Loan Guarantees
New reactor construction is so expensive and unpredictable that no U.S. utility is willing to take the risk without the backing of federal loan guarantees, potentially in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Beyond Nuclear and others fight to prevent the mature nuclear industry from seizing any such subsidies which are better spent on true climate solutions such as renewable energy and energy efficiency programs.
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An op-ed with this title was penned by Mark Cooper, senior fellow at the Institute for Energy and the Environment at Vermont Law School, and Nancy Young Wright, an Arizona state representative (D-District 26) and was published in Arizona's American Forum.
Taxpayers for Common Sense (TCS) has objected to the Obama administration and congressional Democratic leaders agreeing to add energy loan guarantees -- including to support the building of new atomic reators -- on the emergency supplemental war spending bill. TCS stated "The emergency spending bill is supposed to address urgent, unforeseen war and disaster related items - adding risky loan guarantees for projects that won’t be built for years is little more than a cynical political ploy to jam it through Congress without adequate scrutiny."
May 22, 2010