Dear Senator (or Representative)

I/We are concerned that, under the current political climate, the Congress will rush through renewal of the Price Anderson Act, not fully considering the terrorist dangers and damaging impact on the commercial energy industry. Renewal of the Act is unnecessary and irresponsible. Why should the public of the United States be unable to purchase insurance to protect their businesses and homes from nuclear accidents and radiation contamination; while they, in turn, are forced to cover the cost of catastrophic nuclear accidents?

The insurance industry--the professional-risk assessor--realized from the start that nuclear power was too dangerous to fully insure. The American Nuclear Insurers (ANI) recognized this when it testified "the Act has been critical in enabling us to provide stable, high quality insurance capacity for nuclear risks in the face of normally overwhelming obstacles for insurers—those obstacles being catastrophic loss potential, the absence of credible predictability…without the "ups and downs" (or market cycles) that have affected nearly all other lines of insurance." (emphasis added)

The government realized that no utility would ever build an atomic reactor because no utility would ever open itself to the potential consequences of an accident. Investors are still unwilling to build nuclear power reactors without a large accident bailout. As Vice-President Dick Cheney recently admitted, without extension of Price-Anderson to new reactors, "Nobody's going to invest in nuclear power." The Price-Anderson act provides nuclear utilities insurance that they could never obtain in real market circumstances.

Finally, Price-Anderson expires in August 2002. If Price-Anderson were not reauthorized, existing reactors would still be covered by its current provisions. Because the industry wants to build more reactors, they would like to rush Price-Anderson through without due regard for terrorist concerns and public safety. The industry is asking the American public to insure a new generation of reactors which have less containment then Chernobyl. This simple, frightening fact makes "new" reactors extremely vulnerable to terrorist attack, and shows the duplicity of the nuclear industry. Industry is calling these reactors (without any containment) "inherently safe" but they also claim these reactors are not safe enough to insure without a law limiting utility liability. Which is it?

With the Act, the public is denied financial protection from the enormous health costs and economic losses from a catastrophic accident. If the nuclear industry is the safe, market viable and mature industry it claims to be, it can be held accountable for the real cost of doing business.

For these reasons, we request that, as representatives of the public interest, you vote against renewal of the Price-Anderson act and cut off public subsidy to an inherently dangerous, attack-prone technology.