Harvey Wasserman: "$7 Billion New Nuke Attack"

Harvey WassermanHarvey Wasserman of NukeFree.org strikes again, with an analysis and call to action against nuclear power subsidies as an essential prerequisite for achieving Solartopia.

Coalition of taxpayer and conservative groups oppose risky nuclear loan guarantee expansion

Taxpayers for Common Sense, the Non-Proliferation Policy Education Center, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the National Taxpayers Union have warned Congress: "Putting the full faith and credit of the U.S. government behind costly, risky projects that the private sector won't finance is fiscally reckless and politically unwise. Because of the size of these nuclear reactor projects, taxpayers stand to lose more on these than any other Title XVII loan guarantee. Congress must face the reality that loan guarantees are anything but 'free money' or a wise expansion of government authority and oppose further expansion of this program." Despite this, the U.S. House of Representatives, led by retiring House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey (D-WI), narrowly approved a Continuing Resolution that in fact includes a $7 billion expansion in new reactor loan guarantees, and an additional $3 billion in expanded loan guarantees for fossil fuel industries.

U.S. House approves $7 billion in additional new reactor loan guarantees

The U.S. House of Representatives, by the narrow margin of 212 to 206, today passed a 423 page long "Continuing Resolution" (CR) bill, H.R. 3082, including $7 billion in additional nuclear power loan guarantees for the building of new atomic reactors, as well as an additional $3 billion in loan guarantees for "fossil energy technologies." Retiring House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey, Democrat from Wisconsin, served as the primary sponsor for the legislation; his committee website has posted a summary of the bill, the bill's full text, as well as Rep. Obey's floor statement. Although there are numerous factors which undoubtedly determined each House Member's final decision on whether or not to vote for or against the CR, it is still valuable to thank those who voted against, while expressing disappointment to those who voted for, these $10 billion in dirty, dangerous, and expensive nuclear and fossil energy loan guarantees. Check the roll call vote lists for your U.S. Representative. Thank them if they voted against the CR and its nuclear loan guarantees; "spank" them if they voted for the CR and its nuclear loan guarantees. You can call your U.S. Representative's office via the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121. Or, you can visit your House Member's website, in order to send a fax, letter, or email. Now consideration of the CR, or alternatively an Omnibus spending bill, and debate over such matters as nuclear loan guarantees, shifts to the U.S. Senate. It's vital that you call your two U.S. Senators via the Capitol Switchboard, or visit their websites in order to fax, write or email them. Urge them to block any CR or Omnibus that contains additional nuclear loan guarantees. Also contact the White House, and urge President Obama to stop subsidizing new atomic reactors -- a violation of a presidential campaign pledge he made in 2007-2008. The White House comment line can be reached at 202-456-1111; you can send a fax at  202-456-2461; you can fill out the webform at http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact; or you can send a snail mail letter to President Obama at The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20500.

Addressing the climate crisis with nuclear power would be like using “caviar to fight world hunger"

As reported by Matt Wald of the New York Times, former NRC Commissioner Peter Bradford strikes again, with a most apt metaphor bringing a dose of reality to the so-called Third Way/Idaho National Lab conference on nuclear power's future. Unmentioned in the reporting, however, is the irony of U.S. Senators Voinovich (R-OH) and Carper (D-DE) hosting the event. It was on Voinovich's watch that the Davis-Besse atomic reactor near Toledo came within 3/16ths of an inch of a meltdown; Carper's political power base in Wilmington could suffer 100,000 "peak early fatalities," over 70,000 "peak early injuries," 40,000 "peak cancer deaths," and over $300 billion in property damage if any one of the three Salem/Hope Creek atomic reactors suffered a catastrophic radiation release, according to NRC's 1982 CRAC-2 study ("Calculation of Reactor Accident Consequences"). Also unreported was the irony that, as Obama administration officials -- Energy Secretary Steven Chu, White House climate and energy czar Carol Browner, NRC chairman Greg Jaczko -- rubbed shoulders with NEI President Marvin Fertel, GE-Hitachi Board Chair Jack Fuller, etc., the nuclear power industry's army of lobbyists worked Capitol Hill to attach a $7 billion nuclear loan guarantee onto the congressional lame duck session Continuing Resolution to fund government operations. NRC's homepage described the gathering as "28 nuclear leaders from government, industry and finance -- focused on long term policy for nuclear energy," but offered no explanation as to why its Chairman would attend an event seemingly largely devoted to nuclear power's promotion -- NRC is not supposed to promote nuclear power, but rather to regulate it in the interests of public health and safety and environmental protection.

They're baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack! Nuclear industry lobbyists sneak $7 billion loan guarantee onto Lame Duck CR -- call your Congress Members right away!

