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Is Obama’s call for “clean” energy in fact a push for nuclear power?

Obama’s Gulf oil catastrophe Oval Office call for “clean energy” tacit push for taxpayer-backed atomic power expansion, Beyond Nuclear, 18 June 2010, ?Although President Barack Obama did not say the words “nuclear power” in his first ever Oval Office address to the nation on June 15th, his call for an accelerated “transition to clean energy” in response to the worst environmental catastrophe in U.S. history — the worsening oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico — represents a tacit push for the expansion of atomic energy.

Such a nuclear relapse would only take place by transferring the financial risks and even direct costs (not to mention the radiological risks) squarely on the backs of taxpayers. Obama’s speech only adds to concerns this his choice of pro-nuclear co-chairs to head his oil catastrophe investigative panel could serve as a cynical pretext for advancing the dirty, dangerous, and expensive atomic reactors and associated facilities.

Obama said “Last year, the House of Representatives acted on these principles by passing a strong and comprehensive energy and climate bill –- a bill that finally makes clean energy the profitable kind of energy for America’s businesses.” But he failed to mention that the Waxman-Markey “American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009” (ACES, H.R. 2454) legislation would carve out as much as 30% of federal “Clean Energy Deployment Administration” (CEDA) funding and support — loan guarantees, outright loans, and other subsidies — for new atomic reactors and other nuclear facilities such as uranium enrichment plants.

Obama also failed to mention that the Kerry-Lieberman “American Power Act” in the Senate — more of a dirty energy subsidy bill, including, ironically, support for expanded offshore oil drilling — contains a long list of taxpayer giveaways to the nuclear power industry, as revealed in analyses by the Natural Resources Defense Council and Physicians for Social Responsibility. The Kerry-Lieberman bill would include the $36 billion expansion of the nuclear loan guarantee program funding requested from Congress by Energy Secretary Chu for the Fiscal Year 2011 budget. The Obama administration is attempting to rush $9 billion of this expansion onto this year’s Fiscal 2010 budget by attaching a rider onto the emergency supplemental war funding and disaster relief bill currently before the U.S. House Appropriations Committee.

Also not mentioned in Obama’s speech was the Bingaman energy bill, passed by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last summer. Its version of CEDA is significantly worse than the House version, allowing for unlimited loan guarantees for nuclear power, without congressional oversight — granting the Department of Energy veritable blank check writing authority for the nuclear relapse. Beyond Nuclear – Home – Obama’s Gulf oil catastrophe Oval Office call for “clean en

June 18, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear costs, nuclear secrecy, nuclear spin, nuclear wastes, nuclear weapons, radioactive, reactors, uranium