. “Events like this highlight that eventually we may need to start curtailing because of market-wide oversupply,” said Monne Depraetere, an analyst for Bloomberg New Energy Finance. “In the long-run, that may provide a case to build technologies that can manage this oversupply  for example more interconnectors or energy storage.” Renewables were only able to meet demand because of Germany’s strong export capability, the analyst said. Even when solar and wind peaked, conventional power plants were still supplying 7.7 gigawatts.

Prohibiting nuclear power opens up the potential for a more decentralized grid – it also makes renewables more effective because they no longer get blocked by the nuclear industry.
Lydersen ’15, Kari Lydersen writes for publications including The Washington Post, In These Times, Punk Planet and LiP magazine and is a youth journalism instructor based in Chicago. “Why the nuclear industry targets renewables instead of gas.” Midwest Energy News. 02/06/2015. http://midwestenergynews.com/2015/02/06/why-the-nuclear-industry-targets-renewables-instead-of-gas/ JJN
Why attack renewables? The advent of horizontal hydraulic fracturing (fracking) about a decade ago provided an abundant fuel for natural gas plants which can quickly ratchet up and down to match demand. Cheap natural gas has driven the closing of scores of coal plants nationwide, and has had a major impact on the nuclear industry. So why isn’t the nuclear industry trying to curb the influence of natural gas? Energy experts point to straightforward political and business reasons and the complicated structure of the auctions where energy is sold. “The fact of the matter is natural gas and wind power both compete with Exelon’s nuclear generation,” said Environmental Law and Policy Center director Howard Learner. “Exelon can’t do anything about the market price for natural gas, so Exelon is training its fire on trying to stop and hold off wind power and solar energy development.” Some companies that own nuclear generation are also heavily invested in natural gas. Nuclear makes up 81 percent of Exelon’s generation and 54 percent of its capacity, while natural gas makes up 10 percent of its generation and 22 percent of its capacity. Wind and solar make up 1.9 and 0.3 percent of Exelon’s generation, respectively. “One thing to understand about the nuclear industry is that nuclear is also the coal and natural gas industry,” said Tim Judson, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, which published the September 2014 report “Killing the Competition” about nuclear attacks on renewables. “Wind and efficiency are just boutique elements of their portfolios.” Nuclear Energy Institute spokesman Thomas Kauffman said that the institute does not take a position on renewable energy subsidies and that it, “supports the Obama administration’s all-of-the-above energy strategy.” He declined to answer further questions and said that groups weighing in about recent developments have “a history of opposing nuclear power.” Colafella and Young of FirstEnergy said “we believe that a diverse mix of generating assets, including renewables, is needed to keep power flowing reliably and affordably.” “Low market prices – which are largely driven by low-cost natural gas, not renewables – are putting pressure on baseload generating plants that reliably deliver power to our customers around the clock,” they added. But, they reiterated they expect prices to rise, reviving the nuclear plants’ profits. Auction action Nuclear energy and wind power are both known as “price-takers” in the regional auctions where generators sell their energy. In these auctions, all sellers get the same price for energy sold at a given time. They are all paid the price of the most expensive bid that is accepted into the auction to meet demand. Nuclear plants and wind turbines both generate energy very cheaply, even though the overall costs of maintaining and running a nuclear plant are high. Before the fracking revolution, natural gas-fired power was typically much more expensive than other sources, so nuclear and coal generators would enjoy getting paid at the same rate as natural gas. These days natural gas-fired power is cheap, but wind is even cheaper. So a lot of wind on the market not only edges out other energy sources in the auction, it also can lower the price that all players are paid for their energy. The nuclear industry is striking back at wind in a specific type of market known as capacity, where energy providers are essentially paid for promising to be ready to provide energy at peak times. The PJM regional market has adopted changes that greatly increase the capacity payments that Exelon’s nuclear plants will receive, while making it extremely difficult for wind and solar to benefit from these payments. Exelon lobbied hard for the changes, which must still be approved by federal regulators. Paradigm shift Nuclear companies also appear to oppose the proliferation of distributed solar and other renewable generation for the same reasons that apparently motivate utility companies like We Energies in Wisconsin. Even if renewables make up only a small amount of generation, they represent a shift to a more decentralized energy system, less reliant on big baseload coal or nuclear power plants. While Exelon’s unregulated generation arm runs the nuclear plants in Illinois, Exelon is also a regulated utility in the process of acquiring Washington D.C.