Tournament: Loyola Invitational | Round: 2 | Opponent: Northwood Independent KK | Judge: Islam, Rashed
Open Source

Tournament: Greenhill RR | Round: 1 | Opponent: PV Peninsula JL | Judge: IDK I have to check
Open Source

Tournament: GH RR | Round: 9 | Opponent: NA | Judge: NA
GH RR AC
Part 1 is Framework

Evaluation of energy policy requires a social context. This requires situating nuclear power in the broader context of society and the economy to understand that traditional cost benefit assessment relies on flawed technological optimism. Glover et al 06 Policy fellow at center for energy
(Policy Fellow at the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy, University of Delaware, Directs the Urban Studies and Wheaton in Chicago programs, selected to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs Emerging Leaders Program for 2011-2013, *2007 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Distinguished Professor of Energy and Climate Policy at the University of Delaware, Head of the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy (Leigh Glover, Noah Toly, John Byrne, “Energy as a Social Project: Recovering a Discourse”, in “Transforming Power: Energy, Environment, and Society in Conflict”, p. 1-32, http://www.ceep.udel.edu/energy/publications/2006_es_energy_as_a_social_project.pdf)

From climate change to acid rain, contaminated landscapes, mercury ¶ pollution, and biodiversity loss,¶ 2¶ the origins of many of our least tractable¶ environmental problems can be traced to the operations of the modern energy¶ system. A scan of nightfall across the planet reveals a social dilemma that also ¶ accompanies this system’s operations: invented over a century ago, electric ¶ light remains an experience only for the socially privileged. Two billion human¶ beings—almost one-third of the planet’s population—experience evening light¶ by candle, oil lamp, or open fire, reminding us that energy modernization has ¶ left intact—and sometimes exacerbated—social inequalities that its architects¶ promised would be banished (Smil, 2003: 370 - 373). And there is the ¶ disturbing link between modern energy and war.¶ 3¶ Whether as a mineral whose ¶ control is fought over by the powerful (for a recent history of conflict over oil,¶ see Klare, 2002b, 2004, 2006), or as the enablement of an atomic war of ¶ extinction, modern energy makes modern life possible and threatens its future. With environmental crisis, social inequality, and military conflict among the¶ significant problems of contemporary energy-society relations, the importance ¶ of a social analysis of the modern energy system appears easy to establish. One¶ might, therefore, expect a lively and fulsome debate of the sector’s performance, ¶ including critical inquiries into the politics, sociology, and political economy of¶ modern energy. Yet, contemporary discourse on the subject is disappointing:¶ instead of a social analysis of energy regimes, the field seems to be a captive of ¶ euphoric technological visions and associated studies of “energy futures” that ¶ imagine the pleasing consequences of new energy sources and devices.4 One stream of euphoria has sprung from advocates of conventional energy, ¶ perhaps best represented by the unflappable optimists of nuclear power ¶ who, early on, promised to invent a “magical fire” (Weinberg, 1972) capable¶ of meeting any level of energy demand inexhaustibly in a manner “too cheap¶ to meter” (Lewis Strauss, cited in the New York Times 1954, 1955). In reply to¶ those who fear catastrophic accidents from the “magical fire” or the proliferation of nuclear weapons, a new promise is made to realize “inherently safe¶ reactors” (Weinberg, 1985) that risk neither serious accident nor intentionally harmful use of high-energy physics. Less grandiose, but no less optimistic, forecasts can be heard from fossil fuel enthusiasts who, likewise, project¶ more energy, at lower cost, and with little ecological harm (see, e.g., Yergin¶ and Stoppard, 2003). Skeptics of conventional energy, eschewing involvement with dangerously scaled technologies and their ecological consequences, find solace in¶ “sustainable energy alternatives” that constitute a second euphoric stream.¶ Preferring to redirect attention to smaller, and supposedly more democratic,¶ options, “green” energy advocates conceive devices and systems that prefigure a revival of human scale development, local self-determination, and a¶ commitment to ecological balance. Among supporters are those who believe¶ that greening the energy system embodies universal social ideals and, as a¶ result, can overcome current conflicts between energy “haves” and “havenots.”¶ 5¶ In a recent contribution to this perspective, Vaitheeswaran suggests¶ (2003: 327, 291), “today’s nascent energy revolution will truly deliver power¶ to the people” as “micropower meets village power.” Hermann Scheer echoes¶ the idea of an alternative energy-led social transformation: the shift to a¶ “solar global economy... can satisfy the material needs of all mankind and¶ grant us the freedom to guarantee truly universal and equal human rights and¶ to safeguard the world’s cultural diversity” (Scheer, 2002: 34).¶ 6 The euphoria of contemporary energy studies is noteworthy for its historical consistency with a nearly unbroken social narrative of wonderment extending from the advent of steam power through the spread of electricity¶ (Nye, 1999). The modern energy regime that now powers nuclear weaponry¶ and risks disruption of the planet’s climate is a product of promises pursued¶ without sustained public examination of the political, social, economic, and¶ ecological record of the regime’s operations. However, the discursive landscape has occasionally included thoughtful exploration of the broader contours of energy-environment-society relations. As early as 1934, Lewis Mumford (see also his two-volume Myth of the¶ Machine, 1966; 1970) critiqued the industrial energy system for being a key¶ source of social and ecological alienation (1934: 196): The changes that were manifested in every department of Technics rested for the¶ most part on one central fact: the increase of energy. Size, speed, quantity, the¶ multiplication of machines, were all reflections of the new means of utilizing fuel and¶ the enlargement of the available stock of fuel itself. Power was dissociated from its¶ natural human and geographic limitations: from the caprices of the weather, from the¶ irregularities that definitely restrict the output of men and animals. By 1961, Mumford despaired that modernity had retrogressed into a lifeharming dead end (1961: 263, 248): ...an orgy of uncontrolled production and equally uncontrolled reproduction: machine fodder and cannon fodder: surplus values and surplus populations... The dirty crowded houses, the dank airless courts and alleys, the bleak pavements, the sulphurous atmosphere, the over-routinized and dehumanized factory, the drill schools, the second-hand experiences, the starvation of the senses, the remoteness from nature and animal activity—here are the enemies. The living organism demands a life-sustaining environment. Modernity’s formula for two centuries had been to increase energy in order¶ to produce overwhelming economic growth. While diagnosing the inevitable failures of this logic, Mumford nevertheless warned that modernity’s¶ supporters would seek to derail present-tense¶ 7¶ evaluations of the era’s social¶ and ecological performance with forecasts of a bountiful future in which,¶ finally, the perennial social conflicts over resources would end. Contrary to¶ traditional notions of democratic governance, Mumford observed that the¶ modern ideal actually issues from a pseudomorph that he named the “democratic-authoritarian bargain” (1964: 6) in which the modern energy regime¶ and capitalist political economy join in a promise to produce “every material¶ advantage, every intellectual and emotional stimulus one may desire, in¶ quantities hardly available hitherto even for a restricted minority” on the¶ condition that society demands only what the regime is capable and willing¶ to offer. An authoritarian energy order thereby constructs an aspirational democracy while facilitating the abstraction of production and consumption¶ from non-economic social values. The premises of the current energy paradigms are in need of critical study¶ in the manner of Mumford’s work if a world measurably different from the¶ present order is to be organized. Interrogating modern energy assumptions,¶ this chapter examines the social projects of both conventional and sustainable energy as a beginning effort in this direction. The critique explores the¶ neglected issue of the political economy of energy, underscores the pattern of¶ democratic failure in the evolution of modern energy, and considers the discursive continuities between the premises of conventional and sustainable¶ energy futures. The Abundant Energy Machine8 Proposals by its stakeholders to fix the modern energy system abound.¶ Advocates envision bigger, more expensive, and more complex machines to¶ spur and sate an endlessly increasing world energy demand. From clean coal¶ to a revived nuclear energy strategy, such developments promise a worldwide¶ movement to a cleaner and more socially benign energy regime that retains¶ its modern ambitions of bigger, more, and better. Proponents even suggest¶ that we might have our cake and eat it too, promoting patterns of energy¶ production, distribution, and consumption consistent with an unconstrained¶ ideology of quantification while also banishing environmental threats and¶ taming social risks that energy critics cite in their challenges to the mainstream. Consistent with a program of ecological modernization, the conventional energy regime’s architects are now exploring new technologies and¶ strategies that offer what are regarded as permanent solutions to our energy¶ troubles without harming our ecological future or disturbing the goal of¶ endless economic growth and its attendant social relations.

