Energy Law Speeds Up Nuclear Proliferation, Stifles Competition from Renewable Energy, and Threatens National Security
Energy bill signed into law this week speeds up nuclear proliferation, increases dangers from nuclear wastes and dirty bomb makers, assures continued dependence on Middle East oil dictators and threatens U.S. naitonal and Homeland security
(PRWEB) August 9, 2005 -- “Dangers from nuclear proliferation extend
far beyond missiles and warheads. Cheap dirty bombs can be made with little more
than a private aircraft or a helium filled balloon and radioactive wastes from
nuclear power plants.
Radioactive dirty bombs can disable entire cities
transforming them into Chernobyl-like ghost towns for centuries and rendering
their suburbs into toxic wastelands.” said author, engineer and scientist, Roy
McAlister, Co-President of Cleanpeace.org and a world authority on energy.
The Energy Policy Act signed into law this week commits $13 billion to
expand construction of new nuclear power plants including equipment to produce
hydrogen from them. It provides economic support and regulatory relief for their
construction as well as operating subsidies. It also accelerates nuclear
research and development. The Act virtually ignores the dangers of nuclear waste
proliferation.
McAlister continued, “Radioactive wastes can come from a
safe reactor or an unsafe design like Chernobyl. All that's needed to make a
Chernobyl scale ghost town is a way to disburse radioactive wastes on a targeted
city. Already dangerous radioactive wastes are missing from U.S. nuclear
reactors.”
The huge taxpayer subsidies and unfair policy advantages
heaped on depletable coal, oil, gas and radioactive nuclear fuels under the new
Energy Act severely hobble competition from safe, abundant, undepletable energy
resources assuring the nuclear industry clear competition-free access to fill
the rapidly growing oil gap with nuclear hydrogen as oil and other fuels
deplete.
“The new Energy Policy Act is the Administration's domestic
anti-competitive equivalent of the OPEC cartel and a plethora of unfair trade
practices wrapped-up in one radioactive, oil soaked package. said Bill Garrett,
Co-President of Cleanpeace.
Garrett Continued “If government funding and
policy advantages were equally distributed between depletable fuels and
undepletable fuels, the nuclear industry would be obsolete and abundant, clean,
undepletable fuels could compete on price with depletable gas, coal and oil in
transportation, utility and agricultural markets via hydrogen produced from
undepletable solar, wind, wave and biomass energy.”
“The Energy Laws
stacks the deck against abundant, undepletable, energy and that stacks the deck
against America.” said Garrett.
Radioactive spent fuel rods have been
missing or misplaced from at least 3 nuclear power plants in recent years: the
Millstone I nuclear reactor in Waterford, CT, the Vermont Yankee reactor in
Vernon, VT and the Humboldt Bay Power reactor near Eureka, CA. Missing rods and
other radioactive wastes could come into the hands of
terrorists.
Expansion of U S nuclear power and radioactive waste
production at a time when the U.S. and our allies are engaged in negotiations to
persuade Iran and North Korea to limit their nuclear energy activities, is a
slap in the face to good faith bargaining. It provides a propaganda gift to
these two nations and threatens to undermine the success of these stalled talks
further jeopardizing U.S. national security.
“The new Energy Act also
subsidizes more rapid depletion of dwindling U.S. oil resources. Subsidized
production means faster depletion and a dangerous increase in dependence on
Middle East oil, the dictators who control it, and the radical terrorists who
influence them.” said McAlister.
Oil dependent democracies like the U.S.,
Canada, and the EU nations have the most at stake. Their demand for oil
continues increasing exponentially and their oil extraction rates and reserves
continue declining more rapidly than the much larger reserves of the Persian
Gulf nations and the OPEC cartel.
The new Energy Act all but guarantees
America's continued, dangerous dependence on Middle East oil. The U.S. holds
between 2 and 3% of world oil reserves, the Persian Gulf nations hold 50% and
the Middle East dominated OPEC cartel controls 61%. Middle East dictators have
oil staying power; the U. S. and Western democracies do not. This dependence and
its potential to interrupt U. S. oil supplies endangers our national
security
The U S now imports 60% of its oil requirements and becomes more
reliant on Middle East supplies each day as it consumes another 21 million
barrels of oil.
“Earth collects more energy from the sun in one day than
all the fossil oil that ever existed. Nature provides vast amounts of this solar
energy including wind, wave action, falling water, and biomass. These resources
can be harnessed with adaptations of safe conventional technology.” said
McAlister, noting that virtually all forms of solar energy can be used to
produce hydrogen and fuel America's existing utility, industrial, transportation
and agricultural engines without pollution.
McAlister said, “The Energy
Policy Act amounts to little more than a multi-billion dollar giveaway to giant
depletable fossil and radioactive energy corporations. It puts taxpayer money in
the wrong place, at the wrong time, for the wrong reasons. It continues
short-changing abundant, domestic solar resources and it fails to equalize
subsidies and policy advantages between depletable energy and clean undepletable
energy.”
“The President sent an energy message to America's friends and
foes that the United States has surrendered its energy future to those who hold
the oil and provided inadequate untimely and dangerous alternatives to fill the
rapidly widening oil gap. He should have issued a Declaration of Energy
Independence and set an undepletable energy policy to back it up.” said
Garrett.
For more information visit www.cleanpeace.org
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Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/8/prweb271057.htm