Advocating for Nuclear Advocacy at the NEA meeting

Facebook Post by Sarah Spath, Kristin Zaitz and Heather Matteson of
Mothers For Nuclear

The Conference

Each year, the Nuclear Energy Institute and North American Young Generation in Nuclear (NAYGN) jointly sponsor the NEA Nuclear Energy Assembly.

At NEA, Monday includes the  the NAYGN Professional Development sessions (open to all attendees, not just young members). The Supplier Expo and "Top Innovative Practices" awards are more industry-oriented. These more general events started Monday night and continued to Wednesday, according to the program calendar.  This year, the conference started this Monday, May 22, and ended Wednesday, May 24.

Advocacy at the Conference

I was moved to see the emphasis on advocacy at this conference.  In the NAYGN portion of the conference, there was an afternoon session on Effective Storytelling, described this way: Attendees will hear from panelists on effective strategies in storytelling and industry branding to explore new ideas in how we should be talking about nuclear energy and best practices in reaching a broader audience on issues important to the industry.

Wow.  I wasn't at the conference, but just this description stirs my heart.  And there's more.

At the main conference (the NEA portion, not the NAYGN portion), the president of the Nuclear Energy Institute, Maria Korsnick, unveiled a "Wide-ranging Nuclear Advocacy Effort." This national outreach strategy will appeal to a wide range of advocates.   Here is a link to an article about her speech. But I can't resist one quote: "We have stepped up our advocacy effort not just a notch or two, but by a great margin."

I am so pleased to see this new policy. Nuclear needs a wide range of advocates.

Campaigning for Clean Air at the NEA meeting

I was not at the NEA meeting but my book was there!  Campaigning for Clean Air was given out in the NAGYN welcome packets. If you registered for NAGYN, you received my book!  NAYGN bought the book from me (bulk purchase with a discount) and distributed it.

It's hard to even write about this, because I am so happy.  But please understand, there was a lot of emphasis on advocacy at the meeting, at panels and announcements and more.  My book was just one part of the advocacy events at the meeting. But still: my book was there!

Mothers For Nuclear posted on Facebook about receiving my book in their packet.  I headed this post with a screen shot of this posting. What can I say?

 I can only say Thank You to Kristen Zaitz, Heather Matteson and Sarah Spath for their posting, and Thank You to everyone at NEA for advocating advocacy!

The New York Clean Energy Standard

The victory

I was in Albany today, and the New York Department of Public Service passed the Clean Energy Standard.  It was a great day and a fabulous victory for clean air!  New York State officially acknowledged that nuclear energy is a low-carbon source, and it deserves to be supported, in a similar manner that renewables are supported.  (Nuclear will receive far less money per kWh than renewables, however.)

A victory like this cannot be ascribed to only one person or one organization.  Many people and many groups did a huge amount of work to make this happen.  That said, I have to give a huge amount of credit to the Environmental Progress organization, Michael Shellenberger and Eric Meyer, along with the Mothers for Nuclear organization, with Sarah Spath and others.  There will be much more written about this in future days, but I wanted to get a blog post about it up  today.

My day in Albany

I also wanted to give a first-hand idea of what it was like to be there.

My visit to Albany started last night with a dinner with nuclear activists from all over the country: California, Ohio, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Virginia.  Rod Adams includes pix of the dinner at his blog post: Fighting climate change with best available tools. 

The next morning, we gathered for a rally before the Department of Public Service meeting.  We met in a ground-floor corridor of the building in which the meeting took place. The meeting room was on the 19th floor.  Various people spoke. I spoke about the consequences of closing Vermont Yankee, and why we have to avoid closing nuclear plants. Eric Meyer led us in a rousing rendition of "The Battle Hymn of the Atom" (The Truth Goes Marching On). And then we went to the meeting rooms.  Tim Knauer's article in Syracuse.com has a picture of part of the scene at the rally. Dozens of CNY residents flood Albany meeting on nuclear subsidies. 

We went into the meeting room. I had the good luck to get a seat and be able to stay in the meeting room itself: the department had to open three "overflow" rooms with video feeds because of the large crowd.  I heard the historical decision to support all kinds of clean energy: renewable AND nuclear.  I think the best post on this is Shellenberger's post at the Environmental Progress blog: Big New York Victory Shows How Far Nuclear Still Has to Go.  This post also has pictures of the celebration outside after the ruling.

It's good to have a victory.

Video: Here's a good nine-minute video about today's events, with Sarah Spath and Michael Shellenberger.
http://www.twcnews.com/nys/capital-region/capital-tonight-interviews/2016/08/1/michael-shellenberg-sarah-spath-080116.html