Standpoint epistemology is the best starting point for moral decisions – other methods exclude some viewpoints, which makes true analysis of reality impossible. Mills 5
Edited for ableist language
Charles Mills, “Ideal Theory” as Ideology, 2005.  
The crucial common claim—whether couched in terms of ideology and fetishism, or androcentrism, or white normativity—is that all theorizing, both moral and nonmoral, takes place in an intellectual realm dominated by concepts, assumptions, norms, values, and framing perspectives that reflect the experience and group interests of the privileged group (whether the bourgeoisie, or men, or whites). So a simple empiricism will not work as a cognitive strategy; one has to be self-conscious about the concepts that “spontaneously” occur to one, since many of these concepts will not arise naturally but as the result of social structures and hegemonic ideational patterns. In particular, it will often be the case that dominant concepts will obscure certain crucial realities, blocking them from sight, or naturalizing them, while on the other hand, concepts necessary for accurately mapping these realities will be absent. Whether in terms of concepts of the self, or of humans in general, or in the cartography of the social, it will be necessary to scrutinize the dominant conceptual tools and the way the boundaries are drawn. This is, of course, the burden of standpoint theory—that certain realities tend to be more visible from the perspective of the subordinated than the privileged (Harding 2003). The thesis can be put in a strong and implausible form, but weaker versions do have considerable plausibility, as illustrated by the simple fact that for the most part the crucial conceptual innovation necessary to map nonideal realities has not come from the dominant group. In its ignoring of oppression, ideal theory also ignores the consequences of oppression. If societies are not oppressive, or if in modeling them we can abstract away from oppression and assume moral cognizers of roughly equal skill, then the paradigmatic moral agent can be featureless. No theory is required about the particular group-based obstacles that may block the vision of a particular group. By contrast, nonideal theory recognizes that people will typically be cognitively affected by their social location, so that on both the macro and the more local level, the descriptive concepts arrived at may be misleading. Think of the original challenge Marxist models of capitalism posed to liberalism’s social ontology: the claim that to focus on relations of aparently equal exchange, free and fair, among equal individuals was illusory, since at the level of the relations of production, the real ontology of worker and capitalist manifested a deep structure of constraint that limited proletarian freedom. Think of the innovation of using patriarchy to force people to recognize, and condemn as political and oppressive, rather than natural, apolitical, and unproblematic, male domination of women. Think of the recent resurrection of the concept of white supremacy to map the reality of a white domination that has continued in more subtle forms past the ending of de jure segregation. These are all global, high-level concepts, undeniable abstractions. But they map accurately (at least arguably) crucial realities that differentiate the statuses of the human beings within the systems they describe; so while they abstract, they do not idealize. Or consider conceptual innovation at the more local level: the challenge to the traditional way the public/private distinction was drawn, the concept of sexual harassment. In the first case, a seemingly neutral and innocuous conceptual divide turned out, once it was viewed from the perspective of gender subordination, as contributing to the reproduction of the gender system by its relegation of “women’s issues” to a seemingly apolitical and naturalized space. In the case of sexual harassment, a familiar reality—a staple of cartoons in men’s magazines for years (bosses chasing secretaries around the desk and so on)—was reconceptualized as negative (not something funny, but something morally wrong) and a contributor to making the workplace hostile for women. These realizations, these recognitions, did not spontaneously crystallize out of nowhere; they required conceptual labor, a different map of social reality, a valorization of the distinctive experience of women. As a result of having these concepts as visual aids, we can now see better: our perceptions are no longer ignorant blinded to realities to which we were previously obtuse. In some sense, an ideal observer should have been able to see them—yet they did not, as shown by the nonappearance of these realities in male-dominated philosophical literature.

Thus the standards is minimizing the material conditions of social inequality.
Part 2 is The Nuclear Renaissance
We are in the midst of a global “nuclear renaissance”- corporate propaganda markets nuclear power as the only solution to climate change in order to shut down democratic deliberation about alternative energy futures. Wasserman 16 MA
(Harvey  Harvey Franklin Wasserman is an American journalist, author, democracy activist, and advocate for renewable energy.  http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/07/29/ny-times-pushes-nukes-while-claiming-renewables-fail-to-fight-climate-change/ , 7-29)

The idea that nuclear power might fight climate change, and that environmentalists might support it, is a recent concoction, a disgraceful, desperate load of utility hype meant to defend the status quo. Fukushima, unsolved waste problems and the plummeting price of renewables have solidified the environmental community’s opposition to nuke power. These reactors are dirty and dangerous. They are not carbon-free and do emit huge quantities of heated water and steam into the ecosphere. The utility industry can’t get private liability insurance for them, and relies on the1957 Price-Anderson Act to protect them from liability in a major catastrophe. The industry continually complains about subsidies to renewable energy but never mentions this government protection program without which all reactors would close. 7. Not just nuke power but the entire centralized fossil/nuke-based grid system is now being undermined by the massive drops in the price of renewable energy, and massive rises in its efficiency and reliability. The critical missing link is battery technology. Because the sun and wind are intermittent, there needs to be energy storage to smooth out supply. Elon Musk‘s billion-dollar Tesla Gigafactory in Nevada and many other industrial ventures indicate major battery breakthroughs in storage is here today. 8. Porter’s NY Times piece correctly says that the massive amounts of cheap, clean renewables flooding the grid in Europe and parts of the U.S. are driving nuclear power plants into bankruptcy. At least a dozen reactor shut downs have been announced in the U.S. since 2012 and many more are on their way. In Japan 52 of the 54 reactors online before the Fukushima disaster are now closed. And, Germany has pledged to shut all its reactors by 2022. But Porter attacks this by complaining that those nukes were supplying base load power that must be otherwise—according to him—shored up with fossil burners. Here’s his key line: “Renewable sources are producing temporary power gluts from Australia to California, driving out other energy sources that are still necessary to maintain a stable supply of power.” But as all serious environmentalists understand, the choice has never been between nukes versus fossil fuels. It’s between centralized fossil/nukes versus decentralized renewables. Porter’s article never mentions the word “battery” or the term “rooftop solar.” But these are the two key parts in the green transition already very much in progress. So here is what the Times obviously can’t bring itself to say: “Cheap solar panels on rooftops are now making the grid obsolete.” The key bridging element of battery back-up capability is on its way. Meanwhile there is absolutely no need for nuclear power plants, which at any rate have long since become far too expensive to operate. Spending billions to prop up dying nuke reactors for “base load” generation is pure corporate theft at the public expense, both in straight financial terms and in the risk of running badly deteriorated reactors deep into the future until they inevitably melt down or blow up. Those billions instead should go to accelerating battery production and distribution, and making it easier, rather than harder, to gain energy independence using the wind and the sun. All this has serious real-world impacts. In Ohio, for example, a well-organized shift to wind and solar was derailed by the Koch-run legislature. Some $2 billion in wind-power investments and a $500 million solar farm were derailed. There are also serious legal barriers now in place to stop homeowners from putting solar shingles and panels on their rooftops. Meanwhile, FirstEnergy strong-armed the Ohio Public Utilities Commission into approving a huge bailout to keep the seriously deteriorated Davis-Besse nuke operating, even though it cannot compete and is losing huge sums of money. Federal regulators have since put that bailout on hold. Arizona and other Koch-owned legislatures have moved to tax solar panels, ban solar shingles and make it illegal to leave the grid without still paying tribute to the utilities who own it. Indeed, throughout the U.S. and much of the western world, corporate-owned governments are doing their best to slow the ability of people to use renewables to rid themselves of the corporate grid. For an environmental movement serious about saving the Earth from climate change, this is a temporary barrier. The Times and its pro-nuke allies in the corporate media will continue to twist reality. But the Solartopian revolution is proceeding ahead of schedule and under budget. A renewable, decentralized energy system is very much in sight. The only question is how long corporate nonsense like this latest NY Times screed can delay this vital transition. Our planet is burning up from fossil fuels and being irradiated by decrepit money-losing reactors that blow up. Blaming renewable energy for all that is like blaming the peace movement for causing wars. The centralized King CONG grid and its obsolete owners are at the core of the problem. So are the corporate media outlets like the New York Times that try to hide that obvious reality.

At the heart of this renaissance is a drive to colonize other countries to sustain our nuclear addiction – Wittman PhD 11

Wittman, Nora Ph.D. African American Studies “The Scramble for Africa's Nuclear Resources” New African No.507 June 2011

THE CURRENT NUCLEAR POLLUTION in Japan and the reactions of politicians and governments throughout Europe, the USA and Asia, even in the eye of disaster, indicate that they will never stop using nuclear power for military means and domestic energy generation and supply.¶ ILLUSTRATION OMITTED¶ As Japan was battling to control pollution from its Fukushima nuclear plant, destroyed by the massive earthquake that hit the region on II March, French President Nicolas Sarkozy was firmly pronouncing that a withdrawal from nuclear energy was totally out of question for France and will not happen--80 of domestic energy in France comes from nuclear plants.¶ A few hours later, EU ministers deemed it sufficient to submit European nuclear power reactors to a so-called "stress test", and even then only on a voluntary basis. Apparently, the nuclear industry and their party allies throughout the political spectrum have been for a long time in a tight marriage that is far too beneficial for them to split.¶ Africa is currently the continent where nuclear power plants are least present. Only one such plant is present in South Africa, imposed by the apartheid regime in the 1970s. It is located in Koeberg, 30km north of Cape Town, yet surrounded by the city's ever-spreading suburbs, and was built by a French company. Like most nuclear power plants, it has experienced serious problems and its reactors have had to be shut down several times, especially since 2005.¶ Of course, the idea is not totally unconceivable that there could have been more severe incidents before, and that in apartheid times the white supremacist regime would not have made it a top priority to inform and protect the surrounding African people. In 2010, 91 members of staff were contaminated with Cobalt-58 dust in an incident that was said to be confined to the plant only.¶ In view of these facts and the recent developments, it should be clearer than ever that Africa must not follow the path to ultimate and lasting nuclear destruction that European, North American and Asian leaders seem to be determined to continue to take. Indeed, Africa may not only have the responsibility to save itself from this fate, but may also ultimately have the power to save the world from some of this otherwise pre-programmed nuclear disaster. How? By refusing to let its vast nuclear resources be exploited.¶ South Africa's only nuclear power plant, In Koeberg, 30km north of Cape Town, was imposed by the apartheid regime in the 70s¶ ILLUSTRATION OMITTED¶ The nuclear powers are increasingly experiencing and preparing for problems of supply with the necessary crude nuclear materials such as uranium and plutonium. Even though it is said that countries such as the USA, Russia and China have or rather had vast uranium resources themselves, all of these countries are now very eager to identify, secure and exploit mines for nuclear materials throughout Africa.¶ Africa, the continent endowed with the richest natural resources, has vast nuclear materials in its soil. Almost every African country is currently being mined or examined and prepared for nuclear exploitation.¶ According to a recent report updated in February 2011 by the World Information Service on Energy (WISE), an environmental activist amalgamation based in Amsterdam, China National Nuclear Group, being that country's biggest nuclear power plant builder, signed a deal with the China-Africa Development Fund, a Chinese state-run institution, in 2010 to examine and exploit uranium resources throughout Africa.¶ French, Canadian, British, Swiss, Japanese, Russian, Chinese, Australian and other companies are mining uranium, or have signed contracts to do so very soon with Algeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, DRCongo, Gabon, Malawi, Mali, Chad, South Africa, Tanzania, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Zambia and other African countries. …

