Greenpeace & Musician's United for Safe Energy Oppose Nuclear Industry Loan Guarantees

From Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Graham Nash and Harvey Wasserman
Co-Founders, Musicians United for Safe Energy (MUSE)

AN URGENT CALL TO STOP THE $50 BILLION NUKE POWER GIVE-AWAY

As early as this Friday, Congress may approve legislation allowing the Department of Energy to approve $50 billion and more in federal loan guarantees to build new nuclear power plants.

We ask that you write your US Representative to make sure this does not happen.

The nuclear industry itself has made it clear that this astonishing taxpayer give-away is the only way new atomic reactors will be built in this country. After fifty years of proven failure, neither Wall Street nor the utility industry wants to finance new atomic construction without your taxpayer dollars to guarantee their investments. You might think that after half a century, technology once sold on the promise of being "too cheap to meter" would be able to raise its own funding. But it can't.

By contrast, no federal guarantees are needed for the billions of dollars being invested in building new wind farms all over the world. Now the reactor industry falsely claims that it can help solve the global warming problem, even though all reactors emit huge quantities of excess heat directly into the air and water.

They also cause major CO2 emissions in the mining, milling and enriching of nuclear fuel, in the reactor construction and decommissioning process, and in the long-term management of spent radioactive fuel, for which there is no real solution.

A single dollar spent on increased efficiency saves as much energy as ten dollars spent on nuclear power can produce.

But under this phony "green" guise, the industry wants to exploit a single-sentence loophole in the Energy Bill passed by the U.S. Senate to cash in on virtually limitless federal loan guarantees. The sentence was slipped into the law without open debate. It does not appear in the House energy bill.

It is essential that we stop this gargantuan nuclear rip-off from happening. This is just the first major battle in what will be a long, hard fight to stop atomic energy from once again derailing the necessary transition to a global economy based on the efficient, equitable use of natural energies provided by our Mother Earth.

Thanks and No Nukes!

Bonnie, Jackson, Graham & Harvey

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Dear Representative,

On Monday, the New York Times reported that nuclear industry lobbyists successfully inserted a provision into the Senate energy bill that opens the door to tens of billions of dollars in new taxpayer subsidies through loan guarantees to the nuclear industry.

Nuclear power is an expensive and dangerous diversion from solutions to climate change and should not be further subsidized in any energy bill. As a Greenpeace supporter and concerned constituent, I am calling on you to support energy efficiency and renewable energy like solar and wind, not new nuclear plants.

Moving the United States towards a more sustainable, clean, and home grown energy future is crucial if we are to meet our growing energy needs while doing our part to avoid catastrophic global warming.

However, throwing tens of billions of dollars at the nuclear industry for a new generation of nuclear power plants is fiscally irresponsible and distracts from real solutions like efficiency and renewable energy. I'm asking you to block this reckless provision that even the Congressional Budget Office recognizes as ill conceived.

"Sincerely," and your name and contact information will be added to the end of the letter.

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Greenpeace & Musician's United for Safe Energy Oppose Nuclear Industry Loan Guarantees

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