Issue #221
August 3, 2007
The Senate Takes the Nuclear Option
Josh Dorner
There were plenty of shenanigans on the Senate energy bill that were pretty much right out in the open for everyone to see. Nevertheless, a fresh wave of outrage washed over our shores this week after the New York Times reported that a single sentence "inserted into the [Senate energy bill] without debate" could result in billions in loan guarantees for the nuclear industry -- and possibly even so-called "clean coal."
I don't know why these things even surprise me anymore, but what really got my goat was that apparently our ol' pal Sen. Pete "Pajamas" Domenici wasn't too busy personally filibustering the Renewable Electricity Standard to make sure his pals in the nuke industry got another round at the trough. Apparently, the $13 billion they got in the 2005 energy bill wasn’t quite enough.
The nitty-gritty of this latest debacle is that that one sentence provides for unlimited loan guarantees -- up to 100 percent of the loan for 80 percent of the total cost of a new reactor -- for the nuclear industry. The industry plans to go hat in hand to Congress to the tune of $25 billion next year and with an ominous sounding request for "more than that" in 2009. They say they will need about $50 billion to get their next generation of reactors up and running.
Nuclear power is the most expensive and complicated way anyone's ever figured out to boil water. So I'm not sure which is worse, that we could be shoveling $50 billion to a dirty, dangerous industry that hasn't figured out how to be cost-competitive after more than 50 years OR that taxpayers are likely to be left on the hook when the nuke folks weasel their of paying back the loans later? And to top it all off, the provision (and a similar one in the energy bill now before the House) also prohibits Congress from categorically excluding loan guarantees for nukes (or coal or anything else specific) from appropriations bills this year and in the future.
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