   
Nuclear power is justified through emergency framing- this creates a nuclear state of exception. Nuclear dangers are deprioritized in favor of remote cataclysms, which systematically warps cost benefit assessment and recreates warming and destruction of animal life. Kaur 11 Phd
(Raminder, A ‘nuclear renaissance’, climate change and the state of exception, THE AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 22, Issue 2)
Increasingly, nation-states such as China, France, Russia, Britain and India are pro-moting the nuclear option: first, as the main large-scale solution to developing economies, growing populations and increasing demands for a consumer-led lifestyle, and secondly, to tend to environmental concerns of global warming and climate change.1India’s Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, speaking at a conference of atomic scientists in Delhi, for instance, announced a hundredfold increase to470,000 megawatts of energy that could come from Indian nuclear power stations by 2,050. He said, ‘This will sharply reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and will be a major contribution to global efforts to combat climate change, adding that Asia was seeing a huge spurt in ‘nuclear plant building’ for these reasons (Ramesh2009)’. The Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster of March 2011 has, for the time being at least, dented some nation-state’s nuclear power programmes. However, in India, the government has declared that it has commissioned further safety checks whilst continuing its nuclear development as before. Whilst the ‘carbon lobby’, including the fossil-fuels industries, stand to gain by undermining the validity of global warming, it appears that the ‘nuclear lobby’ ben-efits enormously from the growing body of evidence for human-based global warming. This situation has led to a significant nuclear renaissance with the promotion of nuclear power as ‘clean and green energy’. John Ritch, Director General of the World Nuclear Association, goes so far as to describe the need to embrace nuclear power as a ‘global and environmental imperative’, for ‘Humankind cannot conceiv-ably achieve a global clean-energy revolution without a huge expansion of nuclear power’ (Ritch nd). To similar ends, India’s Union Minister of State for Environ-ment and Forests, Jairam Ramesh, remarked, ‘It is paradoxical that environmental-ists are against nuclear energy’ (Deshpande 2009). With a subtle sleight of hand,nuclear industries are able to promote themselves as environmentally beneficial whilst continuing business-as-usual at an expansive rate. Such global and national views on climate change are threatening to monopolise the entire environmentalist terrain where issues to do with uranium and tho-rium mining, the ecological costs of nuclear power plant construction, maintenance, operation and decommissioning, the release of water coolant and the transport and storage of radioactive waste are held as subsidiary considerations to the threat of climate change. Basing much of my evidence in India, I note how the conjunction of nuclear power and climate change has lodged itself in the public imagination and is consequently in a powerful position, creating a ‘truth regime’ favoured both by the nuclear lobby and those defenders of climate change who want more energy without restructuration of market-influenced economies or changes in consumerist lifestyle. The urgency of climate change discourses further empowers what I call the ‘nuclear state of exception’ which, in turn, lends credence to the veracity of human-centric global warming.

The nuclear state of exception bleeds into all aspects of society- it provides a model for authoritarian decision making that privileges technocratic experts and excludes the viewpoint of everyday citizens – legitimates oppression. Kaur 11 PhD
(Raminder, A ‘nuclear renaissance’, climate change andthe state of exception, THE AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 22, Issue 2)

Although Giorgio Agamben’s (2005) work on the normalisation of exceptional state practice has been much cited, it would appear that Robert Jungk anticipated some of his main axioms. Jungk outlines how the extraordinary, as it pertains to the state’s possession of nuclear weapons and the development of atomic industries since the mid-1940s, became the ordinary (Jungk 1979: 58). When associated with nuclear weapons, the state operates under the guise of a paradigm of security which promises ‘peace’ in terms of a nuclear deterrence to other countries and also legiti-mates the excesses of state conduct whilst abrogating citizens’ rights in the name of ‘national security’. Jungk adds that, in fact, state authoritarianism applied to all nation-states with nuclear industries: ‘Nuclear power was first used to make weap-ons of total destruction for use against military enemies, but today it even imperils citizens in their own country, because there is no fundamental difference between atoms for peace and atoms for war’ (Jungk 1979: vii). The inevitable spread of tech-nological know-how through a range of international networks and the effects of the US’ ‘atoms for peace’ program in the 1950s led to a greater number of nations constructing institutions for civilian nuclear power, a development that was later realised to enable uranium enrichment for the manufacture of weapons .Because of the indeterminacy between atoms for peace and atoms for war, the nuclear industries began to play a key part in several nations’ security policies, both externally with reference to other states and also internally with reference to objec-tors and suspected anti-national contingents. Jungk notes ‘the important social role of nuclear energy in the decline of the constitutional state into the authoritarian nuclear state’ by focussing on a range of indicators, including a report published by the American National Advisory Committee on Criminal Justice in 1977 which suggested that:in view of the ‘high vulnerability of technical civilization’, emergency legislation should be introduced making it possible temporarily to ignore constitutional safeguards without previous congressional debate or consultation with the Supreme Court.(1979: 135) The bio-techno-political mode of governance encapsulates subjects into its folds such that it becomes a ‘technical civilisation’—a civilisation that, although promis-ing favourable aspects of modernity to the populace and development for the coun-try, is also to be accompanied by several risks to human and environmental safety that propel states, including democracies further towards authoritarianism. ‘Big sci-ence’—that is, science that is centralised or at least circumscribed by the state—and the bureaucracies surrounding it play a critical part in the normalisation of the state of exception, and the exercise of even more power over their citizens. Jungk elaborates on the routinisation of nuclear state violence, epistemological, juridical and physical :Such measures will be justified, not as temporary measures made necessary by an exceptional emergency … but by the necessity of providing permanent protection for a perpetually endangered central source of energy that is regarded as indispensable. A nuclear industry means a permanent state of emergency justified by a permanent threat. (1979: 135)This permanent state of emergency with respect to anything nuclear applies to restrictions on citizens’ freedom, the surveillance and criminalisation of critics and campaigners, the justification of the mobilisation of thousands of police men and sometimes military to deal with peaceful demonstrators against nuclear power, and a hegemony on ‘truth-claims’ where the nuclear industries are held as the solution to growing power needs whilst advancing themselves as climate change envi-ronmentalists. In this way, power structures and lifestyles need not be altered where nuclear power becomes, ironically, a powerful mascot of ‘clean and green’ energy. In India, the capitalist modality of the nuclear state was exacerbated by the ratification of the Indo-US civilian nuclear agreement in 2008, a bilateral accord which enables those countries in the Nuclear Suppliers Group to provide mate-rial and technology for India’s civilian nuclear operations even though it is nota signatory to the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty. This has led to an expansionof the nuclear industries in the country where the limited indigenous resources of uranium could then be siphoned into the nuclear weapons industries. The imposition of the nuclear state hand-in-hand with multinational corporations in regions such as Koodankulam in Tamil Nadu (with the Russian nuclear com-pany, Atomstroyexport), Haripur in West Bengal (with the Russian company,Rosatom) or Jaitapur in Maharashtra (with the French company, Areva), without due consultation with residents around the proposed nuclear power plants, has prompted S. P. Udayakumar (2009) to recall an earlier history of colonization describing the contemporary scenario as an instance of ‘nucolonisation(nuclear + colonisation)’.The Indian nuclear state, with its especial mooring in central government, hasconducted environmental enquiries primarily for itself—and this so in only asummary fashion. In a context where the Ministry of Environment and Forestscan override the need for an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report forthe first two nuclear reactors at Koodankulam in 2001, saying that the decisionwas first made in the 1980s before the EIA Notification Act (1994); or where theSupreme Court of India can dismiss a petition against the construction of thesereactors simply by saying: ‘There is no reason as to why this court should sit inappeal over the Governmental decision relating to a policy matter more so, whencrores of rupees having (sic) been invested’ (cited in Goyal 2002), then there is astrong basis upon which to consider the Indian state as a whole as a nuclearisedstate—that is, a state wherein matters relating to nuclear issues are given inordi-nate leeway across the board. The nuclear enclave consisting of scientists, bureau-crats and politicians, is both the exception to and the rule that underpins the rest of state practice. So even though we may be talking about a domain of distinct governmental practice and political technology as encapsulated by the notion of a nuclear state, it is evident that its influence spreads beyond the nuclear domain in a discourse of nuclearisation through state-related stratagems which have become increasingly authoritarian and defence-orientated since the late 1990s. In a nut-shell, discourses about the urgency of climate change, global warming, nuclear power and defence have converged in a draconian and oppressive manner that now parades itself as the necessary norm for the nation. Despite their particularities, machinations of the Indian nuclear state are also nota-ble elsewhere. Joseph Masco elaborates on the ‘national-security state’ in the USA(2006: 14). Tony Hall comments upon the ‘defence-dominated, well-cushioned(nuclear) industry’ in the United Kingdom (1996: 10). And on the recent issue of the construction of more nuclear power stations in Britain, David Ockwell observesthat a public hearing was only undertaken for ‘instrumental reasons (i.e. it was alegal requirement), as demonstrated by a public statement by then prime ministerTony Blair that the consultation ‘won’t affect the policy at all’ (2008: 264). These narratives are familiar across the board where a nuclear renaissance is apparent. But critics continue to dispute the hijacking of environmentalism by the state and argue that if climate change is the problem, then nuclear power is by no means a solution. Moreover, the half-life of radioactive waste cannot be brushed away in a misplacedvindication of the saying, ‘out of sight, out of mind’

