The agreement, made in conference committee, axed a proposal from Sen. Bennett (R-UT) to include $50 billion in pork barrel federal loan guarantees for the nuclear industry. The Congressional Budget Office stated earlier this year that the industry would likely default on more than half the loans, leaving taxpayers and ratepayers to foot the bill.

Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps was at the forefront of the campaign to eliminate the nuclear subsidy. After the win he said: "This is a big victory for common sense and the American taxpayer. This toxic nuclear pork had no place in a bill designed to put Americans back to work and salvage our economy. Our legislators are to be applauded for getting their priorities right and saying no to yet another blatant attempt to prop up an industry that has never stood on its own financial feet.

"The nuclear industry has received an estimated $500 billion dollars in public subsidies over the past half century," Kamps added. "This monumental waste of money had to end. The nuclear energy industry cannot solve the climate crisis and fattening the nuclear calf has deprived real energy solutions like renewable energy and energy efficiency programs of essential support for decades."

The Canadian pork barrel efforts in the Canadian stimulus package have seen similar recommendations.  The nuclear energy industry in Canada has only received $20 Billion in the past 5 decades.  What is different in the recent Harper budget is that the efforts to support the green energy production have been either cut or never were there.  The other parties in Parliament have not seen reason to support the same renewable energy production as has happened in the United States.  With the clear majority in the house, one must question what is their rationale?  Do they not support reducing GHG emission and stop climate change?  Do they want to support the western tar sands even though it is the dirtiest energy source on the planet, save nuclear?

Instead, the stimulus package is also putting $1 Billion into research over five years for the development and demonstration of promising technologies incuding carbon capture and storage projects.  This is intent to clean up the dirty tar sands developments in Alberta.  They are also giving Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. $351 million for its continued operations, including the development of the Advance CANDU Reactor and to maintain safe and reliable operations at the Chalk River Laboratories. 

Without the $50 Billion going into the United States, what are the prospects for nuclear energy?  Nuclear reactors across the globe are being shut down or not built.  The users of radioisotopes for nuclear medicine are looking for non-nuclear sources and are finding them.  The costs of keeping those reactors now alive are going up each year.  And this still hasn't tackled the growing nuclear waste storage problem.  They haven't even found a promising viable option to solve that problem yet.

They call nuclear energy clean and will create a more sustainable environment.  But it is clearly seen that nuclear energy produces significant amounts of carbon dioxide and other GHG emissions in the mining, milling, reprocessing and use of the uranium.  The ongoing radioactive leaks in reactors around the world and at Chalk River are continuing.  If the need for electricity is valid, some would question that scenario, then the replacement of coal-fired plants needs to be done.  But, this is not a walk in the park for nuclear energy.  Others have produced credible workable strategies to replace the electricity without nuclear energy and without coal.  Will this be the last final throws of desperation in the death of nuclear energy?  Will Canadians shut down the tar sands?

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