Tell President Obama and Secretary Chu: Stop taxpayer loans for Georgia reactors!

[bananas]

http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/5502/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=9662

Tell President Obama and Secretary Chu: Stop taxpayer loans for Georgia reactors!

June 11, 2012

This is big. The $8.3 Billion taxpayer loan for construction of two new reactors at the Vogtle site in Georgia, the centerpiece of the Obama Administration's support for the "nuclear renaissance," may be blocked--by the Obama Administration. You can help make this happen.

The Department of Energy last week extended the deadline for completion of the loan package until the end of 2012--an indication this loan is in serious trouble. WE CAN STOP THIS LOAN AND END THE ENTIRE NUCLEAR LOAN PROGRAM! ACT BELOW!

More background:

According to an article from the industry publication Platt's, the nuclear industry is growing increasingly worried that the White House's Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which also must approve the loan, will not give its final approval. That's because the nuclear industry wants a sweetheart deal--one where Southern Company has to put up virtually none of its own money and where all financial risk is laid squarely on the shoulder of taxpayers.

But both OMB and DOE have come under scathing criticism, especially from Congressional Republicans, over the failure of the Solyndra solar company loan granted by the Administration. And the proposed Vogtle loan would be 15 times larger (and far riskier) than the one given to Solyndra.

Thus, the Administration is being much more cautious over the Vogtle loan than it would have been when first agreed to more than two years ago. And the more public scrutiny the Administration receives--and the more letters we send--the more likely that caution will lead to a cancellation of this loan. Our actions now matter--a lot. It may not be too much to say that the strength of our actions now could determine the fate of new nuclear power in the U.S.

Tell President Obama and Secretary Chu below to stop these loans now.

As usual, you can edit the sample letter to reflect your own concerns. Support from our international friends is very welcome. Please help us organize and mobilize by using the icons on the top right. You too can be an organizer; it's easy. By telling your friends and colleagues about this action page, and posting it on your Facebook/Twitter or other social network pages, you are helping expand our reach and making a real difference.

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[kristopher]

1. I think the OMB is might be underestimating the risks

Last edited Thu Jul 12, 2012, 02:58 PM - Edit history (1)

I wonder if the OMB is taking the fact that we are steadily shifting away from centralized thermal generation into account? The type of rule-making by regulators in the first article below is steadily building a new marketplace where the advantages of renewables are able to be realized.

Big News for Renewable Energy: FERC Rules for Wind, Solar, Storage

Like a Jedi responding to changing events by striving to bring balance to the Force, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission under Chairman Jon Wellinghoff has been rapidly reshaping the formerly sclerotic electricity sector to make it responsive to new technologies.

Some of the sector’s fossil fuel-centric rules left a high barrier to entry for so-called variable resources: energy like wind and solar that are only created when the wind blows or the sun shines, unlike, say, a gas or nuclear power plant that generates electricity around the clock.

A year ago, Wellinghoff told me: “[North American Electric Reliability Corporation] projects in its 2010 Long-Term Reliability Assessment that approximately 60 percent of all new resources expected to be added to the bulk power system by 2019 will be new wind and solar resources."

The FERC aims to remove regulatory barriers to ensure that all of these resources can get access the grid and play a competitive role in the energy markets.

To that end, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission passed ...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericagies/2012/06/29/ferc-moves-to-ease-wind-solar-energy-storage-onto-the-grid/?ss=strategies-solutions


The result is that the risk of the project failing is heightened by the shifting generation mix that we are required to pursue in order to address climate change.

The "market design" being referenced below refers to centralized thermal and the economics built around the way coal and nuclear plants need to be operated in order for them to be most profitable. The article is a description of how the rule-making designed to make the operating characteristics of renewable energy profitable is moving us through the first and most critical stage of putting fossil fuel generation out of business. It is a snapshot in time of the new "market design" centered around distributed renewables taking form.

If you are serious about climate change, this is what you've been waiting to see happen.

Renewables Make German Power Market Design Defunct, Utility Says
By Rachel Morison, Bloomberg
June 26, 2012

LONDON -- Electricity generation from renewable energy in Germany is reducing power prices and has left the country with a market whose design no longer works, according to Stadtwerke Leipzig GmbH.

Renewable generation, such as wind and solar, receives support from the German government in the form of a feed-in tariff, or FIT. Because there are no costs associated with the wind and sunshine, renewables have a generating margin of zero, as well as legally mandated priority access to the grid. As a result, fossil fuel-fired plants are generating for fewer hours and selling their power at cheaper prices, making them less profitable.

“As long as renewables have zero margin costs, the market design we have doesn’t work,” Jens Teresniak, team manager for business development and market analysis at Stadtwerke Leipzig, said in an interview in Leipzig on June 21. “Capacity markets could be a solution.”

So-called capacity markets allow utilities to fix prices for guaranteed backup power supply in advance, boosting margins for gas and coal electricity plants as renewables output rises. German policy makers are considering how to ensure there are enough round-the-clock plants to keep the lights on when nuclear reactors are phased out and renewables output falls short.

Merit Order

Increasing supply of renewable energy is one of the main reasons electricity prices in Germany have declined, Teresniak said....

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2012/06/renewables-make-german-power-market-design-defunct-utility-says?cmpid=SolarNL-Thursday-June28-2012

Originally posted here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/112718851

[NNadir]

2. I'm going to tell the Democratic President and a Nobel Laureate cabinet member to

stop doing the right thing because of the fear, ignorance and superstition of a dogmatic blogger?

You know what cabinet level Nobel Laureate <em>built</em> the American nuclear infrastructure?

That would be Glenn Seaborg.

Nobel prize winning chemist Glenn T. Seaborg ranked among the most prolific authors in scientific history. With some 50 books, 500 scientific journal articles, hundreds of published speeches and a lifelong daily journal, a massive volume of written material written by Seaborg is available. Seaborg frequently collaborated with other scientists, co-authors and staff members to achieve the productivity for which he was so well-known. Although most of his writing was in the field of nuclear chemistry, history of science, science education and public science policy, he has also collaborated on works in sports and collegiate history.

Glenn Seaborg

But look on the bright side. Even if the planet is a little tired of having the anti-nuke cults all sit around and hope that someone, anyone, dies so as to validate their Fukushima fetish, they do have some wonderful accomplishments to point to.

Within this year or next, the concentration of dangerous fossil fuel waste in the planetary atmosphere will reach 400 ppm.

And surely, when we start adding in the dead from heat waves, we're sure to exceed the death toll caused by 3.3 million people killed each year by air pollution, not there is ONE anti-nuke who would even think to question the President of the United States, and his Nobel Laureate Secretary of Energy about that matter.

What the President and Secretary are doing to support the world's largest, by far, source of climate change gas free energy is something, but it's not enough. It's too little, to late. We should have listened to Dr. Seaborg when their was still time, but unfortunately our sad, sick culture decided to listen to paranoid little uneducated brats, the Harvey Wasserman types.

As a result, the planetary atmosphere is collapsing.

Heckuva job anti-nukes, you must be very proud.

[RobertEarl]

3. Why are you hassling us?

Go to your banker and tell him to finance nukes.

Or he will just look at you like you are crazy?