And, Nuclear power is centralized and an arm of state technocrats that profit off of taking away local community control over energy. Martin et. Al 84

(The main authors are Jill Bowling, Brian Martin, Val Plumwood and Ian Watson, with important contributions from Ray Kent, Basil Schur and Rosemary Walters. Strategy against nuclear power http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/86sa.html)

Why was the nuclear option taken? Nuclear power is not an automatic or inevitable development. Technology is not neutral but develops in ways which correspond to social structures. The social structures which favour and in turn are favoured by nuclear power include capitalism, patriarchy, the intellectual division of labour and the state. The connections and reinforcements between these entrenched social structures is the reason why nuclear power is so hard to dislodge. In the early 1950s, nuclear power had not yet been shown to be technologically feasible, much less economically viable. In 1952 the Paley Commission in the US favoured heavy investment in solar technology as the energy option of the future. Despite such options, nuclear power was promoted over solar power. Nuclear power was originally promoted by states rather than corporations or workers. Nuclear power was attractive to governments and state bureaucracies for several reasons. Nuclear power, by virtue of its large size, centralised production of electricity and dependence on experts, was suitable for control by state bureaucracies. Solar home heating, by comparison, did not lend itself to such control. Nuclear power fitted neatly into the existing electricity generation and distribution system. Like coal or oil, it was a way of producing electricity at a central location for distribution through the established grid. Unlike oil, where there are several commercial outlets to chose from, we can only have one distributor's power points in our houses. When that distributor is the state - and most electricity grids are either state-owned or state regulated - the consequence for communities is a reduction of local control over their energy planning. The potential risks of nuclear power - for example from meltdown accidents at nuclear power plants - were too large to be taken by even the largest corporations. US companies only joined nuclear power projects after many subsidies and incentives were offered by the US state, including the Price-Anderson Act in 1957 which limited corporate liability in the event of reactor accidents. The pro-nuclear US Department of Energy estimated that in 1980 the US 'commercial' nuclear-power industry had been subsidised to the tune of $US37,000 million. Anti-nuclear groups have put the figure closer to $US100,000 million. For these reasons, nuclear power has been largely state-developed, owned and promoted. Only in the US do corporations have much of an independent role, and even there the industry is heavily regulated by the state. Most of those countries with the greatest stake in nuclear power - United States, Japan, Soviet Union, France, West Germany, Britain - are the most powerful economically. The state is not a unified entity. It incorporates the elected government, the military, the police, the legal system, state bureaucracies for regulating the economy and providing welfare services, and many other functions. Only some of these parts of the state have been active in promoting nuclear power, notably the energy bureaucracies, parts of the military and some politicians. An important pressure within these areas has come from politically active nuclear scientists and engineers. Nuclear weapons and nuclear power would not have been possible without the mobilisation of scientific expertise for the purposes of the state. Especially since World War Two, an ever increasing fraction of research and development finance has come from the state, and the orientation of science and technology has been increasingly oriented to the requirements of large corporations and the state. This science-state interaction has given rise to the technocrats, among whom the nuclear elites are prominent. Nuclear power simultaneously provides a power base for the nuclear elites while increasing state power. In capitalist societies, the state is structurally tied to corporate expansion and profit making. A key role of governments in capitalist countries is maintaining the conditions necessary for corporate profit-making. Indeed, the state has intervened in education and health, among other things, in order to ensure that capitalism is provided with a continuing work force, that is, healthy workers with the right skills and attitudes. Similarly, the state takes care of many of the other needs of capitalism, particularly subsidising the infrastructure (such as ports and rail lines) of large projects. In a way, large scale 'development' projects, such as nuclear power, can be seen as a test of the state's commitment to key corporations and to securing the conditions necessary for capitalist profitability. Despite the intimate connections between the state and the corporate sector, there is also a particular logic to capitalist investment. Projects which are capital intensive, large scale, centralised and suitable for monopolisation are favoured areas of corporate investment. Thus promotion of energy efficiency, or of decentralised and locally controlled energy sources, would do little for profits and are thus ignored (or undermined) by corporate management. Similarly, there has been little corporate interest in biological pest control because it does not have readily monopolisable sources and cannot be easily oriented to a single market consumer. In other words, profitability of this environmentally sound technology is minimal. Ultimately, investment decisions in a capitalist society reflect this preoccupation with profitability at the expense of social usefulness and environmental harmony. When corporations are confronted with the environmental pollution, concern for profitability dictates that efforts will be made to merely clean up the mess, rather than change the structures responsible for the pollution. Underlying the immediate role of the state and nuclear elites in promoting nuclear power are several deeper factors. One is the hierarchy and division of labour characteristic of modern corporations and state bureaucracies. Workers are kept under control by work organisation - such as the manufacturing division of labour - in which key decisions are made by elites and in which shopfloor participation is minimised. Technologies are often chosen or designed to enforce hierarchical control in the workplace. Nuclear power fits this pattern well. Other technologies besides nuclear power can be assessed according to whether they lend themselves to centralised or decentralised control. For example, many simpler weapons such as the rifle can be used either by soldiers or police on behalf of the state, or by forces opposing the state such as guerrillas. In contrast, nuclear weapons are typical of modern technological weapons: they require training and expertise to use and are generally inaccessible to small groups. Like nuclear weapons, nuclear power as an energy source lends itself to centralised control. In contrast, measures such as bicycle transport, passive solar design, solar heating, wind power or biogas production lend themselves to local community control. An emphasis on nuclear power must not obscure the fact that other energy technologies can also fulfil the same socially destructive role that nuclear power plays. Even the much heralded solar energy has the potential to be incorporated into these structures if it develops in certain ways. For example, one US corporation has proposed a satellite solar power station which would orbit the earth and beam down massive amounts of microwave radiation to be collected by a seven kilometre wide receiver on the earth's surface. Clearly a campaign which effectively does away with nuclear power does not automatically do away with centralised systems of political and economic control. The key distinction between technologies is not whether they are solar, fossil or nuclear, but whether they lend themselves to control by political and economic elites or to control by individuals and local communities. Scientific research on nuclear power also illustrates the effects of this division of labour. The isolation of social control and responsibility and concern in the hands of political elites, together with the structure of the scientific community, act together to produce a system which keeps scientists locked into socially destructive research. Science is not value-free. Politically determined goals, like winning a real-war or cold-war situation, can conveniently smother irksome consciences. At the same time, the intellectual challenges which scientific research presents provide a strong driving force for the commitment of individual scientists. Thus some scientists can work on weapons of mass destruction because the political decisions regarding these weapons are made at a distance, in an apparently legitimate forum. Such scientists may not consider that they have the right or expertise to question the political consequences of their work. It is this intellectual division of labour which focusses scientists' attention and their energies upon research problems which are divorced from their social consequences. Most scientists are ominously silent about the political side of the nuclear fuel cycle, particularly the undermining of civil liberties 'necessary' to safeguard nuclear power. Patriarchy - the collective domination of men over women - and other major social structures such as the state and capitalism mutually reinforce one another. It is important here to differentiate between masculinity, which is socially constructed, and maleness, which has a genetic base. Most men exhibit culturally specific masculine behaviour and this behaviour is often expressed as domination of women and the environment. Within state bureaucracies, corporations and the scientific community, women are discriminated against through job and career structures which concentrate men into the most powerful positions. Commonly, to gain entry to these positions, women themselves are forced to adopt a 'masculine approach'. It is at this level of power that masculine values emerge such as careerism, competitiveness, aggressiveness, the separation of tasks from emotion, and patterns of dominance. These values foster inequalities between people, thereby further concentrating power into the hands of an elite and forming the basis of exploitation of other people and nature. Nuclear weapons for example are a product of aggression and dominance relations as opposed to the more feminine values of nurturing and caring. Indeed it would be difficult to imagine the development of nuclear weapons in a society where feminine values predominated. On the one hand, the state and corporations mobilise patriarchal relations to serve their own domination, for example to split the workforce and impose hierarchical relations between men as well as between men and women. On the other band, groups of men mobilise state and capitalist interests to maintain their domination over women, for example using job seniority rules and the legal system to keep women in lesser occupations or the home. The intellectual division of labour, and the concept of professionalism which is used to justify it, also are associated with deeply rooted masculine values. For example, the way in which the scientific community is structured, particularly the impetus to continually publish ahead of rivals, promotes intellectual aggressiveness and competitiveness. In addition many of the characteristics of modern science can be grouped under the heading of 'masculine rationality'. This rationality sets up a dualism between society and nature, production and reproduction, the intellect and the emotions, and the technical and the political. 1. Nature, which in the traditional metaphor is seen as feminine, is regarded by masculine rationality as merely a resource to be exploited or an enemy to be subjugated by society. 2. Masculine elevation of the realm of production as the most worthwhile area of life reflects the dominant presence men have in this realm. At the same time the realm of reproduction is denigrated and so this area which women have traditionally dominated is denied status. Yet production and reproduction are both essential for a society's survival. The failure of masculine rationality to recognise the value of both production and reproduction rules out the possibility of a harmonious balance between current needs and long-term survival. Not surprisingly, this is the same balance which the existence of nuclear weapons undermines. 3. Masculine rationality also endorses the separation of the intellect and the emotions - the intellect being seen as superior - and the idea of emotional neutrality towards objects of study. When ordinary people become actively concerned about nuclear power, this style of rationality characterises them as emotional and ill-informed in contrast to the experts who it depicts as involved in 'responsible, objective, scientific endeavour'. Thus too scientists are encouraged to remain detached from the social consequences of their work. 4. Masculine rationality also connects with the sharp division between the realm of ends and that of means. This is reflected in turn in the separation of the technical and the political, and of the technical dimensions of a problem from its political ramifications. The separation is visible in the current division of labour. For example, it is necessary to have nuclear physicists, nuclear engineers, plant technicians and construction workers in order to conceive, design and build a nuclear power plant. However, these people are not required to consider the social and political consequences of their work; these 'goal' aspects are 'taken care of' by politicians. The dominant political system makes social responsibility and the determination of ends, which should be everyone's concern, the concern of a specialised few. This type of separation between the technical and the political is especially evident in dominant ways of organising work such as in bureaucracies. Domination of nature is another fundamental factor underlying state promotion of nuclear power. Modern industrialisation, science and technology are based on subjugating the environment, on extracting resources for human requirements. The orientation is one of exploitation for short-term use rather than harmony and understanding. Domination of nature, of women and of workers are all aspects of modern structures which maintain hierarchy and inequality and which serve the interests of elites. Nuclear power is one component of this system. To oppose nuclear power effectively requires addressing the structures in which it is embedded.

