Nuclear is Our Future Pro-nuclear activist group

The NRC has proposed implementing one of the few POGO recommendations I agree with: reducing hours for security guards at nuclear power plants. I’d like to take this opportunity to draw a distinction between watchdogs and attack groups. We don’t like to engage either, since neither tend to know what they’re doing, and the NRC’s unwillingness to admit anyone to discussions who isn’t a member of the good ol’ boy network doesn’t help, but I submit that there is a difference that we need to be aware of.

We’re used to being under attack; there hasn’t been a moment in the last 40 years when we weren’t. We are used to ignorant arguments coming from groups that are trying to shut down the industry, and accordingly have gotten used to taking any ignorant argument as a threat to shut down the industry. This, I believe, is a mistake.

Greenpeace and NIRS are attack groups. They have campaigns, use words like “shut” and “stop,” and have a stated aim of trying to destroy nuclear technology. They cannot be reasoned with; they must be exposed as fools in public, their sources of volunteers and money cut off, and the loons in charge marginalized. We are familiar with them, their message, their strategy, and their tactics.

POGO, on the other hand, suffers from exactly the same problem as the industry and NRC: nuclear exceptionalism. They are a watchdog group; they believe that the NRC and government in general are not doing the best possible job and are trying to expose problems so they can be fixed. We disagree with them a lot, but they’re not out to get us. They aren’t the problem. Don’t attack them in the manner that Greenpeace and NIRS attack the industry.

Joe Six-Pack thinks nuclear power plants pollute, are unsafe, and produce piles of leaking, deadly waste. They want a good reason to think that nuclear power plants don’t do any of those things, and we can provide it–if we act graciously and professionally, and not wimpy or suburban, and destroy these urban myths with real information. As I’ve said before, people are not dumb–they just have other things to worry about. Tell me an auto mechanic can’t understand how a nuclear power plant works.
The key is, they can’t figure it out on their own. We have to do what every other technology proponent does, and provide information and involvement. Whatever you want to say about how it should be, the public is the boss.

Filed under Activism, Nuclear Exceptionalism, Politics and Regulation, Security and Terrorism, Their Actions

Posted on June 3, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

I recently got my hands on an anti-nuclear activist’s comment submitted to the Department of Energy on GNEP’s environmental impact statement. It serves as an example of a few things to do when writing public comments, as well as some things not to do.

First, don’t talk about morals and ethics; talk about the legal and public relations implications of the proposed action. Morals and ethics are nice, but being immoral or unethical doesn’t have an immediate negative effect on the decision-makers. Being sued or inciting a riot does, and a comment must make clear that the proposed action is either illegal or will result in negative political consequences.
If the proposed action is legal and you still don’t like it, you have two options. If you have enough money, lawyers are extremely creative and can concoct an admissible contention from almost anything, and trials/settlements cost the opponents money even if you lose. If you have no money and a lot of people, get about 1,000-1,500 of them to submit near-identical comments threatening protests and media activity. And above all, be prepared to follow through if they go ahead with the proposed action; you can’t be caught bluffing. If you are, that’s the end of your credibility.

Do not assume that they have received “expert analyses” and that you only have to second them. Know the most important points of those analyses and echo them as though you didn’t know about the expert analyses–it’s much more impressive to whatever bureaucrat reads the comment if they think that there’s a huge groundswell of opposition for diverse, original reasons instead of three guys and their 1,500 foot soldiers.

Don’t ask them to follow the procedure. They either will follow the procedure or won’t, and the only thing you can do is threaten negative consequences if they don’t (or do, if you don’t want them to follow the procedure).

Don’t include conspiracy theories. Preferably, don’t originate them or subscribe to them, but don’t try to analyze people’s motives or do a power structure analysis, either. They don’t care about that. Again, they care only about negative consequences to them politically, legally, and financially if they proceed. If you don’t want them to do whatever they’re doing, make it clear that your organization will inflict those negative consequences.