-area Pepco Holdings, which would make it the country’s largest utility. “It goes back to the concept of maintaining the old model of utilities as long as possible because you have control, as opposed to something out of their control like solar panels on rooftops,” said Dave Kraft, director of the Nuclear Energy Information Service. Ongoing improvements to the grid, including new transmission and increased grid storage, also pose a challenge to centralized power. When it gets easier to move electricity around or to store it on the grid, energy generated by the sun and wind can be better used when and where it is needed. Scared by solar? Exelon runs a 10 MW solar farm on Chicago’s South Side. But critics say this does not make the company a friend of solar. In different jurisdictions Exelon has argued that people with solar panels should not be paid the retail rate for energy they send back to the grid. This same position has been taken by utilities around the country looking to curb distributed solar generation; in most cases it has met with strong opposition from both the public and regulators. Exelon’s stance on solar has stoked resistance to the company’s proposed merger with Pepco. Exelon spokesman Paul Adams said, “As technology continues to evolve, it is important that we maintain a reliable, secure and universally available electric grid and ensure that energy policies do not permit shifting the costs of maintaining the grid from some customers to others, creating energy ‘haves’ and ‘have nots.’” This is the same argument that We Energies has made in its highly controversial rate case in Wisconsin. Makhijani called Exelon’s point disingenuous, especially since the changes Exelon pushed in the capacity market will likely increase Illinois customers’ rates 11 percent or more. “It’s crocodile tears, the crocodile feeling very sorry for this deer it just caught,” Makhijani said. “Suddenly there’s this huge concern for the poor.” Louisiana-based Entergy has also promoted policies that pay low rates to customers with solar panels for the energy they send back to the grid. Entergy has nuclear plants that sell their power on the open market as well as regulated nuclear plants where the company is guaranteed to recoup its costs from ratepayers. Fighting over subsidies Nuclear proponents have long depicted tax breaks for wind and other renewables as unfair and a threat to reliability. In 2012 Exelon was expelled from the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) and its board, because of Exelon’s aggressive lobbying to end the federal Production Tax Credit which provided tax breaks crucial for wind development. “It was simply a fact that they no longer supported the aims” of promoting wind power, said AWEA spokesman Peter Kelley. “They were marshaling allies, teaming up with anti-wind organizations that have always been against wind energy.” Kelley said that cheap natural gas prices have had a much more profound impact than wind on the viability of nuclear plants. “You have to ignore the real reasons and exaggerate a few outlier moments when wind had any impact on their business at all,” to be convinced by Exelon’s arguments, Kelley said. “They’re ignoring the real reasons and blaming wind because they may think it’s politically expedient.” Adams said the Exelon “believes the transition to clean energy should be left to the free market, rather than through the government picking technology winners and losers through tax subsidies. We believe that the wind PTC has served its purpose and oppose its reinstatement.” Exelon had argued that the Production Tax Credit was causing a phenomenon known as “negative pricing” when power from its nuclear plants could not be delivered where it was wanted. In March 2014 AWEA released a study criticizing Exelon for what it called exaggerations and distortions on that issue. AWEA said negative pricing was rare, was caused more by congestion on power lines and other factors than by wind, and had nothing to do directly with the tax credit. Critics point out that the nuclear industry was built on government subsidies and continues to be heavily subsidized. A 2011 report by the Union of Concerned Scientists describes a host of past and ongoing nuclear subsidies related to construction, operation, insurance, waste management and uranium mining. “It’s the throwing stones from glass houses problem,” said Makhijani. “They have more glass in their house than any other industry.” Clean power plans Nuclear plants could benefit substantially from the clean power plans that states are developing in keeping with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s rules on reducing carbon emissions from power plants. Much depends on how the final EPA rules play out and how states decide to achieve their required reductions. The Nuclear Energy Institute wrote a letter in December to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy asking the EPA to treat avoided carbon emissions from existing nuclear plants the same way that reduced emissions are treated. And it noted that the EPA’s calculations show that per ton of carbon avoided, nuclear plants are cheaper than creating new sources of renewable energy. “Renewable energy, nuclear energy and hydro receive vastly different treatment under the proposed EPA rule, but nuclear energy does not receive appropriate credit,” says the letter. Environmentalists say that rewarding existing nuclear plants for their zero-carbon power is not in the spirit of the EPA rules. “Exelon has talked about redefining clean energy to include nuclear plants that produce large amounts of highly radioactive waste,” said Learner. “That too-clever definition is simply not credible with the public. To redefine clean energy to include nuclear power really doesn’t pass the straight-face test.”
Part 3 Framing 

The role of the judge is to vote for the debater who best methodologically resists oppression.  Abstractions that don’t address the Aff’s fundamental thesis marginalize the discussion, destroying accessibility.  