This reinforces all level of social division and perpetuates inequality. Martin et. Al 84

(The main authors are Jill Bowling, Brian Martin, Val Plumwood and Ian Watson, with important contributions from Ray Kent, Basil Schur and Rosemary Walters. Strategy against nuclear power http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/86sa.html)

Why was the nuclear option taken? Nuclear power is not an automatic or inevitable development. Technology is not neutral but develops in ways which correspond to social structures. The social structures which favour and in turn are favoured by nuclear power include capitalism, patriarchy, the intellectual division of labour and the state. The connections and reinforcements between these entrenched social structures is the reason why nuclear power is so hard to dislodge. In the early 1950s, nuclear power had not yet been shown to be technologically feasible, much less economically viable. In 1952 the Paley Commission in the US favoured heavy investment in solar technology as the energy option of the future. Despite such options, nuclear power was promoted over solar power. Nuclear power was originally promoted by states rather than corporations or workers. Nuclear power was attractive to governments and state bureaucracies for several reasons. Nuclear power, by virtue of its large size, centralised production of electricity and dependence on experts, was suitable for control by state bureaucracies. Solar home heating, by comparison, did not lend itself to such control. Nuclear power fitted neatly into the existing electricity generation and distribution system. Like coal or oil, it was a way of producing electricity at a central location for distribution through the established grid. Unlike oil, where there are several commercial outlets to chose from, we can only have one distributor's power points in our houses. When that distributor is the state - and most electricity grids are either state-owned or state regulated - the consequence for communities is a reduction of local control over their energy planning. The potential risks of nuclear power - for example from meltdown accidents at nuclear power plants - were too large to be taken by even the largest corporations. US companies only joined nuclear power projects after many subsidies and incentives were offered by the US state, including the Price-Anderson Act in 1957 which limited corporate liability in the event of reactor accidents. The pro-nuclear US Department of Energy estimated that in 1980 the US 'commercial' nuclear-power industry had been subsidised to the tune of $US37,000 million. Anti-nuclear groups have put the figure closer to $US100,000 million. For these reasons, nuclear power has been largely state-developed, owned and promoted. Only in the US do corporations have much of an independent role, and even there the industry is heavily regulated by the state. Most of those countries with the greatest stake in nuclear power - United States, Japan, Soviet Union, France, West Germany, Britain - are the most powerful economically. The state is not a unified entity. It incorporates the elected government, the military, the police, the legal system, state bureaucracies for regulating the economy and providing welfare services, and many other functions. Only some of these parts of the state have been active in promoting nuclear power, notably the energy bureaucracies, parts of the military and some politicians. An important pressure within these areas has come from politically active nuclear scientists and engineers. Nuclear weapons and nuclear power would not have been possible without the mobilisation of scientific expertise for the purposes of the state. Especially since World War Two, an ever increasing fraction of research and development finance has come from the state, and the orientation of science and technology has been increasingly oriented to the requirements of large corporations and the state. This science-state interaction has given rise to the technocrats, among whom the nuclear elites are prominent. Nuclear power simultaneously provides a power base for the nuclear elites while increasing state power. In capitalist societies, the state is structurally tied to corporate expansion and profit making. A key role of governments in capitalist countries is maintaining the conditions necessary for corporate profit-making. Indeed, the state has intervened in education and health, among other things, in order to ensure that capitalism is provided with a continuing work force, that is, healthy workers with the right skills and attitudes. Similarly, the state takes care of many of the other needs of capitalism, particularly subsidising the infrastructure (such as ports and rail lines) of large projects. In a way, large scale 'development' projects, such as nuclear power, can be seen as a test of the state's commitment to key corporations and to securing the conditions necessary for capitalist profitability. Despite the intimate connections between the state and the corporate sector, there is also a particular logic to capitalist investment. Projects which are capital intensive, large scale, centralised and suitable for monopolisation are favoured areas of corporate investment. Thus promotion of energy efficiency, or of decentralised and locally controlled energy sources, would do little for profits and are thus ignored (or undermined) by corporate management. Similarly, there has been little corporate interest in biological pest control because it does not have readily monopolisable sources and cannot be easily oriented to a single market consumer. In other words, profitability of this environmentally sound technology is minimal. Ultimately, investment decisions in a capitalist society reflect this preoccupation with profitability at the expense of social usefulness and environmental harmony. When corporations are confronted with the environmental pollution, concern for profitability dictates that efforts will be made to merely clean up the mess, rather than change the structures responsible for the pollution. Underlying the immediate role of the state and nuclear elites in promoting nuclear power are several deeper factors. One is the hierarchy and division of labour characteristic of modern corporations and state bureaucracies. Workers are kept under control by work organisation - such as the manufacturing division of labour - in which key decisions are made by elites and in which shopfloor participation is minimised. Technologies are often chosen or designed to enforce hierarchical control in the workplace. Nuclear power fits this pattern well. Other technologies besides nuclear power can be assessed according to whether they lend themselves to centralised or decentralised control. For example, many simpler weapons such as the rifle can be used either by soldiers or police on behalf of the state, or by forces opposing the state such as guerrillas. In contrast, nuclear weapons are typical of modern technological weapons: they require training and expertise to use and are generally inaccessible to small groups. Like nuclear weapons, nuclear power as an energy source lends itself to centralised control. In contrast, measures such as bicycle transport, passive solar design, solar heating, wind power or biogas production lend themselves to local community control. An emphasis on nuclear power must not obscure the fact that other energy technologies can also fulfil the same socially destructive role that nuclear power plays. Even the much heralded solar energy has the potential to be incorporated into these structures if it develops in certain ways. For example, one US corporation has proposed a satellite solar power station which would orbit the earth and beam down massive amounts of microwave radiation to be collected by a seven kilometre wide receiver on the earth's surface. Clearly a campaign which effectively does away with nuclear power does not automatically do away with centralised systems of political and economic control. The key distinction between technologies is not whether they are solar, fossil or nuclear, but whether they lend themselves to control by political and economic elites or to control by individuals and local communities. Scientific research on nuclear power also illustrates the effects of this division of labour. The isolation of social control and responsibility and concern in the hands of political elites, together with the structure of the scientific community, act together to produce a system which keeps scientists locked into socially destructive research. Science is not value-free. Politically determined goals, like winning a real-war or cold-war situation, can conveniently smother irksome consciences. At the same time, the intellectual challenges which scientific research presents provide a strong driving force for the commitment of individual scientists. Thus some scientists can work on weapons of mass destruction because the political decisions regarding these weapons are made at a distance, in an apparently legitimate forum. Such scientists may not consider that they have the right or expertise to question the political consequences of their work. It is this intellectual division of labour which focusses scientists' attention and their energies upon research problems which are divorced from their social consequences. Most scientists are ominously silent about the political side of the nuclear fuel cycle, particularly the undermining of civil liberties 'necessary' to safeguard nuclear power. Patriarchy - the collective domination of men over women - and other major social structures such as the state and capitalism mutually reinforce one another. It is important here to differentiate between masculinity, which is socially constructed, and maleness, which has a genetic base. Most men exhibit culturally specific masculine behaviour and this behaviour is often expressed as domination of women and the environment. Within state bureaucracies, corporations and the scientific community, women are discriminated against through job and career structures which concentrate men into the most powerful positions. Commonly, to gain entry to these positions, women themselves are forced to adopt a 'masculine approach'. It is at this level of power that masculine values emerge such as careerism, competitiveness, aggressiveness, the separation of tasks from emotion, and patterns of dominance. These values foster inequalities between people, thereby further concentrating power into the hands of an elite and forming the basis of exploitation of other people and nature. Nuclear weapons for example are a product of aggression and dominance relations as opposed to the more feminine values of nurturing and caring. Indeed it would be difficult to imagine the development of nuclear weapons in a society where feminine values predominated. On the one hand, the state and corporations mobilise patriarchal relations to serve their own domination, for example to split the workforce and impose hierarchical relations between men as well as between men and women. On the other band, groups of men mobilise state and capitalist interests to maintain their domination over women, for example using job seniority rules and the legal system to keep women in lesser occupations or the home. The intellectual division of labour, and the concept of professionalism which is used to justify it, also are associated with deeply rooted masculine values. For example, the way in which the scientific community is structured, particularly the impetus to continually publish ahead of rivals, promotes intellectual aggressiveness and competitiveness. In addition many of the characteristics of modern science can be grouped under the heading of 'masculine rationality'. This rationality sets up a dualism between society and nature, production and reproduction, the intellect and the emotions, and the technical and the political. 1. Nature, which in the traditional metaphor is seen as feminine, is regarded by masculine rationality as merely a resource to be exploited or an enemy to be subjugated by society. 2. Masculine elevation of the realm of production as the most worthwhile area of life reflects the dominant presence men have in this realm. At the same time the realm of reproduction is denigrated and so this area which women have traditionally dominated is denied status. Yet production and reproduction are both essential for a society's survival. The failure of masculine rationality to recognise the value of both production and reproduction rules out the possibility of a harmonious balance between current needs and long-term survival. Not surprisingly, this is the same balance which the existence of nuclear weapons undermines. 3. Masculine rationality also endorses the separation of the intellect and the emotions - the intellect being seen as superior - and the idea of emotional neutrality towards objects of study. When ordinary people become actively concerned about nuclear power, this style of rationality characterises them as emotional and ill-informed in contrast to the experts who it depicts as involved in 'responsible, objective, scientific endeavour'. Thus too scientists are encouraged to remain detached from the social consequences of their work. 4. Masculine rationality also connects with the sharp division between the realm of ends and that of means. This is reflected in turn in the separation of the technical and the political, and of the technical dimensions of a problem from its political ramifications. The separation is visible in the current division of labour. For example, it is necessary to have nuclear physicists, nuclear engineers, plant technicians and construction workers in order to conceive, design and build a nuclear power plant. However, these people are not required to consider the social and political consequences of their work; these 'goal' aspects are 'taken care of' by politicians. The dominant political system makes social responsibility and the determination of ends, which should be everyone's concern, the concern of a specialised few. This type of separation between the technical and the political is especially evident in dominant ways of organising work such as in bureaucracies. Domination of nature is another fundamental factor underlying state promotion of nuclear power. Modern industrialisation, science and technology are based on subjugating the environment, on extracting resources for human requirements. The orientation is one of exploitation for short-term use rather than harmony and understanding. Domination of nature, of women and of workers are all aspects of modern structures which maintain hierarchy and inequality and which serve the interests of elites. Nuclear power is one component of this system. To oppose nuclear power effectively requires addressing the structures in which it is embedded.

