Groups: Foreign Companies, Workers are Big Early Winners Under Federal Loan Guarantees for Nuclear Reactors

Comment:  Demand our leaders to stop giving taxpayer's monies away to any companies but we really do not want any form of Nuke Plants paid for by taxpayers and we will fight to stop our taxpayer's monies going to France or Japan Nukes!  No to Nukes!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 1, 2010

Groups: Foreign Companies, Workers are Big Early Winners Under Federal Loan Guarantees for Nuclear Reactors

WASHINGTON, D.C. — July 1, 2010 — The notion that taxpayer-backed loan guarantees for more nuclear power means energy independence in the United States is a hoax that could cost unwary U.S. taxpayers tens of billions of dollars while richly benefiting profitable foreign corporations and non-U.S. workers, according to a new report from the nonprofit Nuclear Information & Resource Service (NIRS).

Titled Nuclear Power: Implications of Loan Guarantees for Reactors With Foreign Control and Foreign Jobs, the NIRS report notes that:

•Two of the next three reactors in line for taxpayer-backed loan guarantee bailouts — Calvert Cliffs Unit 3 in Maryland and South Texas Project Units 3 and 4 in Texas — have substantial foreign ownership involving French and Japanese companies.
•One of the two already awarded taxpayer-backed nuclear loan guarantees — for a uranium enrichment facility in Idaho — is a project of the French company AREVA.

•All 18 currently pending reactor projects in the U.S. feature reactors that are designed by French and Japanese companies. Nearly all of the immediate employment benefits of the loan guarantees will flow to non-U.S. workers, since virtually all major reactor components are made outside of the United States by foreign companies.
Additionally, of $18.5 billion currently authorized for nuclear loan guarantees, the Department of Energy (DOE) has given out $8.3 billion, leaving $10.2 billion, which DOE says is only enough for one project.

The Obama administration has stuck $9 billion in additional loan guarantee authority in the House version of the war supplemental, which the House may vote on by the end of this week. This means the bill to fund U.S. war efforts may be used to subsidize foreign-controlled nuclear reactor projects and related overseas employment.

Michael Mariotte, executive director, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, said: "Nuclear power is U.S.-made power only in the same way that a shirt made in China is 'American' because you buy it at a Wal-Mart in this country.

The bailout of the nuclear industry with taxpayer-backed financing of loan guarantees is in no way a triumph for U.S. energy independence.

Instead, it is a huge publicly backed corporate welfare arrangement for foreign-owned companies and non-U.S. workers.

The non-U.S. companies that stand to be the biggest beneficiaries of taxpayer-backed loan guarantees are both massive in size and profitable.

If American taxpayers were upset about bailing out U.S. banks and car companies, they should be furious about being put at risk in order to fatten the bottom line of overseas nuclear companies."


A CLOSER LOOK AT THE NEXT LOAN GUARANTEE CANDIDATES

In February 2010, President Obama announced that the first federal loan guarantees for new nuclear reactors would be offered to the Vogtle Units 3 and 4 that the Southern Company is planning to build in Georgia. The company announced on June 18, 2010, that it had reached agreement with the Department of Energy on the secret terms of the guarantees. The Vogtle units are slated to use reactors supplied by Westinghouse Electric, a subsidiary of Japan's Toshiba Corp.

In May 2010, the Energy Department announced a $2 billion loan guarantee for a uranium enrichment facility in Idaho proposed by the French company AREVA.

DOE has not formally announced which other reactor projects might be granted loan guarantees, but the signs are that they would be the following:

•UniStar Nuclear's Calvert Cliffs project;
•Nuclear Innovation North America's South Texas project; and
•SCANA Corporation's Virgil C. Summer project.

The operators of both Calvert Cliffs and South Texas include substantially foreign-controlled ownership, while the operator of the V.C. Summer project is a U.S. company. Calvert Cliffs is slated to use a reactor supplied by France's AREVA, South Texas will be supplied by Japan's Toshiba, and V.C. Summer will be supplied by the Westinghouse Electric unit of Toshiba.

For the full text of the NIRS report, go to http://www.nirs.org/
Read more:
http://www.nirs.org/press/07-01-2010/2