The nuclear power industry won't take no for an answer. It has attempted multiple times this year to add another $9 billion in new reactor loan guarantees to the $18.5 billion it got Congress and George W. Bush to approve on Dec. 23, 2007 -- taking advantage of most Americans being distracted by the holidays. It also got an additional $2 billion at that time in new uranium enrichment loan guarantees. Grassroots resistance was instrumental in blocking the $9 billion nuclear loan guarantee addition attached to inappropriate bills earlier this year, such as the emergency war funding and disaster relief bill in June, as well as the small business support bill after that. This latest sneak move, during a lame duck session of Congress, will be even more difficult to stop -- but stop it we must!

Calls to Congress are urgently needed to block this latest nuclear money grab! Call your two U.S. Senators and your U.S. Representative right away via the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121. Urge them to block any nuclear loan guarantees by having them stripped out from the Continuing Resolution (CR) before Congress. If the nuclear loan guarantees are included in the CR nonetheless, then urge your Congress Members to vote against the entire bill. You can also find your Representative's fax number and email/webform, as well as local district office contact numbers, via the Library of Congress website, to contact them in those multiple ways; the same is true for your two U.S. Senators.

Also contact the White House, and urge President Obama to stop bailing out the filthy rich nuclear power industry. The White House comment line is (202) 456-1111. The White House fax number is (202) 456-2461. And emails can be sent in via the White House webform. Although President Obama has stood by his wise campaign pledge to kill the dangerous Yucca Mountain, Nevada radioactive waste dump proposal, he has largely reneged on other campaign pledges concerning nuclear power. Running for President, Obama said nuclear power's risks and the radioactive waste problem must be solved -- that nuclear power must be made safe and clean -- before any new reactors can be built. And he said such new construction must be done without subsidies. But in the State of the Union Address in 2009, Obama simply declared nuclear power to be safe and clean, and even worse, called for Congress to triple new reactor loan guarantee funding levels from $18.5 billion to $54.5 billion. Obama even went so far as to personally announce the award of the first nuclear loan guarantee, for $8.3 billion, to Southern Co. and its partners, for two new reactors in Georgia. Ironically, Obama's announcement came the very same day that the State of Vermont Senate voted 26 to 4 to block the 20 year license extension sought by Vermont Yankee atomic reactor, due to massive radioactivity leakage into groundwater, as well as outright lies, under oath, by Entergy Nuclear officials.

Most ironically -- this latest sneak money grab at the U.S. Treasury was revealed on Pearl Harbor Day, doubly ironic in that this new nuclear loan guarantee would very likely go to the South Texas Project twin reactor proposal. Toshiba of Japan is a partner, Hitachi of Japan is the reactor designer/vendor, and Japanese government agencies are willing to risk billions of dollars in Japanese taxpayer funding on the proposal. The good news is the figure has been lowered from the earlier $9 billion to $7 billion (that's still $7 billion too much!), but the bad news is that House Appropriations Chair Dave Obey (D-WI) could move the bill to the House floor for a vote at any time now. Another $3 billion in loan guarantees for dirty, dangerous, and expensive "fossil energy technologies" is also included in the CR. This is quite objectionable, with the fossil fuel driven climate crisis worsening, and in the aftermath of the BP Gulf of Mexico oil catastrophe, deadly coal mine explosions, disastrous coal ash spills, oil spills into rivers in Michigan and Illinois, and the risky push for major expansion of natural gas "fracking" (hydraulic fracturing) threatening ground and drinking water aquifers.

It's incredible that this $7 billion is even under consideration. $10.2 billion still remains in the nuclear loan guarantee fund, uncommitted. In October, a $7.5 billion nuclear loan guarantee offer by the Obama administration's Dept. of Energy to Constellation Energy for building a giant French Areva "Evolutionary Power Reactor" at Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant in Maryland was turned down. Constellation wanted even more financial risk than that to be transferred onto taxpayers! Constellation not only rejected the offer -- it walked away from its partner Electricite de France, and abandoned the project! Just as Calvert Cliffs 3's price tag was skyrocketing, so too is South Texas Project Units 3 and 4's -- so much so that the City of San Antonio, Texas has lowered its share of ownership by 85% in order to protect its interests.

The ability of nuclear power industry lobbyists to attach the same money grab rider, over and over again, to various pieces of legislation, is shocking, but should not be surprising any longer. After all, Judy Pasternak of American University's Investigative Reporting Workshop, revealed a year ago that from 1999 to 2009, the nuclear industry spent $645 million on federal lobbying, and an additional nearly $65 million on federal campaign contributions. (Pasternak is also the author of the newly released book, Yellow Dirt, about the health and environmental disasters suffered by Navajo miners and their families near uranium mines and mills in the Southwest.) These figures do not include nuclear power industry public relations expenditures -- such as fully funding the Orwellian named front group "Clean and Safe Energy Coalition" headed by Patrick Moore and Christie Todd Whitman. Nor does it include lobbying expenditures and campaign contributions at the state level. The nuclear power industry and its army of lobbyists regards our democracy as the best that money can buy. We need to stop them.