Nuclear lobby pushes for “permanent financing platform,” at taxpayer risk and expense

While President Obama and other leading Democrats went “wooing” wavering Senators on both sides of the aisle with more nuclear power incentives for the administration’s Climate and Energy Bill, the Nuclear Energy Institute released its own "Nuclear Policy Incentive" to Capitol Hill. NEI broadly outlined a plan on how to build 45 new reactors in the US by 2030. It aims to support a climate bill that includes a “permanent financing platform” under the Clean Energy Deployment Administration to start with more than an additional $100 billion in direct federal loans, loan guarantees and other credit support for new reactor construction; to provide tax incentives to steeply ramp up large nuclear power component manufacturing and production facilities; to further streamline the federal licensing process and; to provide financial incentives for the development of “voluntary interim storage facilities for used nuclear fuel” (also known as “radioactive waste parking lot dumps”).

Thus, the nuclear industry is essentially looking to hook up an umbilical attachment to the US taxpayer for limitless federal money necessary to build financially risky new reactors. Given the teetering global economy and the colossal cost of new nukes, this would once again tip the playing field and competitive markets against renewable energy and drain the life blood out from the real answers to global climate change. NEI seeks to further strip public interest groups of their due process to challenge new reactor construction on public health and safety and environmental issues and bribe economically hard hit communities to take timelessly toxic nuclear waste.

Contact President Obama, your two U.S. Senators, and your U.S. Representative. Tell them that a permanent infusion of massive amounts of federal taxpayer dollars into dangerous and financially risky nuclear power in the climate bill jeopardizes real solutions to addressing climate change through renewable energy, energy efficiency and conservation.

Nuke subsidies: "All risk, no reward, for taxpayers and ratepayers"

A new report, "ALL RISK, NO REWARD, FOR TAXPAYERS AND RATEPAYERS: THE ECONOMICS OF SUBSIDIZING THE 'NUCLEAR RENAISSANCE' WITH LOAN GUARANTEES AND CONSTRUCTION WORK IN PROGRESS," by Mark Cooper, Senior Fellow for Economic Analysis at the Institute for Energy and the Environment of the Vermont Law School, shows that the American public could face trillions of dollars of financial risk and added costs if a new generation of atomic reactors is built in the U.S.

Forbes strikes again!

As described in the current issue of Forbes magazine, federal nuclear loan guarantees would transfer the financial risks of the “nuclear renaissance” onto U.S. taxpayers. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that “well over half” of nuclear loan guarantees will default, leaving taxpayers to hold the bag for many billions of dollars per failed project. In February 1985, Forbes reported that “[t]he failure of the U.S. nuclear power program ranks as the largest managerial disaster in business history, a disaster on a monumental scale. The utility industry has already invested $125 billion in nuclear power, with an additional $140 billion to come before the decade is out, and only the blind, or the biased, can now think that most of the money has been well spent.” If Energy Secretary Chu rushes nuclear loan guarantees out the door by the end of the year, as he has threatened to do, this ugly history could easily repeat itself. Phone Energy Secretary Steven Chu at (202) 586-6210 (during business hours only), email him at The.Secretary@hq.doe.gov, write him a letter at U.S. Department of Energy/1000 Independence Ave., SW/Washington, DC 20585, or fax him at (202) 586-4403. Urge Secretary Chu to not rush granting $18.5 billion in nuclear loan guarantees to flawed, incomplete, uncertified, unsafe and financially risky new reactor designs

Henry Sokolski op-ed, "Cap and Bribe," spotlights nuclear loan guarantees' violation of free market, transfer of financial risk to taxpayers

In an Oct. 21, 2009 opinion-editorial in the National Review Online, Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, urges Senate Republicans to stick by their fiscal conservative rhetoric and oppose taxpayer-backed loan guarantees for new atomic reactors.

New analysis examines taxpayer risks of proposed Webb-Alexander pro-nuclear power legislation

An article in Nuclear Power Daily compares the pro-nuclear power bill sponsored by U.S. Senators Jim Webb (D-VA) and Lamar Alexander (R-TN) with an analysis by Dr. Mark Cooper, exploring the many financial risks faced by U.S. taxpayers if nuclear power loan guarantees for new reactors are granted and expanded, and the risks faced by ratepayers if "Construction Work in Progress" (CWIP) fees are added to electricity bills to pay for proposed new reactors in advance.