Tell Congress: No Nuke Subsidies during Lame Duck--and not next year either!

November 4, 2010

The election is over. And the nuclear industry is salivating over the prospect that the new Congress will give them your money to build their dangerous, dirty and extraordinarily expensive new nuclear reactors.

Here are just a few of the comments made yesterday:

An article from Bloomberg News that starts out, "Electricity producers such as NRG Energy Inc. and Southern Co. will benefit as Republicans who won control of the U.S. House yesterday promote nuclear power as part of clean-energy legislation."

Here is an article that says two of only five areas Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell sees for cooperation over the next two years are nuclear power and "clean" coal.

And President Obama said at his press conference yesterday, "There's been discussion about how we can restart our nuclear industry as a means of reducing our dependence on foreign oil and reducing greenhouse gases.  Is that an area where we can move forward?"

But we've taken on bigger odds before and won. So let's get to work. Let's tell Congress: no nuke subsidies during the Lame Duck Session, and none next year either!

One thing Congress must get done during its lame duck session beginning November 15 is to continue funding the government. Their current plan is to pass a giant "omnibus" appropriations bill that will fund all government agencies for the rest of the fiscal year (through September 2011). Once agreement is reached on this kind of bill, it is almost impossible to stop because, after all, the government does need to be funded. And amendments to this kind of bill are rarely allowed.

This is exactly the kind of bill where nuclear power advocates will try to sneak in billions more of your dollars for new reactor construction. Thanks to your actions, they've failed at getting more money for new nukes all year long, so this will be their last, best shot.

And, in the wake of Constellation Energy's decision to end the Calvert Cliffs-3 nuclear project, the nuclear power industry will be trying to change the rules to force taxpayers to take ALL the financial (and safety!) risks of new reactor construction. We might even see an effort to change the Atomic Energy Act to allow foreign ownership of U.S. nuclear reactors in order to allow the French government to build reactors here. Don't let them get away with it!

Let your Senators and Representatives know we're watching them, and that they must not spend any tax dollars on new reactors during this lame duck session, nor change the rules to force us to take the extraordinary financial risks for their dangerous, dirty and unnecessary reactors. Enter your zip code below to send your letters. And, of course, please feel free to edit the sample letter to reflect your own concerns.

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