Stop taxpayer loan for new nuclear reactors

[Coyotl]

http://www.credomobilize.com/petitions/stop-taxpayer-loan-for-new-nuclear-reactors

To: President Obama, Energy Secretary Moniz
Stop taxpayer loan for new nuclear reactors
17,718 of 20,000 signatures

The Department of Energy’s proposed taxpayer loan for the Vogtle nuclear plant would put more than $8 billion in taxpayer money at risk and increase our dependence on dangerous and expensive nuclear power. Please reject this loan completely and permanently now.

Why is this important?

A proposed $8.3 Billion taxpayer loan for construction of Georgia's Vogtle nuclear reactors is teetering on the edge: this is the time to tip it over entirely.

The loan was announced, with great fanfare, by President Obama in February 2010, as part of his stated "all of the above" energy strategy. It came from the Department of Energy's $18.5 Billion loan guarantee fund and was supposed to herald the "nuclear renaissance." Today, fully 3 1/2 years later, the loan has still not been granted.

Why? Because Southern Company, the lead utility in the Vogtle project, wants a sweetheart deal that would not only give it well below-market interest rates, but also put all of the risk on taxpayers rather than themselves. Indeed, Southern Company officials have said at least five times that they don't even need the loan--they're already using ratepayers as their private bank under Georgia's "early cost recovery" law. If that were true, then why should taxpayers be involved at all? But Southern's other partners, which own about 40% of the project, do need the federal loan.

The White House's Office of Management and Budget, which along with the Department of Energy must approve the loan, has balked at the riskiness of the proposed loan and the final deadline for loan approval has been extended several times over
the years. The next deadline is coming up on September 30, 2013.

Vogtle received its construction license in February 2012. It is already nearly two years behind schedule and somewhere between $700 million and $1.6 billion over budget, depending on who's counting. Given the history of large nuclear construction projects in the U.S. and abroad, more delay and cost overruns can be expected. The first two Vogtle reactors actually finished at more than 1200% over budget.

Since President Obama's February 2010 loan announcement, the nuclear "renaissance" has collapsed. During 2013 alone, six proposed new reactors were dropped for various reasons, five operating reactors announced permanent shutdowns, and utilities gave up on power uprates for five more reactors. The nuclear "renaissance" now consists of two reactors at Summer in South Carolina, a Tennessee Valley Authority reactor that began construction more than 30 years ago, and Vogtle. The marketplace has spoken and nuclear power has lost. Not only is natural gas a current competitor, but costs of clean renewables like solar and wind have plummeted and are viable alternatives, while energy efficiency programs are keeping new demand far lower than projected when the Vogtle project was first announced.

This is the time to tell President Obama and Energy Secretary Moniz to finally give up on this fiasco--before taxpayer money is put at risk. No extension, no loan. Act now. Your voice matters.