New York Times reports DOE to issue first nuclear reactor loan guarantee "in the next few days"

While American taxpayers were distracted by the holidays, Congress and the Bush administration approved $18.5 billion in new reactor federal loan guarantees, and another $2.0 billion in uranium enrichment facility loan guarantees, on Christmas Eve, 2007. Now that the American people are again distracted by the holidays, the Obama administration's Dept. of Energy (DOE) appears poised to begin delivering the goods, at U.S. taxpayer risk and expense. A Christmas Eve New York Times article, "Loan Program May Stir Nuclear Industry," reports that DOE may begin dispersing the first new reactor federal loan guarantees in "the next few days." This, despite widespread design flaws endemic to proposed new reactors on DOE's loan guarantee short list. This includes the design for the Westinghouse-Toshiba Advanced Passive (AP) 1000, proposed to be built at Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia, widely rumored to be at the top of DOE's list for receiving a loan guarantee. In recent months, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission publicly announced that the AP1000 design is vulnerable to severe weather such as tornadoes and hurricanes, and other natural disasters such as earthquakes, damaging the reactor core due to a faulty "shield building."

DOE: Nuke loan guarantees still have "some distance to go"

"We're getting close, but we're not done," with new atomic reactor federal loan guarantees, Deputy Energy Secretary Daniel Poneman has told ClimateWire's Peter Behr. This despite Energy Secretary Steven Chu's earlier threat to issue such guarantees -- risking up to $18.5 billion in taxpayer-backed loans for new reactors and an additional $2.0 billion for new uranium enrichment facilities -- by the end of this year.

Harvey Wasserman celebrates "A quiet but HUGE no nukes triumph"

Harvey Wasserman's latest essay lists recent setbacks plaguing the nuclear "renaissance," and urges continued grassroots vigilance against taxpayer-backed loan guarantees for new atomic reactors. See numerous additional Wasserman anti-nuke blogs down the righthand side of his freepress.org homepage, and visit the nukefree.org website Harvey edits.

Beyond Nuclear joins coalition letter to Energy Dept. urging no "conditional loan guarantee" for risky French EPRs

Beyond Nuclear, as a member of the Chesapeake Safe Energy Coalition, has joined with groups in multiple states targeted for new Areva "Evolutionary Power Reactors" in a letter urging Energy Department officials to not grant rushed loan guarantees to this financially risky French reactor design with documented safety flaws.