President Obama's Nuclear Reversal. Commentary by Erich Pica, HuffPost, February 18, 2010. "President Obama announced Tuesday that the Department of Energy is awarding $8 billion in taxpayer dollars towards loan guarantees to build the United States' first nuclear reactors in nearly thirty years. This move may be politically expedient, but for the public, it's a raw deal. As a candidate, Obama expressed openness to new reactors, but said, 'Before an expansion... is considered, key issues must be addressed including: security of nuclear fuel and waste, waste storage, and proliferation.' President Obama should heed candidate Obama's advice. These issues have not been addressed. If anything, the challenges facing the nuclear industry have grown worse...
"With Yucca Mountain a no-go, there is still nowhere to put the radioactive waste piling up across the country... There's also still no way to ensure reactors' safety... The FBI has called nuclear facilities 'target rich' environments for terrorists. More reactors also mean more weapons-usable material, increasing the risk of proliferation... For decades, the industry has depended on taxpayer support. Investing in emerging technologies that can eventually thrive on their own makes sense, but the nuclear industry doesn't fit the bill... Nuclear reactors have received more preferential treatment than any other source of electricity. Even today, the industry is slated to receive more federal loan guarantees, a host of tax credits for nuclear power production, and insurance subsidized through the Price Anderson Act, which was renewed for 20 years in 2005... Investments in nuclear plants are deemed too risky by private industry... so the nuclear industry relies on loan guarantees from the federal government for new construction... President Obama should ditch this failed industry and take the lead on investing in truly clean, safe, and financially viable solutions to our energy crisis, rejecting the industry's rhetoric and abandoning this false solution." Erich Pica is President of Friends of the Earth. He is a nationally recognized expert on energy subsidies who for more than a decade has worked to reform U.S. tax and budget policy in ways that reduce climate-warming pollution and help spark a transition to clean energy.
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