This view of nuclear power as a “quick fix” depoliticizes the global economy and energy system perpetuating massive inequality. Maciejewska and Marszalek ’11 Professor at Wroclaw Unitersity
(Malgorzata, institute of Sociology and Faculty of Social Sciences at Wroclaw University, and Marcin, Wroclaw University (Poland), “Lack of power or lack of democracy: the case of the projected nuclear power plant in Poland,” Economic and Environmental Studies Vol. 11, No.3 (19/2011), 235-248, Sept. 2011)
The mainstream discourse on nuclear power rarely takes up the question of how the global energy industry is organized. In the modern economy the production of energy around the world, which is supposed to be a kind of public good and to guarantee sustainable development, is planned and arranged under free market conditions. As a part of the global chain of extraction, production and trading, it is subordinated to the neoliberal logic on terms of which the society and economy is governed as a business enterprise with the logic of maximum interest and minimum loss. This imposes on different actors (from the international corporations to individual households) the discipline of competitiveness and profitability, resulting in the growth of existing inequalities as ‘the invisible hand’ of the free market economy legitimizes those subjects which are already in power. The modern global economy is based on irrational production and social inequalities where one can observe the processes of work intensification and the cheapening of labor. The markets are dominated by the unproductive virtual economy (See Peterson, 2002) where the major players are the financial institutions which, by means of sophisticated financial tools, buy and sell virtual products (currencies, stocks, insurances, debts and its derivatives). In effect, the major actors in the capitalist economy are the international investors who have the capability of financial liquidity, and operate with those sophisticated financial tools on the global stock market. Even when they lose those capacities because of indebtedness, the states and international organizations seem often to be willing to repair the damage by transferring the taxes paid by citizens. (This is actually happening now, during the financial crisis, when southern and western European countries are subjected to shock therapy under which governments introduce austerity measures.) The praxis of nuclear power producers and the discourse which legitimizes it is therefore reduced to one goal – increasing financial revenues. The Polish plan to build the atomic power plant seems to be another element of the competitiveness strategy. In the authorities’ mind set it could put Poland into the position of more a competitive, more dynamic economy, as expected by the European Union and international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank. The welfare of Poland’s or Niger’s society does not fit into that picture. The nuclear establishment does not take into account the most important aspect of sustainable  development: the overall reduction of energy consumption and therefore of energy production. Such a policy could bring a wide range of profits to the societies, the ecosystem, as well as the economy. On the contrary, the increase of power production and power use is one of the core concepts of pro-atomic discourse. This dogmatic belief draws the ideological line indicated at the beginning: the question of energy use and the ideas for solving this problem are seen only as a matter of technological challenges and the amount of financial and material means which have to be invested in them, but not as an effort to re-organize and restructure the modern economy. 

Part 3 is the Advocacy

Plan Text: All countries ought to prohibit the production of nuclear power. Countries that currently produce power from nuclear reactors will immediately begin phasing out all nuclear power. Lucas 12 Leader of the Green party of England, Wales
Caroline Lucas an British politician, and since 2 September 2016, Co-Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, 2-17-2012, "Why we must phase out nuclear power," Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/feb/17/phase-out-nuclear-power MG
The inherent risk in the use of nuclear energy, as well as the related proliferation of nuclear technologies, can and does have disastrous consequences. The only certain way to eliminate this potentially devastating risk is to phase out nuclear power altogether. Some countries appear to have learnt this lesson. In Germany, the government changed course in the aftermath of Fukushima and decided to go ahead with a previously agreed phase out of nuclear power. Many scenarios now foresee Germany sourcing 100 of its power needs from renewables by 2030. Meanwhile Italian citizens voted against plans to go nuclear with a 90 majority. The same is not yet true in Japan. Although only three out of its 54 nuclear reactors are online and generating power, while the Japanese authorities conduct "stress tests", the government hopes to reopen almost all of these and prolong the working life of a number of its ageing reactors by to up to 60 years. The Japanese public have made their opposition clear however. Opinion polls consistently show a strong majority of the population is now against nuclear power. Local grassroots movements opposing nuclear power have been springing up across Japan. Mayors and governors in fear of losing their power tend to follow the majority of their citizens. 

Voting affirmative endorses a social critique of nuclear power. Only instrumental reform to the energy system can effectively spill over to broader systemic problems without being coopted. Martin et. Al, 84
(The main authors are Jill Bowling, Brian Martin, Val Plumwood and Ian Watson, with important contributions from Ray Kent, Basil Schur and Rosemary Walters. Strategy against nuclear power http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/86sa.html)

