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Oh dear! Obama – Nuclear Power is not CLEAN!

Ironically, Obama’s “handing out money” from hardworking American taxpayers to the filthy rich nuclear power industry, in the form of current and impending U.S. taxpayer-backed loan guarantee offers, would benefit foreign firms and governments……..Numerous anti-nuclear groups responded immediately to Obama’s “Nukespeak,” including Friends of the Earth, Chicago-based Nuclear Energy Information Service (NEIS), Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), and the Sierra Club of Connecticut’s Anti-Nuclear Committee.

Obama calls nuclear power “clean energy” in State of the Union, Beyond Nuclear, 27 Jan 2011, “……..Obama equated nuclear power to being as “clean” as renewables like wind and solar, despite the “routine” and “accidental” radioactive and toxic releases (as well as greenhouse gas emissions) at each and every step of the uranium fuel chain, from mining to milling, processing, conversion, enrichment, fuel fabrication, reactor operations, decommissioning, and radioactive waste storage and disposal.

Obama said “clean energy,” including nuclear power, represents “investment that will strengthen our security, protect our planet, and create countless new jobs for our people.” To the contrary, more nuclear power facilities would: create yet more “dirty bombs in our backyard” vulnerable to terrorist attack; worsen nuclear weapons proliferation risks; be the most expensive, and slowest, way of all to address the accelerating climate crisis, and the least cost-effective way to put Americans back to work.

Ironically, Obama’s “handing out money” from hardworking American taxpayers to the filthy rich nuclear power industry, in the form of current and impending U.S. taxpayer-backed loan guarantee offers, would benefit foreign firms and governments: $8.3 billion to build two new Toshiba-Westinghouse (a Japanese firm) AP1000 reactors at Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia; $2 billion to build the Areva (French government owned) “Eagle Rock [Uranium] Enrichment Facility” in Idaho; $7.5 billion to build an Areva “Evolutionary Power Reactor” at Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant in Maryland, a project currently 100% owned by the French government’s Electricite de France; and yet-to-be-announced billions for two new Japanese-designed Hitachi-GE “Advanced Boiling Water Reactors” at South Texas Project nuclear power plant, a venture co-owned by Japan’s Toshiba and nuclear utility Tokyo Electric Power Company.

Obama urged that “instead of subsidizing yesterday’s energy, let’s invest in tomorrow’s,” without mentioning that nuclear power is now 54 years old, and has gobbled up the lion’s share of federal subsidies for energy research and development that entire time, as well as numerous other forms of taxpayer and ratepayer subsidy (not to mention shareholder loss!). Despite all this disproportionate public support, nuclear power currently provides only 11% of our country’s primary energy — tied with renewables, which have received so much less support over the past half century. Despite this, Obama called for expanding taxpayer subsidies for nuclear power R&D, explicitly praising such projects at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Numerous anti-nuclear groups responded immediately to Obama’s “Nukespeak,” including Friends of the Earth, Chicago-based Nuclear Energy Information Service (NEIS), Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), and the Sierra Club of Connecticut’s Anti-Nuclear Committee.

Beyond Nuclear – Nuclear Costs What’s New – Obama calls nuclear power “clean energy” in State of the Union

January 27, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA