Act now: Senate Comm. to take up pro nuke bills Thursday

July 12, 2011

We have learned that on Thursday, July 14, the Senate Energy Committee is slated to vote on several bills, including its first post-Fukushima nuclear legislation.

Unfortunately, this legislation isn't about nuclear safety; it isn't about implementing safe, clean alternatives to dirty, dangerous nuclear power; it isn't following the lead of Germany, Italy and elsewhere in ending the threat of nuclear catastrophe in the United States.

It's about pretending Fukushima never happened. It's about building more nuclear reactors in the U.S. And it's absolutely unacceptable.

There are three bills the Senate Energy Committee is likely to consider on Thursday:

S. 512 would require the Secretary of Energy to carry out programs to develop and demonstrate two "small modular nuclear reactor" designs, one of 300 MW maximum and one of 50 MW maximum. By comparison, new reactors being ordered by utilities are 1,000 MW or more, but several problematic early U.S. reactors--like Yankee Rowe, Big Rock Point, LaCrosse and others--were actually smaller than 300 MW. Fukushima Unit 1 was only 460 MW--not a lot larger than these "small modular" reactors.

Here is a factsheet from our friends at IEER & PSR on some of the problems with "small modular reactors."

S. 1067 would waste $250 million taxpayer dollars over the next five years on a hopeless effort: it would create a new Department of Energy program to try to reduce the manufacturing and construction costs of both large and small new reactors.

And the Committee also may resume consideration of CEDA (Clean Energy Deployment Administration) legislation. This would set up a "clean energy" bank to provide taxpayer loans and loan guarantees to eligible technologies. This legislation does not yet have a bill number, and we haven't seen the full text yet. While there appears to be some improvement over earlier versions (it may not allow unlimited taxpayer loans), it still perpetuates the fiction that nuclear power and some types of coal are "clean energy." Until these dirty and dangerous technologies are removed from the definition of clean energy, this type of legislation must be opposed. Otherwise, the "clean energy bank" will simply become another mechanism to channel taxpayer dollars into large, polluting and irresponsible companies that produce lethal radioactive waste, destroy mountains and generally are not deserving of any support.

You can take action below to tell the Senate that none of these bills are acceptable. Note: while only the Senate Energy Committee is considering these bills at this point, we are targeting the entire Senate because Senators do talk to each other....

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