There are more subtle ways to threaten the DOE with legal action than to say “if you proceed with this program, we will be forced to pursue legal action.” State what exactly is not legal about what they are proposing–they’ll fill in the rather obvious blank if you identify yourself as a member of an organization explicitly formed to oppose the proposal. Likewise with publicity campaigns. This is only credible, however, if a large number of people from that organization write in and identify themselves as such, and it really works when that organization has an ongoing publicity campaign that has reached the decision-makers.
This is also different from the standard protest letter or letter to the editor in that the decision-makers actually receive the letter or a summary and are obligated to at least publish it. As such, speak as a negotiator and use negotiating tactics; this is not a place to do general-public-type PR.
Likewise, don’t use personal attacks and don’t try to tell them about what they’ve done. They know what they’ve done and using personal attacks lessens the probability that they’ll accept a face-saving compromise. I’m not advocating for the further wussification of society, just differentiating between the approach needed for PR and the approach needed for negotiation. It is in fact fatal to weasel out, or to suggest solutions that don’t involve the agency you’re complaining about (like legislation).

Oh, and don’t make grammatical and spelling errors, or do anything else that undermines your credibility. Do not feed the ‘allegators’.

Filed under Activism, Environment, Politics and Regulation

Posted on June 3, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

On June 12 at 10 AM in their hearing room at 244 Washington Street SW, Atlanta (via WAND).

As we saw with Shoreham, this is where a lot of decisions get made while we focus on NRC hearings. We really need a power structure analysis on a jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction basis if we are to organize effectively in support of new build.

Filed under Activism, New Build, Politics and Regulation

Posted on June 3, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

Anti-nuclear activists have started circulating an email alert (rather, an alert in the footer of every email they send) asking people to get a (they suggest) WordPress or MySpace blog and start blogging as a way to stop nuclear power. I see some good signs here.

First, a WordPress blog in its externally-hosted form is a technical challenge for people who aren’t familiar with servers, and in its free form is not powerful enough to be effective in an actual campaign. You can’t even change the HTML code. MySpace, however, is a joke. There’s no point trying to use it; once you get past being a joke of a movement, you have to disassemble everything you did and start over on a real platform.
We didn’t make that mistake, at least not that badly. Blogger, for all its faults, is extensible. And most importantly, we made our mistakes a while ago and are starting to recover while they dig themselves a hole. They don’t know that it’s easier to have a tech-savvy organization set up a community that activists can join than to try to make everything work together after six or seven incompatible systems are entrenched. It seems also that anti-nuclear pages are either sophisticated ASP jobs or hacks, with nothing in between; an anti-nuclear activist who is trying to do a good job faces an almost square learning curve with almost no help from their colleagues. They are forced to cut corners and further decrease compatibility (and thus interoperability–which is the whole point).

Second, they honestly think that NEI pays everyone off, and that we’re all NEI employees. Wrong. They simply, honestly, and truly do not understand that there is a difference between the industry and the supporters of the technology. That leads them to think we aren’t distributed and can be beaten easily by five or six dedicated people.

Third, they concentrate on RSS. Go chase RSS, guys. Nobody uses it. It’s useful only as an aggregation tool for people with nothing else to do and when it is converted to an email alert system.

