U in union, disunity at the NRC, and a housing industry ‘scandal’
Plus an interview with the former Dutch defense chief and a look at California’s crisis.
At the end of this month, 673 employees at the United States’ largest factory assembling fuel rods for nuclear reactors will vote on whether to form a union, potentially expanding what is already the most unionized workforce in American energy.
The organizing drive says a lot about the state of nuclear power.
After years of decline, the industry is preparing itself for a renaissance of reactor construction at home and aboard. The Columbia Fuel Fabrication Facility about 25 minutes southeast of downtown Columbia, South Carolina, is owned by the Westinghouse Electric Company, and already provides the fuel generating roughly 10% of the nations’ electricity. Westinghouse is supplying countries like Ukraine and Slovakia with fuel for Russian-made reactors.
If the Biden administration makes good on its promise to triple global nuclear energy production by 2050, there’s going to be a lot more demand for what these workers in South Carolina produce.
Already, workers say they’re feeling the squeeze from growing demand. So they want to have some demands of their own that they feel may be best delivered via collective bargaining with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. More than half the eligible bargaining unit has so far signed cards pledging to vote for the union.
But South Carolina is the most anti-union state in the nation, with the lowest percentage of organized labor for yet another year in a row this year. And, like Nikki Haley before him, the current governor is vehemently opposed to any union drive anywhere in the Palmetto State.
You can read the full story here on HuffPost.
There could be a potential barrier to more reactors getting licensed and sited: Disunity at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
You may remember last summer, when I told you about the efforts to tank former NRC commissioner Jeff Baran’s bid for another term. He had been waiting for the Senate to act after his term expired. But when the Democratic majority couldn’t muster enough votes to secure a confirmation for Baran, a former Democratic congressional aide, the Senate automatically sent the nomination back to the White House at the end of December.
Last month, I broke news that President Biden would not be putting Baran’s name forward again. Stay tuned, as I’ll have more reporting coming soon on what that means.
For now, you can read the original story here on HuffPost.
Now for some scandal.
Long-time subscribers may recall my reporting on the efforts by industry groups to seize control of the process for writing the nation’s model energy codes for buildings. It sounds boring, I know. Soporific, even! But it’s incredibly important – these model codes are enshrined into law in virtually every state (and several countries). The Biden administration is in the process of updating the eligibility requirements for Federal Housing Administration loans to require new homes to be built to the most recent standards, the highest and greenest ever enacted.
Three years after trade groups representing gas utilities and home builders got the International Code Council, the nonprofit body that writes the codes, to change its process to give them more power, we’re about to see the final result of the new system. Before those codes can be finalized, however, natural gas companies are trying to gut key climate-friendly provisions out of the codebook. The big ones are requirements that new homes include the wiring for electric car chargers and electric appliances, based on the assumption that we are, in fact, phasing out fossil fuels in this country. Rewiring an already-built house is way more expensive than having that electrical work in place from the beginning.
In a twist that has advocates crying “scandal,” the ICC violated its own rules to allow the gas companies more time to challenge the codes. The ICC says it’s premature to criticize it before its appeals board rules on the gas industry’s complaints. And the gas groups say they’re well within their rights to challenge what they considered an invalid code-writing process.
The Hill Heat newsletter called my reporting a “blockbuster” investigation.
You can read the full story for yourself here on HuffPost.
A Californian catastrophe: A rare weather event took place over California at the start of this week. An “atmospheric river” – essentially a giant river of vapor in the sky, holding as much water on average as the mighty Mississippi – arrived from across the Pacific, dumping huge amounts of water on the Golden State. Nearly 1 million people lost power on Sunday in the country’s high-tech hub of Northern California as winds topping 100 miles per hour downed transmission lines.
Why can’t the infrastructure in one of the richest and most developed states withstand the weather? It’s a mix of new climate extremes and old infrastructure. I dug up a recent report from a union-backed group that found infrastructure investment fell by nearly 40% over the past decade at precisely the same time the effects of climate change were becoming painfully obvious in California. The sewers and stormwater systems that failed amid this week’s deluge, meanwhile, are primarily funded by municipal and county governments and combined made up the biggest backlog in the report.
You can read the full story here on HuffPost.
Raising a finger in the dike. The Netherlands’ far-right firebrand Geert Wilders – the guy whose party calls itself the Freedom Party while running on banning Muslims from peacefully practicing their religion – is trying to form a government. He says he’s tempering his Islamophobic views. But what about his long standing opposition to climate policy?
I spoke recently to retired General Tom Middendorp, the Netherlands’ former defense chief, who thinks he knows how to persuade Wilders to take planet-heating pollution seriously: Make it about immigration. Climate change is inflaming mass migration, the very thing Wilders and his set want to stop. It’s not the first time climate realism has merged with far-right populism to give us a look at “lifeboat politics.” So-called eco-fascists have been angling in this direction for years, yet pulled back at various points to climate denialism instead.
It’s not clear that Wilders will cobble together the right coalition to become prime minister, despite a resounding electoral victory in November. But his approach to decarbonization in a country built on adapting to rising seas could be a bellwether of things to come.
You can read the full story from my interview here on HuffPost.
Virtual reality. A merger of two California energy startups is paving the way for a giant in the nascent industry of virtual power plants, essentially software networks that allow a utility to harmonize and direct energy from rooftop solar panels and plugged-in car batteries across a whole grid. Canary Media’s Eric Wesoff has the story.
Give soot the boot. NPR gives a good overview of the Environmental Protection Agency’s new regulation to tighten rules on air pollution and reduce how much toxic soot Americans, particularly those in poorer areas, breathe.
GOP says no to U. The bipartisan border deal the Senate negotiated and Republicans killed to boost former President Trump’s reelection efforts contained billions for enriching more uranium in the U.S., a badly needed resource to help the country and its allies get off Russian imports. The legislation earmarked $2.7 billion for uranium fuel and nearly $1 billion for producing the medical isotopes Moscow monopolizes, according to The Hill’s Zack Budryk.
Portugal’s far-right kingmaker? The ultra-conservative Chega party I reported on while I was in Lisbon in November is now angling for a spot in a coalition government as polls favor a center-right victory in next month’s snap election, Reuters reported.
A French fossil fuel house of cards. France is raising gas rates in July as more homes disconnect and turn to electricity instead for heating and cooking. It’s a sign of what gas utilities here in the U.S. fear from things like stricter ICC energy codes. This Radio France article is en français, but Google Translate helps.
U kinda 🤑. Uranium miners were the best performing stocks in Australia this year as new demand struggles to find new supplies, Bloomberg reported.
Thank you for your time and attention. I hope you felt this newsletter earned it. If not, maybe this song recommendation will. It’s called “Gamodi” by Shvidkatsa, a Georgian folk ensemble from Tbilisi. My favorite neighborhood restaurant is a place called Ubani, and this song was playing while my friend Tim and I polished off a delectable meal the other night. I have no idea what it’s about – the title, as far as I can tell, means “come out” – but I have listened to it at least 50 times in the past 48 hours.
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Signing off from sunny Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, where my Kyrgyz barber seemed surprised that I would even think to ask whether there are cognates between his language and Mongolian – but then showed me a picture of his three-year-old son. The boy’s name? Chinggis.