November 9, 2000

The White House
Attn: Under-Secretary Frank Loy

1600 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Under-Secretary Loy:

The international negotiations in The Hague, Netherlands are the final opportunity for the Clinton Administration to leave a legacy that will address the threat of global warming. In the treaty's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), the Clinton Administration is insisting on the inclusion of emissions credits for nuclear power. Instead, the Clinton administration should be promoting a truly clean energy future by leveling the playing field for renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies. There should be no place in the Kyoto Protocol for nuclear power, which failed in the twentieth century because of safety, environmental and cost concerns. Nuclear power must be specifically excluded from the CDM of the Kyoto agreement and given no credits. The same goes for so-called “clean coal” technologies.

Working through the United States, Japanese and French delegations, the nuclear industry is trying to create massive international subsidies for building new nuclear power reactors in countries like China, India and Vietnam. Western nuclear companies, like General Electric, unable to get contracts at home due to safety, environmental and cost concerns, would be attempting to dump their unwanted and failing technology on developing countries.

Subsidizing nuclear power violates the spirit and the letter of the Kyoto Protocol. Allowing nuclear energy to receive pollution trading credits through the CDM would in effect reduce the cost of nuclear reactor construction, thereby giving nuclear power another huge, undeserved subsidy, while keeping money from proven investments like energy efficiency. Every dollar invested in energy efficiency is up to seven times more effective in CO₂ emissions reduction than that same dollar invested in nuclear power. According to American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, energy efficiency alone could account for 60 percent of the emissions reduction necessary in the U.S. to meet the Kyoto protocol.

The United States is opposing the development of a positive list of environmentally sound projects by arguing that each country should determine for itself what qualifies as sustainable technologies. This negotiating tactic gives the appearance of flexibility, but the actual intention is obvious: to allow countries like China and India to label nuclear power as sustainable development and to qualify for tradable credits under the climate treaty. We urge you to reconsider this tactic and support the idea of a positive list that does not include nuclear power.

While every energy technology has some environmental ramification, nuclear power is particularly non-sustainable for the following reasons:

· Each nuclear plant can cost one to several billion dollars in lifetime costs. For nuclear power to make a substantial reduction in CO₂ emissions, commercial reactors would not only have to supply much of the world's electricity growth but also replace many coal-fired plants as they are retired. This would require the construction of approximately 2,000 nuclear power plants (1,000 megawatts each) in the next several decades. The total cost penalty of using nuclear power would amount to several trillion dollars.

· Further investment in nuclear power would keep funds away from renewable energy development. This trade-off is exactly what has happened in the U.S. over the past 50 years. The nuclear power industry has received 96.3 percent of $150 billion in U.S. government subsidies since 1947 according to the Renewable Energy Policy Project; that's $145 billion for nuclear reactors and only $5 billion for wind and solar.

· Many more reactors would result in the creation of thousands of metric tons of spent fuel, in addition to existing wastes. At the present time, there is no viable policy for the management of spent fuel, which will remain dangerous for many thousands of years.

· Once separated by reprocessing, the plutonium in spent fuel can be used to make nuclear weapons. If nuclear power was used as a means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the inventories of plutonium would rise dramatically. Each current 1000-megawatt commercial reactor produces 40 bombs worth of plutonium a year.

· Nuclear reactors threaten our health. As a matter of normal operation, reactors release radioactive substances to the air and water. Many human population studies demonstrate that additional, low, constant levels of radiation can cause cancer and genetic mutations in present and future generations. Subjects of these studies, often nuclear facility workers and reactor host communities, suffer higher rates of diseases than non-nuclear communities, even with responsible operation of these facilities.

· With nuclear power there is the very real potential for serious accidents, as we have seen from Three Mile Island in the U.S., Chernobyl in the Ukraine and, most recently, the 1999 criticality event at the Tokaimura uranium processing plant in Japan that released radiation estimated at about 4,000 times the level considered safe for a person to receive in a year. These accidents resulted in human illness and premature death and have damaged the local economy.

It is disturbing that at a time when new, cleaner energy technologies should be encouraged to enter the global energy marketplace, the nuclear power industry continues to seek incentives to spread this doomed technology throughout the world. Possibly more disturbing is the Clinton Administration’s support of the industry’s argument.

Nuclear power is not sustainable and is not the solution to global climate change; energy efficiency and renewable energy are. Any further subsidy to the nuclear industry will thwart cleaner and more sustainable technologies and ultimately hurt our efforts to address global climate change. The Clinton Administration must advocate that nuclear power should be specifically excluded from the CDM of the Kyoto agreement and given no credits.

The Clinton Administration has the potential to complete a meaningful international global warming treaty that would stand as an international foreign policy legacy for generations. In the waning days of the Clinton Administration, we urge you to shift the U.S. negotiating position to ensure completing a treaty that will not breathe new life into the nuclear industry.

Sincerely,

Kyle Rabin

Nuclear Energy Policy Project Director

Environmental Advocates

Albany, New York 12210

(518) 462-5526