(Approx. Read Time: 3 minutes)
On September 15th and 16th, 2010, sixteen (16) NA-YGN members from AREVA offices in Charlotte, NC, Bethesda, MD, Fort Worth, TX, Lynchburg, VA and Marlborough, MA attended an NA-YGN “Hill Day” Event on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. Prior to the trip, our NA-YGN sponsors and governmental affairs officials at AREVA, hosted several presentations that shared perspectives and prepared our NA-YGN members on effective ways to communicate with legislators on nuclear power issues. Among those presenting–NA-YGN member Erik Haas, who has extensive experience in governmental affairs, helped prepare other members for the challenge ahead.
Alan Hanson, AREVA Vice President of U.S. Back End (i.e. – used fuel management) spoke to the NA-YGN members about the current political situation regarding nuclear power. He touched on some of the key issues including the current status of the Congress-approved loan guarantees and the issue of nuclear waste management.
Thursday afternoon and Friday were spent attending the 17 scheduled meetings with their Congressmen or their Congressional Aides from the various districts represented by the NA-YGN membership who participated. In most cases, the meetings were attended by two to four NA-YGN members with one of those being the “lead” who would facilitate the discussion. Every NA-YGN member who participated had the opportunity to attend at least two meetings.
The key message to the legislators, according to NA-YGN members Tim Thomas and Craig Kelley, NA-YGN Co-Project Managers of this NA-YGN Hill Day event, was to help “influence to make policy which will benefit nuclear power. We stressed the importance of loan guarantees as the key to the nuclear renaissance. Nuclear power is going to create jobs in Virginia and all over the country. It should play a key role in our energy policy and can go a long way towards solving our country’s economic problems. The key to all of this is the loan guarantees.”
One of the key highlights from the trip was having Congressman Tom Perriello (D-VA) agree to send a letter to Dept. of Energy Secretary Chu and The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) urging them to award the loan guarantees.
Also, Congressman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) has sent a letter to President Obama asking him to resolve the political hurdles preventing the loan guarantees and emphasizing the importance of the Calvert Cliffs project for Virginia’s economy and the nuclear industry as a whole.
Michael Wiley, Chair of NA-YGN Fort Worth, said “it was really interesting to see how the political side of our industry works. As engineers, we see the technical side and the direct results of our labors, but to communicate this and see how the political side works was very intriguing. It was a great experience to learn how to adapt our approach in order to communicate our stances on the issues as both constituents and engineers to politicians. It also proved a great opportunity to represent the industry, making persuasive arguments advocating nuclear power within the political machine, not just as an employee, but a representative of our generation in nuclear.”
NA-YGN members had a great experience at the Hill Day. “Overall,” Tim Thomas said, “I think it was a really positive experience for everyone. On one hand, professionally, it was really good for everyone to have the opportunity to meet with elected officials and a good chance to work on communication skills. Also, it was a good experience to learn what it takes to get in touch with an elected official from the emails, letters, phone calls, and diligent follow up through to researching the representative to learn about them and finally tailor our message to them.”