Smith 13 Elijah Smith, A Conversation in Ruins: Race and Black Participation in Lincoln Douglas Debate, Vbriefly, 2013.  NS
It will be uncomfortable, it will be hard, and it will require continued effort but the necessary step in fixing this problem, like all problems, is the community as a whole admitting that such a 3problem with many “socially acceptable” choices exists in the first place. Like all systems of social control, the reality of racism in debate is constituted by the singular choices that institutions, coaches, and students make on a weekly basis. I have watched countless rounds where competitors attempt to win by rushing to abstractions to distance the conversation from the material reality that black debaters are forced to deal with every day. One of the students I coached, who has since graduated after leaving debate, had an adult judge write out a ballot that concluded by “hypothetically” defending my student being lynched at the tournament. Another debate concluded with a young man defending that we can kill animals humanely, “just like we did that guy Troy Davis”. Community norms would have competitors do intellectual gymnastics or make up rules to accuse black debaters of breaking to escape hard conversations but as someone who understands that experience, the only constructive strategy is to acknowledge the reality of the oppressed, engage the discussion from the perspective of authors who are black and brown, and then find strategies to deal with the issues at hand. It hurts to see competitive seasons come and go and have high school students and judges spew the same hateful things you expect to hear at a Klan rally. A student should not, when presenting an advocacy that aligns them with the oppressed, have to justify why oppression is bad. Debate is not just a game, but a learning environment with liberatory potential. Even if the form debate gives to a conversation is not the same you would use to discuss race in

Our discussions cannot be based on ideal theory—we must engage in policy discussions but policies mean nothing unless they change the values to the people they affect.
Dr. Tommy Curry, The Cost of A Thing, VBI Topic Analysis, 2014.  
Despite the pronouncement of debate as an activity and intellectual exercise pointing to the real world consequences of dialogue, thinking, and (personal) politics when addressing issues of racism, sexism, economic disparity, global conflicts, and death, many of the discussions concerning these ongoing challenges to humanity are fixed to a paradigm which sees the adjudication of material disparities and sociological realities as the conquest of one ideal theory over the other. In “Ideal Theory as Ideology,” Charles Mills outlines the problem contemporary theoretical-performance styles in policy debate and value- weighing in Lincoln-Douglass are confronted with in their attempts to get at the concrete problems in our societies. At the outset, Mills concedes that “ideal theory applies to moral theory as a whole (at least to normative ethics as against metaethics); [s]ince ethics deals by definition with normative/prescriptive/evaluative issues, [it is set] against factual/descriptive issues.” 4 At the most general level, the conceptual chasm between what emerges as actual problems in the world (e.g.: racism, sexism, poverty, disease, etc.) and how we frame such problems theoretically—the assumptions and shared ideologies we depend upon for our problems to be heard and accepted as a worthy “problem” by an audience—it is the most obvious call for an anti-ethical paradigm, since such a paradigm insists on the actual as the basis of what can be considered normatively. Mills, however, describes this chasm as a problem of an ideal-as-descriptive model which argues that for any actual-empirical-observable social phenomenon (P), an ideal of (P) is necessarily a representation of that phenomenon. In the idealization of a social phenomenon (P), one¶ “necessarily has to abstract away from 

Put a way your improbably extinction scenarios. People of color face NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST and GENOCIDE through their jobs, housing, schools, families and land.  Someone MUST STAND UP to this shit. It’s Try or keep dying.
Omolade 84, Omolade a historian of black women for the past twenty years and an organizer in both the women’s and civil rights/black power movements 1984
Barbara; Women of Color and the Nuclear Holocaust; WOMEN’S STUDIES QUARTERLY, Vaol. 12., No. 2, Teaching about Peace, War, and Women in the Military, Summer, p. 12; http://www.jstor.org/stable/4004305 City College Center for Worker Education in New York City
In April, 1979, the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency released a report on the effects of nuclear war that concludes that, in a general nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union, 25 to 100 million people would be killed.  This is approximately the same number of African people who died between 1492 and 1890 as a result of the African slave trade to the New World.  The same federal report also comments on the destruction of urban housing that would cause massive shortages after a nuclear war, as well as on the crops that would be lost, causing massive food shortages.  Of course, for people of color the world over, starvation is already a common problem, when, for example, a nation’s crops are grown for export rather than to feed its own people.  And the housing of people of color throughout the world’s urban areas is already blighted and inhumane:  families live in shacks, shanty towns, or on the streets; even in the urban areas of North America, the poor may live without heat or running water.   For people of color, the world as we knew it ended centuries ago.  Our world, with its own languages, customs and ways, ended.  And we are only now beginning to see with increasing clarity that our task is to reclaim that world, struggle for it, and rebuild it in our own image.  The “death culture” we live in has convinced many to be more concerned with death than with life, more willing to demonstrate for “survival at any cost” than to struggle for liberty and peace with dignity.  Nuclear disarmament becomes a safe issue when it is not linked to the daily and historic issues of racism, to the ways in which people of color continue to be murdered.  Acts of war, nuclear holocausts, and genocide have already been declared on our jobs, our housing, our schools, our families, and our lands. As women of color, we are warriors, not pacifists.  We must fight as a people on all fronts, or we will continue to die as a people.  We have fought in people’s wars in China, in Cuba, in Guinea-Bissau, and in such struggles as the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, and in countless daily encounters with landlords, welfare departments, and schools.  These struggles are not abstractions, but the only means by which we have gained the ability to eat and to provide for the future of our people.  We wonder who will lead the battle for nuclear disarmament with the vigor and clarity that women of color have learned from participating in other struggles.  Who will make the political links among racism, sexism, imperialism, cultural integrity, and nuclear arsenals and housing?  Who will stand up?
