Senate panel approves US nuclear plant incentives
Date: 14-Apr-03
Country: USA
Author: Chris Baltimore
The nuclear provision would provide government-backed financing to build six new nuclear power plants to produce up to 8,400 megawatts of electricity, roughly enough to power eight million U.S. homes.
The exact amount of the loan guarantees was not specified in the bill. However, the loan guarantees would cover half the cost of each new plant, which some lawmakers peg at roughly $10 billion each.
The Senate committee plans to finish writing its energy bill by the end of the month. A House version of an energy bill, which contains billions of dollars in tax incentives for oil and gas drilling, was scheduled for a vote by the full House late on Thursday.
Senate Democrats Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico and Ron Wyden of Oregon offered an amendment to strip the loan guarantee incentives from the bill. It failed by a 10-13 vote.
Democrats criticized the financial guarantees as a giveaway to an industry that is already well-established.
"Nuclear power is a mature technology today," Bingaman said. "I can't see a justification for the taxpayer picking up such a substantial portion of these costs."
Republican Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico, the panel's chairman, said the financing was needed to get new nuclear plants built. "This committee is no longer frightened to death with the notion of nuclear power," he said.
NO NEW NUKES SINCE 1979
No new U.S. nuclear plants have been built since the 1979 accident at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island plant, which had a partial meltdown of the reactor core.
Advocacy group Public Citizen criticized the incentives. "Throwing more tax dollars at nuclear power will not make it safer, cleaner or more economical," a spokeswoman said.
The Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry lobbying group, said the loan guarantees would help nuclear power remain a big part of the nation's energy portfolio.
Nuclear plants generate 20 percent of U.S. electricity.
Another nuclear provision approved by the Senate panel would indefinitely extend liability insurance that indemnifies the nation's 103 operating plants against claims exceeding $9.3 billion in the event of a serious accident.
Bingaman, the panel's senior Democrat, said he will seek to to block another measure that would set aside $1 billion to build a next-generation nuclear plant at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory. The plant would also produce hydrogen gas - the fuel source selected for the Bush administration's $1.3 billion hydrogen car program.
The proposed plant, sited in the home state of Republican panel member Larry Craig, is an "industry-scale production reactor which the government would be building and owning," Bingaman said. The panel adjourned before a vote was cast.
Separately, Domenici stripped the Bush administration's climate change proposal from the bill.
Domenici said he wants the full Senate to debate the issue because no consensus exists in the committee.
The Bush administration and many Republicans favor a voluntary approach encouraging industrial companies to cut emissions linked to global warming. Democrats, including presidential hopefuls such as Sens. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and John Kerry of Massachusetts, prefer setting strict limits to reduce carbon dioxide.