My Labor Day Pledge

 

Labor Day was first observed 142 years ago as all my families were arriving in Butte to help punch thousands of miles of underground workings into the hard rock of the Boulder Batholith. In their honor and with great respect for our skilled work force:

1. If elected I pledge to build on the hard-learned skills of over 100,000 Montanans engaged today in energy, construction, mining and railroading, in order to help make Montana an electricity-producing powerhouse for our nation.

Toward this end much has already been accomplished with distributed solar, including two 80 MW solar farms commissioned this year, 22 wind farms consisting of 4024 wind generators, 32 private and federal hydroelectric dams, including the old Montana Power Dams in the Missouri and Clark Fork Basins that powered Butte’s massive and strategically important mines with 100% renewable energy during the whole of World War II, one natural gas-fired peaking plant and one natural gas fired wind-firming plant, and two legacy coal-fired base load plants being kept in service because the need for electricity has begun to skyrocket.

2. I will propose to the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that a site or sites in the Boulder Batholith suitable for use as a high level nuclear waste repository be assessed according to the newest procedures being recommended by the American Nuclear Society’s Special Committee on Generic Standards for Disposal of High-Level Radioactive Waste. See ans.org.

The Boulder Batholith underlies approximately 1.5 million acres managed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Department of Interior and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

3. I will monitor the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s review of Small Modular Reactors, particularly the 345 MW Natrium Reactor design being proposed by Terra Power at the Naughton coal-fired power plant near Kemmerer, Wyoming. See nrc.gov.

My greatest concern right now is that Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Order 1920, will be challenged now that the Supreme Court has overturned the decades-old Chevron doctrine of judicial deference to a federal agency’s interpretation of an ambiguous statute. Order 1920 directs Regional Transmission Owners, including the Western Area Power Administration as part of the Southwest Power Pool to “right size” existing transmission lines and plan electricity transmission using 20 year time horizons with planning cycles every 3 to 5 years. See spp.org.

4. I will ask the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad to begin considering electrification, which in the Montana Department will require 4 Small Modular Reactors (SMR). Northwestern Energy will be colocating a fifth SMR at Colstrip by 2042. The 60 year lifetime waste of 5 SMR’s will be about 3,105 metric tons, compared with the 13.75 to 15 million metric tons of copper ore annually removed from the Boulder Batholith to supply America’s WWII war effort. 

John B. Driscoll