Pre-empts
1) We need to embrace the state as a heuristic – even if it’s bad we need to learn to fight it.
Zanotti 14, Dr. Laura Zanotti is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Virginia Tech.  Her research and teaching include critical political theory as well as international organizations, UN peacekeeping, democratization and the role of NGOs in post-conflict governance.“Governmentality, Ontology, Methodology: Re-thinking Political Agency in the Global World” – Alternatives: Global, Local, Political – vol 38(4):p. 288-304,. A little unclear if this is late 2013 or early 2014 – The Stated “Version of Record” is Feb 20, 2014, but was originally published online on December 30th, 2013. Obtained via Sage Database.
By questioning substantialist representations of power and subjects, inquiries on the possibilities of political agency are reframed in a way that focuses on power and subjects’ relational character and the contingent processes of their (trans)formation in the context of agonic relations. Options for resistance to governmental scripts are not limited to ‘‘rejection,’’ ‘‘revolution,’’ or ‘‘dispossession’’ to regain a pristine ‘‘freedom from all constraints’’ or an immanent ideal social order. It is found instead in multifarious and contingent struggles that are constituted within the scripts of governmental rationalities and at the same time exceed and transform them. This approach questions oversimplifications of the complexities of liberal political rationalities and of their interactions with non-liberal political players and nurtures a radical skepticism about identifying universally good or bad actors or abstract solutions to political problems. International power interacts in complex ways with diverse political spaces and within these spaces it is appropriated, hybridized, redescribed, hijacked, and tinkered with. Governmentality as a heuristic focuses on performing complex diagnostics of events. It invites historically situated explorations and careful differentiations rather than overarching demonizations of ‘‘power,’’ romanticizations of the ‘‘rebel’’ or the ‘‘the local.’’ More broadly, theoretical formulations that conceive the subject in non-substantialist terms and focus on processes of subjectification, on the ambiguity of power discourses, and on hybridization as the terrain for political transformation, open ways for reconsidering political agency beyond the dichotomy of oppression/rebellion. These alternative formulations also foster an ethics of political engagement, to be continuously taken up through plural and uncertain practices, that demand continuous attention to ‘‘what happens’’ instead of fixations on ‘‘what ought to be.’’83 Such ethics of engagement would not await the revolution to come or hope for a pristine ‘‘freedom’’ to be regained. Instead, it would constantly attempt to twist the working of power by playing with whatever cards are available and would require intense processes of reflexivity on the consequences of political choices. To conclude with a famous phrase by Michel Foucault ‘‘my point is not that everything is bad, but that everything is dangerous, which is not exactly the same as bad. If everything is dangerous, then we always have something to do. So my position leads not to apathy but to hyper- and pessimistic activism.’’84
2) In addition to the Shankleman evidence, other renewables and compressed wind storage and advanced energy storage solves intermittency
Arjun Makhijani 4, Ph.D. “Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy” Institute for Energy and Environmental Research November 5, 2010
The main problem with wind and solar energy is intermittency. This can be re- duced by integrating wind and solar energy together into the grid – for instance, wind energy is often more plentiful at night. Geographic diversity also reduces the intermittency of each source and for both combined. Integration into the grid of these two sources up to about 15 percent of total generation (not far short of the contribution of nuclear electricity today) can be done without serious cost or technical dif culty with available technology, provided appropriate optimization steps are taken. Solar and wind should also be combined with hydropower – with the latter being used when the wind generation is low or zero. This is already being done in the Northwest. Con icts with water releases for sh management can be addressed by combining these three sources with natural gas standby. The high cost of natural gas makes it economical to use combined cycle power plants as standby capacity and spinning reserve for wind rather than for intermediate or baseload generation. In other words, given the high price of natural gas, these plants could be economically idled for some of the time and be available as a complement to wind power. Compressed air can also be used for energy storage in combination with these sources. No new