And that’s why both AFL-CIO Building Trades Department President Mark Ayers and Plumbers and Pipefitters President William Hite were enthusiastic about Obama’s Feb. 17 announcement, made at the Electrical Workers Local 26 hall in Lanham, Md.
Obama said on the campaign trail and reiterated in his State of the Union address that nuclear power should be part of the mix that helps march the U.S. towards lesser dependence on imported foreign oil.
Advocates of nuclear power construction note that there are virtually no carbon emissions from nuclear plants, which now supply one-fifth of U.S. electricity. Foes cite the potential for a catastrophic accident and the dangers of storing radioactive waste.
The two union leaders came down on the side of plant advocates. An added incentive: At a prior Building Trades Department conference in Washington, the head of the American Nuclear Energy Council -- the industry’s lobby -- said a proposed third nuclear power plant at Calvert Cliffs, Md., would be built and staffed all-union.
Hite said constructing the Georgia plant would bring several hundred permanent jobs to the area after 3,500 construction workers built it. Ayers reminded listeners of the proposed Calvert Cliffs plant, too. If built, the Georgian reactor and Calvert Cliffs would be the first nuclear plants constructed in the U.S. in decades.
“Our growing needs for affordable energy, combined with price volatility, dependence upon politically unstable regimes that supply much of our oil and gas, and global climate change concerns demands that nuclear power be a central part of the discussion over our national energy policy,” Ayers said. Obama “recognizes the strategic importance a re-vitalized nuclear power industry can play. And by conducting this announcement at IBEW Local 26 Joint Apprenticeship Training Center, the president also recognizes the important role our skilled craft training programs will play to ensure a revitalized nuclear industry is coupled with ‘high-road’ jobs and careers.”
Designing an energy policy that brings affordable energy to consumers and businesses, “can be met through development, installation and continued operation of energy technologies from a broad portfolio of energy resources – including nuclear power – which will have the added social benefits of contributing to the sustained creation of solid, well-paying middle class jobs and careers,” Ayers concluded.
This article was written by Press Associates, Inc., news service. Used by permission.
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And that’s why both AFL-CIO Building Trades Department President Mark Ayers and Plumbers and Pipefitters President William Hite were enthusiastic about Obama’s Feb. 17 announcement, made at the Electrical Workers Local 26 hall in Lanham, Md.
Obama said on the campaign trail and reiterated in his State of the Union address that nuclear power should be part of the mix that helps march the U.S. towards lesser dependence on imported foreign oil.
Advocates of nuclear power construction note that there are virtually no carbon emissions from nuclear plants, which now supply one-fifth of U.S. electricity. Foes cite the potential for a catastrophic accident and the dangers of storing radioactive waste.
The two union leaders came down on the side of plant advocates. An added incentive: At a prior Building Trades Department conference in Washington, the head of the American Nuclear Energy Council — the industry’s lobby — said a proposed third nuclear power plant at Calvert Cliffs, Md., would be built and staffed all-union.
Hite said constructing the Georgia plant would bring several hundred permanent jobs to the area after 3,500 construction workers built it. Ayers reminded listeners of the proposed Calvert Cliffs plant, too. If built, the Georgian reactor and Calvert Cliffs would be the first nuclear plants constructed in the U.S. in decades.
“Our growing needs for affordable energy, combined with price volatility, dependence upon politically unstable regimes that supply much of our oil and gas, and global climate change concerns demands that nuclear power be a central part of the discussion over our national energy policy,” Ayers said. Obama “recognizes the strategic importance a re-vitalized nuclear power industry can play. And by conducting this announcement at IBEW Local 26 Joint Apprenticeship Training Center, the president also recognizes the important role our skilled craft training programs will play to ensure a revitalized nuclear industry is coupled with ‘high-road’ jobs and careers.”
Designing an energy policy that brings affordable energy to consumers and businesses, “can be met through development, installation and continued operation of energy technologies from a broad portfolio of energy resources – including nuclear power – which will have the added social benefits of contributing to the sustained creation of solid, well-paying middle class jobs and careers,” Ayers concluded.
This article was written by Press Associates, Inc., news service. Used by permission.