What is a strategy anyway? A strategy links the analysis of an issue with goals and objectives. Having chosen a strategy, it is implemented through appropriate actions. An action is a 'once-off' event such as a rally, march, blockade or lobbying a particular politician. A method, such as lobbying in general, refers to all actions of a certain type. Actions are coordinated together into a campaign. The campaign gives direction to a series of events. Given our analysis in section 1 of the structural forces responsible for the nuclear fuel cycle, the goal of stopping uranium mining must be closely linked to the goal of basic structural change in the state, capitalism, patriarchy and the division of labour. As such it must involve challenges to the structures which underlie nuclear concerns. The broader objectives for an anti-nuclear movement must include encouraging mass participation in decision making rather than elite control, decentralising the distribution of political power into smaller, local groups, and bringing about self-reliance based on environmentally sound technologies. These objectives involve fundamental changes to the way our society is organised at present. In effect, an anti-nuclear strategy must involve both actions aimed at stopping nuclear power and activities which challenge existing structures and help construct viable alternatives. In this context, the success or failure of an individual campaign must be viewed from the perspective of working towards these overall goals and objectives. The actions used by the anti-uranium movement fall into two main categories. Firstly there are actions which aim at convincing or influencing elites, such as lobbying or writing letters to politicians. Secondly are the actions such as rallies and blockades which usually involve more participation from the community. While such actions may be aimed at elites they are also important in educating or giving support to those who are involved. Lobbying. Lobbying is a direct attempt to convince or pressure elite decision-makers. It does nothing to challenge the state, patriarchy or other structures underlying nuclear power, but rather hopes to oppose nuclear power by 'working through the proper channels'. This leaves elite structures unchallenged and intact. Indeed lobbying is a form of political action most suited to powerful interest groups such as corporations and professional bodies. The state is the forum of the powerful, so for these kinds of groups lobbying often is an effective strategy. For small activist groups lobbying is useful only if it appears to be backed up by politically visible mass concern or mass action. In 1983, after the election of a Labor Government, the anti-uranium movement turned strongly to lobbying in an attempt to induce the Labor Caucus to implement the Labor Party platform. This effort was unsuccessful. Participating in environmental inquiries. In making submissions to the Ranger Inquiry, environmental groups made a concerted attempt to ensure that the issue of the Ranger mine was not divorced from the general issue of uranium mining and nuclear power, and that ultimate decisions were determined by the public rather than 'experts'. The Inquiry did in fact analyse the overall dangers of the nuclear industry and concluded that no decision on uranium mining should occur without public debate. These results helped fuel the ensuing widespread public debate on uranium mining in Australia. One reason for involvement in environmental inquiries is to challenge the role of experts in service to vested interests. The Ranger Inquiry commented on the bias of distinguished scientists who testified in favour of uranium mining. The Ranger Inquiry was unusual in making full use of broad terms of reference. Many environmental inquiries have institutional constraints which can make it questionable whether activists should spend much energy in that area. Many government inquiries with severely limited terms of reference offer few opportunities for activists to intervene effectively. There is not only the danger of being 'co-opted' if activists take part, but also the prospect that any structural challenges may be deflected by superficial concessions. Often such inquiries are not genuine and are only set up as window-dressing. For example, the Australian Science and Technology Council inquiry set up in November 1983 to investigate Australia's role in the nuclear fuel cycle has terms of reference which assume the continuation of uranium mining. Working through the trade union movement. In 1976 anti-uranium groups began a major effort to persuade trade unions and their Congress delegates to adopt and support anti-uranium policies. The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) Congress adopted an anti-uranium policy in mid-1977. Following the re-election of the Liberal-National Government in December 1977, anti-uranium groups focussed on persuading unions to implement the ACTU policy. However, the members of a number of unions - including some with anti-uranium policies - continued to work in the uranium industry. Some union leaders chose not to attempt to convince members to avoid or leave the industry, while other leaders supportive of the policies could not persuade members working in the industry or transporting its products. The efforts within the trade union movement have been strong to the extent that they have mobilised rank-and-file action. One of the most valiant efforts to stop uranium mining was by the Waterside Workers Federation - supported by the Seamen's Union and the Transport Workers Union - in refusing to load yellowcake for export from Darwin in late 1981. This direct action - an obvious challenge to the power of corporations and the state - was only called off when deregistration threats from the Liberal-National Government induced the ACTU to back down. Efforts through the trade unions have been least effective when they have depended on action only by union elites. An ACTU policy against uranium mining is not enough: it does not in itself challenge any of the driving forces behind nuclear power. When Bob Hawke was President of the ACTU, the executive showed itself disinclined to mount even a strong publicity campaign against the uranium mining industry. Working through the parliamentary system. Since 1976 a major focus of the anti-nuclear power movement has been the ALP. A massive campaign of publicising and discussing the issue at the party branch level resulted in an anti-uranium platform being adopted in mid-1977. Since that time there has been strong anti-uranium feeling within the party. In late 1977 the focus of the anti-uranium movement became the federal election campaign. During this campaign the anti-uranium movement used the resources of local anti-uranium groups to help the ALP in marginal House of Representatives electorates and for the Australian Democrats in the Senate. Many anti-uranium activists pinned their hopes on a Labor victory. But the Liberal-National coalition won the election, and the anti-uranium campaign appeared to have little impact in marginal electorates. After this defeat, many activists left the movement while a number of local groups effectively ceased to exist. The danger in relying too much on anti-uranium action by a Labor Government was demonstrated in mid-1982 when the Labor anti-uranium platform was watered down on the initiative of party power brokers in spite of continuing support for the platform at the party branch level. The danger was further demonstrated in November 1983 when Labor Caucus, at the initiative of Cabinet, gave the go-ahead for Roxby Downs, potentially the largest uranium mine in the world. In each case the impetus to maintain the anti-uranium policy came from the grassroots of the party, while it was labour elites who pushed pro-mining stances. Any Australian government, whether Labor or not, is strongly tied to the established state apparatus and to the support of capitalism. It is futile to expect the government on its own - whatever its platform may be - to readily oppose aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle. This will occur only when there is strong and continual pressure from the grassroots of the party and from the community at large. Grassroots mobilisation. The anti-uranium movement has used a wide variety of methods to inform and involve the community. Commonly used methods include leaflet distribution, articles, talks, discussions, films, petitions, rallies, marches, vigils and street theatre. Major anti-uranium rallies and marches were held each year in most large cities, especially in the peak years of the uranium debate, 1976-1979 and again since 1983. A typical grassroots activity has been the creation of nuclear-free zones, which is mainly a symbolic action which helps raise awareness and encourage local groups to openly oppose nuclear power. This activity has worked closely with the dissemination of information through the media, local groups, the alternative press and schools. In 1983 the people in the Bega Valley Shire voted to declare their area a nuclear-free zone. To counter this popular sentiment, the Shire Council called in nuclear experts in order to argue the case against the nuclear-free zone. In this case the nuclear-free zone campaign provided a channel for exposing and challenging the role of nuclear expertise and elites in promoting nuclear power. Civil disobedience has also been used by the anti-nuclear movement. In the late 1970s, nonviolent direct action was used on several occasions at ports where uranium was being loaded for export. At the Roxby Downs blockade in August 1983, several hundred people gathered to express their opposition and hinder mining operations. Two distinctive features of this protest were the use of nonviolent action and the way in which participants formed themselves into affinity groups. These are a form of political organising which is consciously anti-elitist and aims to democratise all group interactions. Education, rallies, marches, petitions and civil disobedience sometimes do little to challenge the structures underlying nuclear power. For example, the rally outside Parliament House in October 1983 was primarily aimed at putting pressure on the Labor Party at a time when it was considering its uranium policy. Similarly, the 'tent embassy' located on Parliament House lawns aimed to prick the conscience of the ALP. One of the aims of the Roxby Downs blockade was to mobilise pressure to influence the ALP. On the other hand, grassroots mobilisation often provides a potent challenge to nuclear power and the forces behind it. All the lasting successes of Australian anti-uranium campaigns have depended ultimately on grassroots mobilisation, which provides a reservoir of commitment and concern which elite-oriented activities do not. In 1975, the virtue of mining uranium was largely unquestioned among the general public and the labour movement. It was simply unthinkable that a mineral which could be profitably sold would be left in the ground. Yet by 1977 the anti-uranium view had become widely understood and strongly supported. This change in opinion happened largely through the educational and organising efforts of the local anti-uranium groups and of anti-uranium activists within organisations such as trade unions, schools and churches. The resurgence of anti-uranium activity in 1983 owed much to the framework established in the late 1970s. The anti-uranium platform adopted by the ALP in 1977 was the result of organising and education at the party branch level. ALP stands and action against uranium mining have come consistently from the party grassroots, and this in turn has depended on anti-uranium sentiment in the general community. Support for uranium mining within the ALP has always been strongest on the part of party elites. The anti-uranium stands and actions by Australian trade unions have been stronger than in any other country in the world. Building on a tradition of trade union action on social issues, this has come about from persistent grassroots education and organising at the shop floor level. It has been the rank-and-file unionists who have taken the strongest anti-uranium stands, and the trade union elites who have backed away from opposition. When in late 1981 the Seamen's Union refused to load yellowcake in Darwin, it was the rank-and-file workers who took a stand and made the sacrifices. Does grassroots mobilisation then provide the most fruitful avenue for challenging the structures behind nuclear power? Yes, but the choice of methods is not straightforward or automatic. The problem with many grassroots methods used by the anti-uranium movement is that they have not been systematically organised and focussed as part of an overall long-term strategy. Instead, individual groups - and indeed the national movement - has often just looked ahead to the next rally, the next signature drive, or the next ALP Conference. While this approach does have some merit for example in saving an area from irreversible environmental destruction, it is inadequate as an approach to stopping mining or transforming the structures underlying nuclear power. For example the closing of Roxby mine would prevent the destruction of the surrounding ecosystem including mound springs inhabited by forms of aquatic life found nowhere else in the world. If the environment is altered, these unique creatures will be gone forever. However, the closing of Roxby in isolation would do nothing to prevent mining companies from setting up or increasing production in other places. If, on the other hand, existing power structures were challenged, and the closing of Roxby were carried out in conjunction with the closing of all uranium mines and a disbanding of uranium interests, then the safety of these ecosystems would be assured. What needs to be done is to focus on vulnerable points within the structures promoting nuclear power, and to devote efforts in these areas. What are the vulnerable points, then? Before looking at specific vulnerable points, let's examine the nuclear power issue as a whole. Nuclear power is a large-scale vulnerable point in the structures of the state, capitalism and so forth. In promoting nuclear power, and thereby entrenching centralised political and economic power, other consequences result which mobilise people in opposition: environmental effects (especially radioactive waste), the connection with nuclear weapons, threats to Aboriginal land rights, threats to civil liberties, and many others. In organising to oppose these specific threats, people at the same time can challenge the driving forces behind nuclear power. Here are a few of the specific vulnerable points which have been addressed by the anti-uranium movement. Threats to Aborigines. Nuclear power is alleged to be beneficial, but uranium mining is a severe cultural threat to Aborigines, who are already a strongly oppressed group in Australia. The anti-uranium movement and the Aboriginal land rights movements have been strengthened by joint actions, such as speaking tours. Centralised decision-making. Nuclear power has widespread social effects, but promoters of nuclear power claim the decisions must be taken by political and scientific elites. This runs counter to the rhetoric of Western democracies where ordinary people are meant to have a say in political decision-making. By moving in on this embarrassing contradiction, protests which demand a role for the public in decision-making about energy also challenge political elites and the political use of expertise. Capitalism and workers. Nuclear power is alleged to be good for the economy and for workers, but in practice massive state subsidies to the industry are the rule, and few jobs are produced for the capital invested. In challenging nuclear power as an inappropriate direction for economic investment, a challenge is made to the setting of economic priorities by corporations and the state. Capitalism also directs investments only into profitable areas, irrespective of their social benefits. If activists can undermine the profitability of marginal enterprises by delaying tactics or by jeopardising state subsidies, then capitalist investment can be shunted away from socially destructive areas. For example, direct actions against Roxby Downs could in the long run undermine its profitability and cause its closure. Grassroots mobilisation is usually the most effective way to intervene at vulnerable points such as these. A suitable combination of interventions then forms the basis for a strategy against uranium mining. But how can uranium mining actually be stopped? This is a good question. Grassroots mobilisation does not by itself stop uranium mining. The mobilisation must connect with major forces in society. There are several ways this can occur. Uranium mining could be stopped: (1) by direct decision of the government; (2) by the unions acting directly through strikes or bans to prevent uranium mining, export, or construction of nuclear plants; (3) through cost escalations, for example resulting from requirements to ensure safety or environmental protection, (4) by a referendum whose results were adhered to; (5) by legal action on the part of aborigines or anti-uranium forces; (6) by direct action to physically stop mining from proceeding. A critical element necessary to the success of any of these methods is the mobilisation of a large section of the public against uranium mining. Thus for example government action to stop mining would be likely to take place only if there were mass mobilisation on the issue. Similarly 'direct action' could only succeed if popular support were so great that the government refused to use sufficient force to physically overcome the resisters. To give an idea of how grassroots methods could be coordinated into a strategy to stop uranium mining, consider a hypothetical example. Suppose an analysis of the current political situation suggested that direct action by workers and unions gave the most immediate promise for directly stopping uranium mining, while government decision and cost escalations were also likely avenues for stopping mining. A grassroots strategy might include the following: Systematic community organising and education, to provide a basis in popular sympathy and support for direct action by workers. Points to be emphasised would include the right of workers to take direct action on conscience issues as well as work-related issues, and the importance of questioning decisions made solely on the basis of corporate profitability or state encouragement of large-scale economic investment. Development of alternative plans for investment and jobs based on input from workers and communities, and widespread dissemination of the ideas and rationale for the alternative plans. A series of rallies, marches, vigils and civil disobedience, aimed at both mobilising people and illustrating the strength of anti-uranium feeling. These actions would be coordinated towards major points for possible worker intervention, such as trade union conferences or the start of work for new mines. Through consultation with unions, workers and working-class families, the establishment of support groups and funds for workers and unions penalised for direct action against uranium mining. Plans to make parallel challenges to those by workers, such as simultaneous defiance of the Atomic Energy Act by trade unionists and community activists. Black bans of corporations or state instrumentalities by unionists could be coordinated with boycotts organised by community groups. With such a strategy, it is likely that the workers taking action would come under strong attacks from both corporations and the government. Preparation to oppose such attacks would depend on community mobilisation to demonstrate support for the workers in the media, in the streets, through informal communication channels and to the workers themselves. If direct action by workers began to be sustained through community support, it is quite possible that other channels for stopping uranium mining could come into play: the government - especially a Labor government - might back away from confrontation with unions supported by the community, or corporations might decide investment in this controversial area was too risky. Plans would be required to continue the campaign towards these or other avenues for stopping uranium mining. How does grassroots mobilisation provide a challenge to the structures underlying nuclear power? It challenges the division of labour and the role of elites, especially the role of political elites which have a corner on the exercise of social responsibility, by mobilising in a widespread way the social concern of ordinary people and by demonstrating the direct exercise of this concern for example by groups in the workplace. Grassroots mobilisation challenges the division of labour and the role of scientific elites through a challenge to the prestige and credibility of scientists who advocate nuclear power. As the nuclear power issue has been widely debated, it has become obvious to many people that the expertise of pro-nuclear scientists and engineers is tied to vested interests. The nuclear debate has greatly weakened the belief that 'the experts know best'. Grassroots mobilisation challenges the masculine rationality of dominant structures through calling contemporary values and attitudes to nature and to the future into question. Within the antinuclear movement, patriarchy has been challenged as at least some groups have addressed domination by men and developed egalitarian modes of interaction and decision-making. This sometimes has been fostered by nonviolent action training used to prepare for civil disobedience actions. The anti-nuclear movement has inevitably involved questioning the growth of energy use and development of programmes for a 'soft energy future' involving energy efficiency, renewable energy sources, and redesign of communities to reduce energy requirements. The challenge to unending energy growth is a direct challenge to the state and capitalism, whose power is tied to traditional economic expansion. Mass mobilisation against uranium also challenges capitalism by bringing under scrutiny the rationale of pursuing profitability at the expense of social responsibility and by direct economic blows to corporate profitability. More fundamentally, nuclear power represents a potential new stage in the entrenchment of centralised political and economic control and of specialist knowledge in the service of elites. By challenging the political and economic rationale for nuclear power, and by making demands for local control over energy decision-making, a direct challenge is made to the power of the state and corporations. It is important to realise that none of these challenges on their own are likely to bring down these structures however much they may weaken them. Sufficiently many blows however over a sustained period could do so. Thus campaigns on the nuclear issue could begin or be part of a process of sustained challenge which could weaken them irreversibly. A grassroots strategy against nuclear power and uranium mining can be seen as a 'non-reformist reform': namely, it can achieve effective change within the system in a way which weakens rather than strengthens dominant structures, or which helps to prevent the entrenchment of new, more powerful structures. Such a strategy does not simply attempt to bypass the 'macro' level of existing structures in the way that some focusses on alternatives do, such as promoting changes in lifestyles only at the level of the individual. Rather such a strategy aims at interactions with existing structures in a way which goes beyond them.