Fourth, they acknowledge that the anti-nuclear movement doesn’t do blogging. The first three dedicated, sustained pro-nuclear blogs (NEI, Atomic Insights, and NIOF) started in a short period in 2005. Others came along later; a second wave came along in 2006 (Freedom for Fission, We Support Lee, Energy from Thorium, and ARDT), and a third wave came along in late 2006 to early 2007 (Pebble Bed Reactor, Idaho Samizdat, Left Atomics, Nuclear Australia, NNadir). I like the fact that that number is going up with each wave (and diversifying), and NIOF is working on making it easier for people to get started–and get started in an organization.
I don’t see the anti-nuclear activists, who are new to this and learn tech more slowly, getting there any faster than we did. Accordingly, I (conservatively) conclude that the anti-nuclear activists are two years behind us.
We have a window, and we have to do something with it. This little smell of blood shouldn’t lead us to believe that they’re dead, but should inspire us to work even harder to kick their butts and make sure they don’t get up again. We must do this by removing their base of support; using the internet’s core competencies (as the UNIX-HATERS Handbook says of computers, “nitpickers with elephantine memories”) as a tool (not a strategy) to accelerate the process of organizing college campuses. It is clear that to do that, we need a Nuclear Advocates’ Declaration of Principles (or something else similar to the Port Huron Declaration; if nothing else, to put our opinions in writing to immunize us from allegations that we’re being bought off), a web-based community platform, and an internal handbook that we can keep out of anti-nuclear activists’ hands until they have their own equivalent (i.e., something we can keep close to our chest for two or three years). NIOF is actively working on the second part, after which we’ll obviously do the third part, but pro-nuclear activists will need to call a conference to do the first part.

In short: they’re a threat, but a foreseen threat. We know what timeline, roughly, they will be operating on. Our application of game theory to proliferation–and their disdain for doing so–helps us. We know exactly what to do to prevent this threat from materializing. We can do it, and I know we will. We must. Too much is at stake, environmentally and on a public health level, for us to not do anything about it, or to fail to do what we know we can do and operate at the high level we know we can operate at.

Get up and do something!

Filed under Activism, Their Actions

Posted on June 2, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

Two are coming up:

1. There will be an observation-only meeting on June 6 from 6:30 PM until the cows come home, at the Saddle Mountain Unified School District Administration Building Board Room, 38201 W. Indian School Road, Tonopah, Arizona, to discuss performance improvements that the NRC wants.

2. On June 7th at 6:30 PM, there will be a town hall meeting in the cafeteria at Ruth Fisher Elementary School (same address) to discuss the plan.

Get out and hellraise!

Link.

Filed under Activism, Politics and Regulation

Posted on May 31, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

Anti-nuclear activist Frieda Berryhill has left no turn unstoned in a recently-published conspiracy theory about the Browns Ferry accident in 1975.

She describes the opposition to the Summit reactors, proposed in 1973 and canceled in 1975, for no reason other than the old they-don’t-want-them-as-neighbors argument (which makes about as much sense as the identical argument made against racial integration in the 1960s). They were certainly safe (that type of reactor–a High-Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactor (HTGR)–cannot even melt down), would have produced less waste than the average American reactor (approaching Canadian efficiency), and pose zero proliferation threat. They could even have run off of Hope Creek and Salem’s nuclear waste, with some minor processing to change its shape. The “excess capacity” argument doesn’t really hold, either, since a lot of that was oil-fired (and becoming rapidly uneconomic with the 1973 Arab oil embargo), you need some excess capacity in case a major plant breaks down, and electricity demand was growing fast enough to quickly eliminate any cushion.

But here’s where it gets interesting. She says that the Browns Ferry fire in 1975 was somehow covered up by a conspiracy involving the industry periodical Nucleonics Week (which she incorrectly refers to as “Nuclearonics Week”), the industry’s trade association at the time (the Atomic Industrial Forum), and the congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, because somebody at DuPont had not heard of the accident (she also gets 55 Crackpot Points for her use of all-caps, but I digress). Now, if that’s not a damning charge, I don’t know what is.

On top of that, she apparently thinks that Browns Ferry Unit 1’s startup hiccups, which happen to any newly-restarted power plant of any type, mean that the unit will be permanently shut down and decommissioned, wasting $1.8 billion but allowing them to get a license renewal (which they got before the restart) and BILK THE TAXPAYER OF BILLIONS (no specifics on how that will happen). Or maybe they’ll replace a hose and fix a pump, which is what they did.

“Are you on drugs?”

