"Nuclear Matters," a high-priced front group featuring paid, pro-nuclear spokespeople -- former members of congress and administration agency heads -- was created by Exelon Nuclear and its PR machine last year. It has since been joined by other nuclear utilities.
"Nuclear Matters" spokespeople, such as former Clinton administration EPA administrator, and Obama administration White House "climate czar," Carol Browner, are in Chicago today, and plan to be at FirstEnergy's Davis-Besse atomic reactor in Carroll Township, Ohio (east of Toledo, on the Lake Erie shore) on Feb. 5th.
"Nuclear Matters" is trying desperately to prop up dirty, dangerous, and uncompetitive atomic reactors, through massive ratepayer bailouts, in both Illinois and Ohio. (And check out Grist's coverage of Exelon's attempt to take over Pepco, and gouge ratepayers in D.C., MD, and beyond in the Mid-Atlantic region!) In fact, in Chicago, they were joined by the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the industry's lobbying and PR HQ in Washington, D.C. Exelon, the single largest nuclear utility in the U.S., also dominates NEI -- both Exelon's and NEI's CEO is one and the same person: Christopher Crane.
For her own part, one of Browner's claims to infamy as EPA administrator was to propose Yucca Mountain radioactive waste dump regulations that were so weak, that the incoming George W. Bush EPA head, Christie Todd-Whitman, simply adopted them verbatim. (Todd-Whitman is herself a paid spokesman for NEI front group CASE Energy.) An environmental coalition, in alliance with the targeted State of Nevada, later successfully challenged EPA's illegal attempt to cut off regulations at Yucca after only 10,000 years: ordered by the courts to rewrite the regulations, EPA several years later acknowledged high-level radioactive waste is hazardous for a million years.
See entries below about the grassroots environmental, consumer protection, and public interest push back against this attempted ratepayer robbery by Exelon, FirstEnergy, "Nuclear Matters," and NEI.
Nuclear power was infamously touted as "too cheap to meter" in the early 1950s by an earlier snake oil salesman, Atomic Energy Commission chairman Lewis Strauss. Scott Saleska and Arjun Makhijani of IEER's 1999 book The Nuclear Power Deception documented that the entire nuclear establishment, including Strauss, already knew by that time that nuclear power would be too expensive to matter -- until the massive subsidies gouged from taxpayers and ratepayers began. Now "Nuclear Matters" is back for more!
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NEIS's director, Dave Kraft, rebutted "Nuclear Matters'" Carol Browner on WBEZ, NPR's Chicago affiliate.
See also NEIS's press advisory, press release, and post-event follow up, as well as a photo, a couple entries down.