[NukeNet] Urgent! Sign-on deadline moved up; Congress on verge of approving loan guarantees. Act now.

Mon Dec 10 20:08:27 EST 2007

http://www.vpr.net/news_detail/78501 

We won over Peter Welch!

------------------------------------------------------------

Stannard Associates, Inc.

Robert J. Stannard, Pres

117 Sleepy Hollow Dr.

Manchester Center, Vt. 05255

802-362-3658 phone/fax

802-345-0786 cell

bob at bobstannard.com

  _____  

From: nukenet-bounces at energyjustice.net
[mailto:nukenet-bounces at energyjustice.net] On Behalf Of Michael Mariotte
Sent: Monday, December 10, 2007 6:15 PM
To: nukenet at energyjustice.net
Subject: [NukeNet] Urgent! Sign-on deadline moved up;Congress on verge of
approving loan guarantees. Act now.

URGENT!

Congress may vote on appropriations/nuclear loan guarantees Tuesday night!

ACT NOW! Stop $25 billion in nuclear loan guarantees!

Friends,

We are hearing today that there is behind-the-scenes maneuvering in the
House and Senate appropriations committees to approve a giant loan guarantee
package in the omnibus appropriations bill, and that this bill could reach
the House floor as early as Tuesday night. The Senate would then vote on the
bill as early as Wednesday. According to some reports, the appropriators are
considering as much as $45 Billion in loan guarantees for energy projects,
with $25 Billion of that being allocated for new nuclear reactors.

This is the worst type of legislation. Not only would it pay for the Iraq
war in exchange for a few billion dollars in domestic projects, but it is
being done almost covertly, in a mammoth spending bill that virtually no
Congressmember would actually have the chance to read before voting. We need
to let Congress know this type of spending bill, with these types of
priorities, is simply unacceptable.

Your actions kept the nuclear loan guarantees out of the House energy bill.
Now we all need to act again, louder and stronger than ever.

*We have moved up the deadline for signing on to the letter below (which has
more than 65 organizational signers so far). If your organization has not
yet signed, please do so by 11 am Eastern time tomorrow, Tuesday, December
11. We intend to put out a press release on it tomorrow afternoon.

To sign, please send your name, organization, city and state to
nirsnet at nirs.org. 

*And everyone: please call both of your Senators and your House
representative on Tuesday-Republican, Democrat, Independent. Every member
needs to hear the message: NO TAXPAYER LOAN GUARANTEES FOR NEW NUCLEAR
REACTORS. Period.

Capitol Switchboard: 202-224-3121

Thank you for all you do!

Michael Mariotte

Executive Director

Nuclear Information and Resource Service

nirsnet at nirs.org; 301-270-6477

Text of the Sign-on Letter

December 11, 2007

Dear Congressmember:

We urge you to keep costly loan guarantees for nuclear power out of the
Energy and Water and omnibus appropriations bills. 

The Administration proposed $9 billion for all energy loan guarantees and
the House approved $7 billion for all energy loan guarantees in FY 2008.
Yet, the media has reported that the Energy and Water Appropriations
conferees are considering $25 billion in loan guarantees exclusively to the
nuclear industry. 

There has been little to no Congressional debate on this large sum of money.
There has also been no discussion or hearings on the implications for other
energy projects, if the $25 billion nuclear loan guarantee package is
passed. $25 billion is more than the entire annual budget for the Department
of Energy. Doesn't Congress have the obligation to debate the ramifications
of risking $25 billion?

Moreover, there is no hurry for a nuclear loan guarantee package: no nuclear
utilities will be in a position in 2008 to use any federal funds for new
reactor construction. Only four utilities so far have submitted applications
for new reactors and the NRC licensing process is expected to take a minimum
of 30 months for complete applications referencing certified standardized
reactor designs. But none of the applications has been certified as complete
by the NRC (Constellation Energy so far is missing half its application; NRG
Energy's application has deficiencies the NRC projects will take a year to
correct), and none of the applications references a certified standardized
reactor design (while the NRC Energy application references a standardized
design, NRG is seeking 16 changes from the design as certified; TVA is
seeking major changes from its standardized design; while Constellation and
Dominion Resources are both seeking licensing of reactor designs that have
not yet gone through the certification process). It will be at least 2011,
and probably later, before any utility can begin reactor construction. 

The cost of new atomic reactors, and thus the usefulness of loan guarantees,
is an issue that Congress has not yet fully explored. Cost estimates by
nuclear utilities for new reactors have essentially doubled over the past
two years, and are far above the $1,500-$2,000/kilowatt price the Nuclear
Energy Institute said in 2005 was necessary to make nuclear power
economically competitive. In October 2007, Moody's Investor Service
estimated that new reactors will cost far more than the nuclear utilities
have estimated. Indeed, Moody's estimates that new U.S. reactors will cost
from $5,000 to $6,000 per kilowatt. If Moody's is correct, a 1,600 MW
reactor such as that proposed by Constellation for the Calvert Cliffs,
Maryland site would cost from $8 to nearly $10 billion. Risking taxpayer
funds on a project with such dubious cost-effectiveness would be
unwise-especially years before the funds could actually be used. A full
Congressional examination of nuclear construction costs should be undertaken
before large amounts of taxpayer funds are risked.

The Energy Department's Office of Inspector General warned in September that
even $9 billion in loan guarantees proposed by the Department for FY 2008
"will result in significant risk to the American taxpayer."  What would $25
billion mean to the American taxpayer, especially given the skyrocketing
cost estimates for new nuclear reactors?

Not only is the nuclear industry not ready to use loan guarantees, it is far
from clear that the Department of Energy is yet capable of managing such an
enormous program. By way of comparison, the U.S. Export-Import Bank-staffed
with recognized experts in banking and lending--reported guaranteeing 736
loans valued at $8.2 billion in FY 2006. The Department of Energy does not
have a similar expertise.

We urge you to accept this summer's decision of the House Appropriations
Subcommittee on Energy and Water, which determined that no loan guarantee
funding should go for nuclear power projects in FY 2008. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------

This is the NIRS E-Mail Alert list. You are on this list because you signed
up on our website, at a NIRS table at a concert, on a petition, or directly
to NIRS. Your name and address are never sold, rented, or traded with anyone
for any reason.

For address changes or to unsubscribe, just send an e-mail to
nirsnet at nirs.org. If you have friends or colleagues who would like to be on
this list, have them send a note to nirsnet at nirs.org

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mail.energyjustice.net/pipermail/nukenet_energyjustice.net/attachments/20071210/35c7bb47/attachment.html 