S 517 provides nuclear welfare on a scale we have never seen before, amounting to protectionism in favor of nuclear energy and against sorely needed renewable energy. S 517 ignores national and energy security in favor of big money handouts to nuclear power.

NUCLEAR

S 517:
*Uses public money to build and test a “new” generation of dangerous nuclear power reactors on federal land, including (but not limited to) DOE sites and labs.

*Streamlines reactor approval.

*Discourages small power generators and funds nuclear power to such a large degree that it amounts to protectionism against renewables, threatening energy and national security.

*Treats irradiated fuel as a commodity or resource, threatening national security.

*Deploys more nuclear power reactors which are officially recognized terrorist targets, endangering national security and major population centers. Many thousands of people could be harmed by a terrorist attack on a nuclear reactor.

* Seeks to greenwash nuclear power by linking it to clean car technology and hydrogen fuel production.

*Repeals PUHCA, the full force of which could have prevented the ENRON debacle, compromising the safety of nuclear reactors.

*S 517 would mandate taxpayer money to implement the nuclear industry-drafted DOE report “A Roadmap to Deploy New Nuclear Power Plants in the United States by 2010.” This report and S 517 would pay the nuclear industry to work to with DOE to “embrace” the industry’s “Vision 2020” plan of deploying 50,000 MWe of new nuclear generation by 2020.

Specifics:

S 517 establishes a new generation of nuclear reactors. It does this first by reauthorizing the Price Anderson Subsidies. Second, it offers public money and federal facilities and land in order to research and operate “new” reactors like the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR).

S 517 reauthorizes Price Anderson (SA 2983-VOINOVICH), which limits catastrophic nuclear accident liability to 9 billion with no assured redress for higher costs; it also subsidizes insurance costs up to 3.4 billion dollars per year for current reactors, further distorting electricity markets. This subsidy will increase with new reactors. “New design” modular reactors such as the PBMR, receive another special incentive which allows a group of reactors with smaller energy output to be covered as one reactor. This lowers reactor premiums and liability. The energy company EXELON is planning on ordering the first US PBMR.

S 517 (SA 2995, CRAIG) seeks fast track ways to ensure the new generation of atomic reactors are operating by 2010. This provision will inevitably trample public participation even more. Additionally, it would use public money and public property to research and deploy a new reactor generation.

S 517 would also encourage “new” atomic reactors by offering over 1 billion dollars in tax breaks for current reactor decommissioning. While this encourages reactor owners to close down current reactors earlier, combined with other incentives in this bill, it encourages these same owners to build “new generation” atomic reactors.

In simple terms, S 517 provisions listed above fund creation of new and very vulnerable terrorist targets: atomic reactors. An attack could easily affect hundreds of thousands of people. The above amendments directly impede renewable energy progress by skewing the electricity market in favor of old and “new” nuclear power. Given the current state of security and the dangers nuclear energy poses, these amendments are especially inappropriate.

Adding to the nuclear waste three-ring-circus, S 517 would relapse into technologies that have long been recognized as catastrophic failures worldwide (SA 3009-Domenici).  Even the industry has rejected these technologies. These methods include reprocessing and plutonium separation. These methods are responsible for harming members of the public and highly contaminating their surrounding environment. Additionally, these methods do not immobilize and isolate this highly irradiated material, encouraging it to circulate, which greatly increases the probability that it will fall into the wrong hands. This is not just an energy security issue; it is a true national security issue.

S 517 repeals PURPA which has required the purchase of power from small generators. This “home-grown” power is instrumental in assuring our individual and national energy independence and security. While a decentralized energy grid favors small, locally controlled renewable energy producers, large grids favor nuclear power. In fact nuclear power is absolutely antithetical to a decentralized power system. Discouraging small energy producers discourages renewables and favors a large grid system which gives nuclear power an unwarranted edge.

S 517 repeals PUHCA which has protected consumers from a utility’s bad investments. With mergers and buyouts the consolidation of nuclear reactor ownership is inevitable.
Without a law like PUHCA to help ensure financial viability and sound investment, poor business judgment on the part of utilities would compromise safety at atomic reactors.

S 517 wastes still more money on nuclear fusion, (SA- 2987, CRAIG) a pie-in-the-sky technology that still generates nuclear waste. The Senate energy bill will increase money for the Fusion Energy Sciences Program to $1.4 billion over four years.

S 517 would link nuclear power to hydrogen production in an attempt to greenwash nuclear energy. This would link nuclear in a new, tangible way to a clean energy source and present a façade of its necessity to America’s clean energy future (SA-3009, Landrieu) It requires study of designs for a high temperature nuclear reactor to produce hydrogen. In practical terms, having a potentially clean fuel (hydrogen) produced by a dirty method (nuclear) obviates the label “renewable”. In terms of politics and public relations this ensures that nuclear energy will have a place in a “future” clean energy source which runs cars. Nuclear Energy proponents can therefore claim that nuclear power is necessary for replacing oil use in this country since most oil is used as gas for automobiles. Although the industry has tried to say nuclear power was instrumental in replacing foreign oil sources, this argument has rung hollow up to now.

Key nuclear power points: Every dollar spent on nuclear power assures that this country will lack true energy independence and security.
1) Subsidizing nuclear power hurts the energy market and renewable energy which, at the least, should have an equivalent playing field. Equivalency can be achieved by removal of all nuclear power subsidies and recognition of its true costs.
2) Reliance on nuclear energy ensures that we will not get a decentralized energy grid into which ALL producers, businesses and individuals, can supply power. This is where true energy security rests.
3) Further, this bill threatens much of the public input provisions we need to participate in our own energy future, especially concerning nuclear power.
4) Nuclear power is a threat to national, environmental, and public security. Period. It was before September 11. It is more so now.
Considering how quickly this bill and its amendments have moved, we must declare our opposition to it now. The promise of amendments to make this bill better is not enough to support it. Even if mitigating amendments were added (unlikely given recent past experience), the cost of this bill becoming law remains too high.