By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent
What Happened: People, I know he’s darn purty, but seriously, if you care about the future of energy in this country DO NOT think Jeff Flake is a 2020 savior, no matter what Sean Penn tells you. He doesn’t even understand the basics of energy baseload.
- In a recent speech at St. Anselm College’s New Hampshire Institute of Politics, in what was widely reported as the first speech of the 2020 Presidential campaign, Arizona (Short-Time) Senator Jeff Flake said that maybe, just MAYBE, the Republican Party should consider accepting climate change science and consider doing something about it.
- But before you give him a standing ovation, in literally the next breath – the next breath – Flake insisted, all evidence to the contrary, that the country needs more nuclear power as “baseload” power if we’re going to have more renewables added to the grid.
- (*Ring, ring* Senator Flake? It’s Germany. They’d like to explain how they were able to add wind and solar and still commit to shutting down all their nuclear plants by 2022.)
- (On the plus side, he pronounced nuclear right.)
SolarWakeup’s View: So Senator Jeff Flake, who is leaving the Senate in November because of the “divisiveness” of Washington politics in the age of President Donald J. Trump, went up to New Hampshire’s St. Anselm College last Friday to discuss said divisiveness and, as mentioned above, reportedly launch a 2020 Presidential campaign.
That would have been largely unremarkable, even for a political junkie like me. But then a woman, in the last question of the session, asked this:
“Do you see a path forward on climate change?”
And at that moment, Flake would have done well to heed Mark Twain and kept his mouth shut. But he just had to weigh in.
He started off OK, talking about how great solar has been in Arizona and how increased energy storage (particularly utility-scale storage) is offering market-based opportunities that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. He added that it might also be a nice change for the Republican Party to accept that climate change is real and maybe try to do something about it. And if he’d just stopped there…..but, well, he just couldn’t.
Democrats, he says, need to accept that the United States needs a carbon-free baseload power source and – wait for it – nuclear power is the answer.
Oh, Jeff – you were this close.
See, here’s the thing: Not only is “baseload” an increasingly irrelevant term in a world of electricity storage – something you had just praised seconds ago – but even if that were a true thing, nuclear is definitively not the answer (at least not new nuclear power plants).
I live in Ohio, and I am still paying for the Perry and the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Plants built around 30 years ago through my electricity rates – and that’s after Davis-Besse’s containment cap started to rust away, forcing the plant to shut down for a year to get it fixed. They are expensive, they take a long time to build and they are dangerous.
(Ask me sometime about the story I once wrote about Davis-Besse’s advice to its neighbors in case of a meltdown – advice that included long sleeves, sunglasses and a hat).
And sometimes, even when you throw billions of dollars at these plants, they still don’t get built (South Carolina anyone?).
Look, I know Jeff Flake looks the part, but if he thinks nuclear power is the answer to bringing more renewables like solar on to the grid, then I’m sorry – he won’t get my vote. He shouldn’t get yours either.
More:
Jeff Flake: The Key To Solar Power Is More Nuclear Power (Sam Seder Podcast)
South Carolina Spent $9 Billion on Nuclear Reactors That Will Never Run. Now What? (Governing)