-Judge Chamberlain Haller, My Cousin Vinny

Sadly, this is representative of anti-nuclear opinion–which unfortunately doesn’t get published a whole lot. I have a strong suspicion that we’re rebutting arguments that people don’t worry a lot about (such as the proliferation potential of PUREX) without covering most people’s major concerns and certainly not going on the offensive. For example, most people probably think that there aren’t any nuclear power plants any more, that uranium is a fossil fuel that emits carbon dioxide, and that global warming is caused by human activity per se instead of a physical process that humans are using (carbon combustion). They certainly think that nuclear reactors can explode like atomic bombs. I’ve said it before, but I think the best answer overall is to explain how a nuclear reactor works in conceptual terms (especially to young people, who basically “get” the engineering design process), so that the urban myths don’t get started in the first place. There aren’t a whole lot of urban myths about coal burning, because people understand it. They can’t design a coal burning power plant, but people have internalized the concept of combustion. And I don’t see any reason why somebody who can disassemble and reassemble a Volvo carburetor by memory can’t understand the very simple mechanism behind a nuclear reactor. Again, they’re not designing it; they don’t have a master’s degree in it, but they know how it works. I can (and have) explained to a group of 50% Green, 40% Democrat and 10% Republican students what the difference is between a PWR and RBMK, in 20 minutes, without using the word “moderator,” such that they knew where I was going half-way through an explanation of Chernobyl’s graphite-tipped-control-rods problem. And as those who know me will tell you, I am no master communicator. We just have to abandon our nuclear exceptionalist egos and tell it like it is in ordinary terms.
If we try to make nuclear energy seem impressive and use difficult-to-understand terminology, we’re going to leave the door open for people to just make stuff up. But I know we can do better than that. I know we will do better than that.

Filed under Activism, Clueless, Conspiracy, Crackpots, Terminology

Posted on May 31, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

A reminder and update to the recent post about an anti-nuclear petition to start a politically-motivated investigation of the NRC: they’re using an online petition. Legislators ignore online petitions, because a bot could easily be programmed to sign it a million times with random names (e.g., Geraldo Lubczynski) and no verification. They pay attention to letters from their constituents, and to a certain extent, written petitions that have been the subject of media campaigns. They pay a lot of attention to petitions to get a referendum on the ballot, in states where this is possible.

Plus, think about it: how is it going to get delivered? Isn’t it a lot easier to provide people with an email form and writing tips?

The only conceivable use for an online petition is to “test the waters” about what ideas can find support on the internet. There is little use for such an exercise; any idea can find support on the internet, and the blogosphere in peer-review mode (much as Ruth Sponsler and I did a while back w.r.t campus organizing) is much faster at evaluating soundbites. Blogs combine quick response with thoroughness; webrings and link lists, while they basically create echo chambers, remove much of the requirement for physical meetings to discuss strategy. The disadvantage is that they’re public, but their limited readership provides the internet equivalent of a focus group. Online petitions, on the other hand, only provide a yes/no option–and you never hear from the “no” people.

Don’t use online petitions; use a letter-writing campaign, or a ballot item, with the internet as an organizing tool (i.e., as a substitute for the phone tree). These facts have been known since about 2000, but the anti-nuclear activists are showing how new they are to net.activism by using online petitions. Let them shoot themselves in the foot.

Filed under Activism, Their Actions

Posted on May 31, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

Open thread: ideas for more effectively working on state restrictions.

Filed under Activism, Politics and Regulation

Posted on May 31, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

According to this email alert, they’re looking into a database to keep track of each reactor trip. That doesn’t sound like it would be too hard to counter as a pro-nuclear group; a blog would work even better as a way to analyze it.

Filed under Activism, Their Actions

Posted on May 31, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

Nuclear Policy? No Thanks. Apparently there shouldn’t even be a policy about it.

The comment thread is about 85%-90% pro-nuclear. It points out the need to develop an effective rhetoric of opposition to the economics argument (read: nuclear power should be banned because it’s expensive) and the need to have support on the Left. We have to get something out of this opportunity and do something with this support, however contingent and/or ephemeral.

Filed under Activism, Economics, Their Actions

Posted on May 26, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »