Radioactive "Moral Hazard": DOE loans, and guarantees, $6.5 billion for two new reactors for a 0%, $0.00 credit subsidy fee!

Aerial image of Plant Vogtle Nuclear Generating Station - photo credit to High Flyer. The photo shows the operating Units 1 and 2, as well as the construction site for proposed new Units 3 and 4.Southern Alliance for Clean Energy reports in a press release entitled "New Documents Confirm Utility Giant Southern Company Gets Sweetheart Deal from Energy Department for Multi-Billion Nuclear Loan Guarantees for Vogtle Reactors":

"As revealed today in an Energy & Environment News story by Hannah Northey, the credit subsidy fee for utility giant Southern Company and its utility partner, Oglethorpe Power, for billions of dollars in taxpayer-backed federal loan guarantees, is nothing, $0. This shocking information was disclosed two months after the Department of Energy (DOE) finalized terms of $6.5 billion worth of loan guarantees that were offered as part of an $8.3 billion package to build two new nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle in Georgia. A third partner in the project, MEAG, has yet to have their $1.8 billion loan guarantee finalized."

Please register your disapproval of this nuclear sweetheart deal, at taxpayer expense and risk, to President Obama, your two U.S. Senators, and your U.S. Representative! You can be patched through to your Members of Congress via the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121.

In the form of the risks stemming from the high-level radioactive wastes that would be generated, those "moral hazards" would extend forevermore into the future.

As if the Obama administration's $8.3 billion boost -- at taxpayer expense and risk -- to Vogtle 3 & 4 weren't bad enough, George W. Bush's DOE committed the U.S. taxpayer to ultimate liability for Vogtle 3 & 4's high-level radioactive wastes in his last day's in office, signing contracts with the nuclear utility just a day or two after Barack Obama won the presidential election, but before he took the oath of office.

More.

"Another Look at the Deep Geologic Repository Plan"

Stop the Great Lakes Nuclear Dump's spokesperson Beverly Fernandez testifies against OPG's DGRAs reported at the Stop the Great Lakes Nuclear Dump website, on April 17th, Beverly Fernandez was interviewed by Agenda producer Hilary Clark about "Another Look at the Deep Geologic Repository Plan." Fernandez is a spokesperson for Stop the Great Lakes Nuclear Dump's efforts in opposition to Ontario Power Generation's proposal to bury so-called "low" and intermediate level radioactive wastes less than a mile from the Great Lakes -- drinking water supply for 40 million people in 8 U.S. states and 2 Canadian provinces.

The Agenda web link above also links to another of its reports from back in the autumn of 2013, after the Canadian federal Joint Review Panel wrapped up their first hearings on the DGR proposal. The Agenda hosted a discussion between Larry Kraemer, Mayor of Kincardine and strong advocate for the project, and Brennain Lloyd of Northwatch, an opponent of the proposal. Kraemer claims it was he who approached OPG with the initial idea for the DGR, in 2001. Kincardine and other area municipalities, largely populated by Bruce Nuclear workers, have been and will continue to recieve a million dollars per year from OPG for their support of the DGR proposal.

Resolutions to stop the Great Lakes nuclear dump spreading!

This map from Stop the Great Lakes Nuclear Waste Dump shows the growing number of resolutions, representing many millions of Americans and Canadians, opposing Ontario Power Generation's proposed radioactive waste dump targeted at the Lake Huron shoreline.

Please get your community, county, and/or state to pass a similar resolution. Use the ones that have already passed as a model.

Update on April 10, 2014 by admin

Speaking on "Derailing the Lake Huron Nuclear Dump: Sustainable Stewardship Is the Alternative," Dr. Gordon Edwards, President of Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (photo, left), will be hosted on Sunday, April 13th in Detroit by the Alliance to Halt Fermi 3, Citizens for Alternatives to Chemical Contamination, and the Swords Into Plowshares Gallery and Peace Center. See the event flier here.

Dr. Edwards will then speak in Port Huron, MI on Monday April 14, from 7-9:00 p.m., in Room 201 of the Clara E. Mackenzie Building at St. Clair County Community College, 323 Erie St.

Finally, Dr. Edwards will speak on Tuesday, April 15, 7 PM, Room L-141, Life Science, Monroe County Community College, 1555 S. Raisinville Road, Monroe, MI 48161.

Is Rick Perry Cheerleading for a Nuclear Trans-Texas Corridor?

As reported by Forrest Wilder at the Texas Observer.

Did short cuts on safety testing waste barrels contribute to WIPP's radioactivity leak?

As reported by the Albuquerque Journal, short cuts on safety to save money -- doing away with headgas space between a waste barrel's contents and its lid -- is a potential explanation for the Feb. 14th radioactivity release at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico, although this has yet to be determined. The concern is that inappropriate gases pent up in a waste barrel may have breached a lid, releasing radioactivity that then escaped up WIPP's ventilation system to blow downwind and fallout. WIPP's been closed since.

Environmental watchdogs and the State of New Mexico resisted the regulatory rollbacks at the time. The rollbacks were pushed by U.S. Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM), perhaps the single most pro-nuclear Member of Congress of the past generation.

An investigative team set to descend into WIPP's depths to try to get to the bottom of the radioactivity release has been postponed, due to the delayed arrival of needed radiation monitors. The workers will have to take elaborate precautions against radioactive exposures while underground, due to the ultra-hazardous nature of transuranics. A single speck of plutonium in the human lung can initiate cancer over time.