FROM EIR DAILY ALERT

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Navy Fathers of Nuclear Power Back Trump’s Strategy To Protect Nuclear Plants

July 3, 2018 (EIRNS)—Retired military, former government officials, industry executives, and former elected officials, are backing up the administration’s call to protect the nation’s nuclear power plants. The Toledo Blade (Ohio) reports July 1 that 75 dignitaries, a quarter of whom are retired admirals or vice admirals, and includes former Secretaries of State, former Senators, and governors, have sent a letter on June 26 to Energy Secretary Rick Perry, imploring him to take immediate action to prevent the closure of reactors. (The large Navy representation is not surprising, since the first generation of nuclear engineers, who operated the first American commercial power plants, came out of Adm. Hyman Rickover’s Nuclear Navy.)

The major point of the letter is that plant closures pose a threat to national security, the argument put forward most recently by the administration. Such a determination, it is proposed, would allow the Executive branch to invoke existing federal emergency law to stay the plant closures, in order to ensure the integrity of the electric grid. There has been vocal opposition from the usual suspects—the anti-nukes, the “renewables industry,” the oil and gas industry. Invoking national security will likely require approval from Congress. It will help to have former naval officers back them up.