In the aftermath of 9/11, there has been much worry about the vulnerability of our nation’s nuclear power plants to terrorist attack. The Indian Point plant, near New York City, is within 50 miles of eight percent of the entire population of the U.S. A terrorist attack there could be catastrophic, and the plans for both dealing with and preventing a disaster are not up to snuff. The evacuation plan for Indian Plant won’t protect the public from “unacceptable doses of radiation,” according to a report by James Lee Witt Associates commissioned by New York State at the request of a long list of local officials and watchdog groups. (Witt is a former director of the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency). Indeed, at nearly half the nuclear points evaluated for security by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), mock attackers have been able to enter without a problem and simulate the destruction of enough safety equipment to cause a radioactive meltdown, and this even though the reactor operators were given about a six-month advance notice of the day of the test, according to a May 2003 article in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
If none of this seems comforting, consider that the Senate, instead of concentrating on the nuclear safety issue, is busy voting huge new subsidies so the industry can build more plants. Energy legislation pending in the Senate (an energy bill has already been approved by the House) includes a federal loan guarantee program for the nuclear industry, one that will make taxpayers liable for up to half the cost of constructing new nuclear reactors. The Congressional Budget Office concluded that the risk of default on these loans is “well above 50 percent,” and the Congressional Research Service estimates that taxpayer liability for the plants would be as much as $16 billion—and this to an industry that is already getting nearly $2 billion over the next four years in tax breaks and direct subsidies.
Yet on June 10 the Senate voted 50 to 48 to retain the new loan guarantee subsidies. The senators who voted to keep the subsidies received an average of nearly $59,500 apiece from nuclear PACs and executives over a six-year period (1997-2002), while senators who voted against the subsidies received an average of $26,400. Overall, the nuclear industry has contributed $57.7 million to federal campaigns since 1989, 62 percent to Republicans, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. Several Bush “Pioneers,” who pledged to raise at least $100,000 for the Bush 2000 campaign, have connections to the nuclear industry: Erle A. Nye, Chair & CEO of Texas Utilities, which contributed $1.2 million in the 2002 elections, 75 percent to the GOP; and Anthony J. Alexander, president of FirstEnergy Corp, the source of $1.1 million in contributions, 72 percent to Republicans.
These new subsidies for nuclear plants have their roots in the National Energy Policy (NEP) developed by Vice President Dick Cheney, soon after the Bush Administration took office, long before 9/11. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham met with 10 nuclear energy officials in the months before the task force released its report. It included recommendations made by the main trade group for the industry, the Nuclear Energy Institute, including some based on suggestions on the group’s web page, according to an Energy Department official.
A window into how this bucks-for-policy-paybacks system works is a revealing quote by British Nuclear Fuels Ltd., which has contributed more than $300,000 to federal candidates and parties since 1999, 69 percent to Republicans. When the news of the company’s contributions came out in Britain, there was a firestorm of criticism. But the company defended itself by telling The Independent that campaign contributions were “"part of the way business is done in the United States. It's a sort of lobbying. . . . Every competitor in the United States is doing this.”
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