Rejecting 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.” 

Nuclear and renewables directly trade off – nuclear caps progress on renewables. Main 15 JD
Ivy Main JD 11/12/15 Sierra Club, Power for the People VA: The Virginia Energy Blog, Ivy Main Freelance “Nuking clean energy: how nuclear power makes wind and solar harder”

Dominion Resources CEO Tom Farrell is famously bullish on nuclear energy as a clean solution in a carbon-constrained economy, but he’s got it wrong. Nuclear is a barrier to a clean-energy future, not a piece of it. That’s only partly because new nuclear is so expensive that there’s little room left in a utility budget to build wind and solar. A more fundamental problem is that when nuclear is part of the energy mix, high levels of wind and solar become harder to achieve.¶ To understand why, consider the typical demand curve for electricity in the Mid-Atlantic, including Virginia. Demand can be almost twice as high at 5 p.m. as it is at 5 a.m., especially on a hot summer day with air conditioners running. The supply of electricity delivered by the grid at any moment has to exactly match the demand: no more and no less. More than any other kind of generating plant, though, the standard nuclear reactor is inflexible in its output. It generates the same amount of electricity day in and day out. This means nuclear can’t be used to supply more than the minimum demand level, known as baseload. In the absence of energy storage, other fuel sources that can be ramped up or down as needed have to fill in above baseload.¶ Wind and solar have the opposite problem: instead of producing the same amount of electricity 24/7, their output varies with the weather and time of day. If you build a lot of wind turbines and want to use all the electricity they generate (much of it at night), some of it will compete to supply the baseload. Although solar panels produce during daylight when demand is higher, if you build enough solar you will eventually have to cut back on your baseload sources, too.¶ With enough energy storage, of course, baseload generating sources can be made flexible, and wind and solar made firm. Storage adds to cost and environmental footprint, though, so it is not a panacea. That said, Virginia is lucky enough to have one of the largest pumped storage facilities in the country, located in Bath County. Currently Dominion uses its 1,800 MW share of the facility as a relatively low-cost way to meet some peak demand with baseload sources like coal and nuclear, but it could as easily be used to store electricity from wind and solar, at the same added cost.¶ Without a lot of storage, it’s much harder to keep wind and solar from competing with nuclear or other baseload sources. You could curtail production of your wind turbines or solar panels, but since these have no fuel cost, you’d be throwing away free energy. Once you’ve built wind farms and solar projects, it makes no sense not to use all the electricity they can produce.¶ But if nuclear hogs the baseload, by definition there will be times when there is no load left for other sources to meet. Those times will often be at night, when wind turbines produce the most electricity.¶ The problem of nuclear competing with wind and solar has gotten little or no attention in the U.S., where renewables still make up only a small fraction of most states’ energy mixes. However, at an October 27 workshop about Germany’s experience with large-scale integration of renewable energy into the grid, sponsored by the American Council on Renewable Energy, Patrick Graichen of the German firm Agora Energiewende pointed to this problem in explaining why his organization is not sorry the country is closing nuclear plants at the same time it pursues ambitious renewable energy targets. Nuclear, he said, just makes it harder.¶ How big a problem is this likely to be in the U.S.? Certainly there is not enough nuclear in the PJM Interconnection grid as a whole to hog all the baseload in the region, and PJM has concluded it can already integrate up to 30 renewable energy without affecting reliability. But the interplay of nuclear and renewables is already shaping utility strategies. Dominion Virginia Power is on a campaign to build out enough generation in Virginia to eliminate its imports of electricity from out of state. And in Virginia, nuclear makes up nearly 40 of Dominion’s generation portfolio.¶ Now Dominion wants to add a third nuclear reactor at its North Anna site, to bring the number of its reactors in Virginia to five. If the company also succeeds in extending the life of its existing reactors, the combination would leave precious little room for any other energy resource that produces power when demand is low.¶ That affects coal, which is primarily a baseload resource. It would also impact combined-cycle natural gas plants, which are more flexible than coal or nuclear but still run most efficiently as baseload. But the greatest impact is on our potential for renewables.¶ This desire to keep high levels of nuclear in its mix explains Dominion’s lack of interest in land-based wind power, which produces mostly at night and therefore competes with nuclear as a baseload source. Dominion’s latest Integrated Resource Plan pretty much dismisses wind, assigning it a low value and a strangely high price tag in an effort to make it look like an unappealing option.¶ Dominion shows more interest in solar as a daytime source that fills in some of the demand curve above baseload. But given Dominion’s commitment to nuclear, its appetite for Virginia solar is likely to be limited. Already it insists that every bit of solar must be backed up with new natural gas combustion turbines, which are highly flexible but less efficient, more expensive and more polluting than combined-cycle gas, and add both cost and fuel-price risk.