Earth Equity News

Former NRC Commissioner Says No to Nuclear Loan Guarantees. By Bob Audette, Brattleboro Reformer, May 5, 2010. "A former commissioner of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said loan guarantees for new nuclear power plants are too much of a risk to put on taxpayers. Peter Bradford, who lives in Peru and was an NRC commissioner from 1977 to 1982, said nuclear loan guarantees are 'a very counterproductive approach to fighting climate change... There are a number of other alternatives that lead to greater greenhouse gas reductions much sooner and much less expensively,' he told the Reformer. Specifically, said Bradford, energy efficiencies that can be implemented immediately rather than the eight or 10 years it might take to get a license for and to build a new reactor. Loan guarantees 'will undermine the fight against climate change by diverting money and attention from the resources that offer much larger atmospheric pollution reductions much sooner and less expensively,' said Bradford in testimony before the U.S. House's Domestic Policy Subcommittee of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee on April 20. Funding of new nuclear power plants is best left to the capital markets, said Bradford, where debt or equity securities are traded, rather than looking to the federal government for support. And nuclear energy is a mature technology, which has been around for 50 years and should be able to stand on its own, he said."