nuke bailout

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June 13, 2003

 

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution today printed an excellent editorial condemning the folly of the Senate's recent vote to keep exorbitant nuclear subsidies in the energy bill (the defeat of the Wyden-Sununu amendment). The text of that editorial appears below.

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Web Address:

http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/0603/13nuke.html

 

OUR VIEW

 

SENATE RECIPE FOR A BOMB: NUCLEAR INDUSTRY, SUBSIDIES

 

Charity usually begins at home, but for the nuclear industry, it begins in the U.S. Senate.

 

This week, a slim Senate majority voted to grant the industry $16 billion in taxpayer-funded handouts, loan guarantees and other goodies, producing one of the sweetest sweetheart deals in recent history.

 

The bill, which now faces a House-Senate conference committee, provides for:

 

•Federal financing to cover up to 50 percent of the cost to develop and build new reactors. The government would buy energy from the plants once they're completed.

 

•A decade-long commitment by the Department of Energy to promote construction of nuclear power facilities through other public-private agreements.

 

•A total of $1.5 billion in federal funding for research, development and commercial demonstration projects.

 

•Extending insurance subsidies for new power plants that would limit the owner's liability in case of an accident. If something goes wrong, as it did so infamously at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island plant in 1979, taxpayers would bail them out.

 

Since that frightening mishap, investors on Wall Street and families on Main Street have had little appetite for nuclear power -- no new plants have been started in this country since that event occurred.

 

Proponents now claim that technological advancements have rendered nuclear power far safer. Opponents still insist otherwise, pointing out that questions about how to dispose of radioactive wastes haven't been fully resolved, and that nuclear plants are extremely costly.

 

The nuclear power subsidy is just one part of a larger energy bill making its way through Congress. That bill also fails to provide meaningful incentives for energy conservation, does nothing to prevent Enron-esque manipulations of the energy markets that darkened California three years ago, and fails to promote renewable energy sources such as wind and solar energy that elected officials treated as unwanted orphans.

 

But here's the real kick: According to a report prepared by the Congressional Budget Office, more than half of the nuclear power plants that would be built if this legislation passes would be very likely to fail, leaving taxpayers on the hook.

 

The nuclear power industry argues that other industries also get subsidies, and they do. Bills in both houses of Congress include handouts for other mature industries that are equally undeserved.

 

But their "me too" defense neither explains nor excuses the Senate's efforts to use taxpayers' money as a crutch for an industry that's been around long enough to stand on its own.