VLS Expert to Testify on Federal Loan Guarantees for Nuclear Plants
March 22, 2010
SOUTH ROYALTON, VT -- Mark Cooper, senior fellow for economic analysis at Vermont Law School's Institute for Energy and the Environment, will testify Tuesday, March 23, before a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee on the economic advisability of increasing federal loan guarantees for the construction of nuclear power plants.
Cooper plans to tell the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform's Domestic Policy Subcommittee that current cost projections make power from nuclear reactors extremely expensive and that those costs are likely to escalate, not decline, if these reactors are ever built.
"As a lifelong consumer advocate, I believe that the fundamental economics of nuclear
power should determine whether a new generation of reactors is constructed in the United States," Cooper said. "Nuclear reactors are uneconomic and unneeded, which is why Wall Street considers them a ‘bet the farm' decision and will not put up the funds to finance them. It would be a mistake for policy makers in Washington, D.C., to force taxpayers to do what the capital markets will not, a mistake that could not only cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars, but could impose trillions in excessive costs for electricity on ratepayers."
Cooper can be reached directly at: 301-384-2204 .
Download Mark Cooper's StatementDownload Mark Cooper's Full Testimony
CONTACT: John Cramer, Associate Director of Media Relations
802-831-1106 , jcramer@vermontlaw.edu
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