"Nuclear: 'Dead Plant Society' Lobby Group Booms As Reactors Close"

"When utility executives gathered over dinner in 2001 to commiserate about looming reactor closures and start lobbying Congress for help, their first order of business was picking a name for their advocacy group.

'The Dead Plant Society,' lobbyist Tim Smith offered.

His tongue-in-cheek reference to 'Dead Poets Society,' a 1980s movie about a secret group of poetry lovers at an all-boys prep school, landed with a thud.

'Nobody,' Smith recalled recently, 'wanted to write a check to a group called the Dead Plant Society.'

But 15 years later, the name lives — and is more fitting than ever.

Reactors are closing as nuclear utilities struggle to compete with cheap natural gas, low demand for power and no national energy policy. And when the behemoth nuclear plants close, the Dead Plant Society grows."

Hannah Northey reports for Greenwire September 6, 2016.