As PennLive reported on the day it was shuttered: “Three Mile Island closes with a whimper, and a whisp.” Ultimately, the public was indifferent-neither for nor against its premature closure.
Center for Opinion Research, March 2019 Franklin & Marshall College Poll: Summary of Findings, Floyd Institute for Public Policy, Franklin and Marshall College ( 28 March 2019). According to a March 2019 poll by the Center for Opinion Research at nearby Franklin and Marshall College, a little more than half-55%-of voters believed that nuclear energy should be one component of Pennsylvania’s long-term energy strategy, and exactly 50% favored the proposal to add nuclear power to the AEPS. Many citizens, however, had no strong opinion either way. Its presence is symbolic not only of decades of local labor participation and energy production but of lingering unease from the 1979 accident figure 4 shows the cooling towers following the accident. Given the high stakes of TMI’s retirement, we might have expected local residents to protest the closing, or at least voice their opinions, especially given TMI’s influence in the region. Simeone, Buried Out of Sight: Uncovering Pennsylvania’s Hidden Fossil Fuel Subsidies, PennFuture ( February 2021). Meanwhile, PennFuture, a nonpartisan environmental advocacy group, published a report estimating the various ways in which the Pennsylvania state and local governments provided $3.8 billion in 2019 in fossil-fuel subsidies. Some swiftly framed the proposed subsidy as a bailout that was further perpetuated by a No Nuke Bailout mailing campaign funded by the American Petroleum Institute and a coalition of special-interest groups forming the Citizens Against Nuclear Bailouts. “We urge Pennsylvania legislators to shift their focus from preserving the aging energy sources of the past and instead look ahead toward real climate solutions that will advance a clean energy future in our Commonwealth,” the Conservation Voters of Pennsylvania said in a March 2019 press release. Opponents-including the oil and gas industry, some environmental groups, manufacturers, and consumer advocates- view nuclear power’s lack of market competitiveness as a positive outcome. Hyland, Pennsylvania’s Energy Future, Center for Strategic and International Studies ( July 2018). According to the act, it is in the public interest for ratepayers to choose their electricity providers, “as long as safe and affordable transmission and distribution service is available at levels of reliability that are currently enjoyed by the citizens and businesses of this Commonwealth.” Today nearly all electricity production in Pennsylvania is generated by privately owned power plants. The law fundamentally restructured the way in which electricity is consumed by separating supply from distribution.
In 1996 the Pennsylvania legislature passed the Electricity Generation Customer Choice and Competition Act, which deregulated the state’s wholesale energy market. Ratepayers couldn’t choose where their electricity came from. When TMI opened in the mid 1970s, utilities in Pennsylvania were vertically integrated, meaning that they controlled the generation, supply, and distribution of power to consumers. Meanwhile, TMI and other nuclear power plants struggle to remain financially viable in the PJM region. The point, however, is that Pennsylvania continues to support shale development because of the promise of low-cost natural gas and the economic growth it offers to local communities, many of which have endured financial stress over the past few decades. Raimi, The Fracking Debate: The Risks, Benefits, and Uncertainties of the Shale Revolution, Columbia U. Like the questions of nuclear power’s benefits and costs in the 1970s and 1980s, the so-called fracking debate is complicated and won’t be easily resolved. Wylie, Fractivism: Corporate Bodies and Chemical Bonds, Duke U. The pollution and health hazards of oil and gas activities, to say nothing of the long-term effects of increased greenhouse gas emissions, have mostly been dismissed by those who benefit from shale development, even as potential harms have been claimed by activists. Although shale development has created a near-term boom in cheap natural gas and has provided thousands of jobs in Pennsylvania, it has also generated heated concerns.
0 kommentar(er)
