The Senate's 'Drill Drill Drill' Bill Hides Nuke Power Mega-Theft

[tannybogus]

The McCain/Palin push for endless oil drilling is being used as a smokescreen to gouge a half-trillion or more taxpayer dollars in subsidies and loan guarantees to build new atomic reactors. The mega-theft could be approved by the US Senate this week. Green activists throughout the nation are calling their Senators, as should you.

The atomic power industry can't get private financing to build new reactors. So while Wall Street plummets into catastrophe, it is using the "drill drill drill" mantra to hide this latest raid on the depleted federal treasury.

The new Senate bill authorizes the oil industry to drill for oil virtually anywhere it wants, without meaningful environmental restraint. The enormous profits would stay in the hands of the petro-barons.

Hidden in the bill is a limitless blank check for loan guarantees to build new reactors. A year ago the industry tried to slip $50 billion in guarantees into a bill sponsored by Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM), nuke power's chief Congressional pusher. A national grassroots campaign, sparked in part by NukeFree.org and other national green groups, helped beat the bill. Not a single major environmental organization supported the reactor industry.

Now desperate reactor builders have upped the ante, demanding a wide range of financial give-aways and regulatory favors to jump-start a technology defined by fifty years of proven failure. The centerpiece is a loan guarantee plan to stick taxpayers with 100% of the liability for failed reactor construction projects. The GOP McCain/Palin ticket wants at least 45 new reactors for the US, with a price tag that could easily exceed $500 billion, all of which would be guaranteed by this bill.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/09/18-2

Always up to something.