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<div style="padding: 15px;"><a
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color="#ffffff" face="Verdana" size="5"><strong>Nuclear Information
and Resource Service</strong></font></a></div>
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<p style="text-align: center;"><b><span
style="font-size: larger;">MURKOWSKI, OTHER PRO-NUKE AMENDMENTS
DEFEATED IN SENATE COMMITTEE</span></b></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><b><span
style="font-size: larger;">REVISED CLEAN ENERGY BANK APPROVED IN HOUSE
COMMITTEE</span></b></p>
<p>May 21, 2009</p>
<p>Dear Friends,</p>
<p><b>Thank you to each of the thousands of you who
have written and called your elected officials over the past couple of
weeks. You are making a difference!</b></p>
<p>Both the Senate Energy Committee, which is
considering S. 949, the Senate energy bill, and the House Energy
Committee, which is considering the Waxman-Markey climate change bill,
are continuing to meet and mark up their respective legislation.</p>
<p>But we thought we'd give you a quick update on how
things are going.</p>
<p><b>First, the good news: </b>The Senate Energy
Committee (very narrowly!) rejected Sen. Lisa Murkowski's (R-AK)
amendment to support new nuclear reactors and radioactive waste
reprocessing plants, and to provide bribes to local communities to
accept "interim" storage of radioactive waste. The vote was 11-11, and
Committee Chair Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) ruled it defeated. All Republicans
on the committee plus Sen. Landrieu (D-LA) voted for the Murkowski
amendment. All other Democrats except Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) (who
voted present) voted against the amendment.</p>
<p>The committee also voted down pro-reprocessing,
pro-waste amendments from Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Jeff Sessions
(R-AL), also by very narrow margins.</p>
<p>We can expect to see some or all of these
amendments again when the bill reaches the Senate floor.</p>
<p><b>Now, the less-good, but still not necessarily
bad news:</b> the House Energy Committee voted 51-6 in support of a
compromise clean energy bank amendment offered by Reps. John Dingell
(D-MI), Jay Inslee (D-WA) and Bart Gordon (D-TN). While the "clean
energy" bank remains self-defeating in that it continues to allow
support for dirty nuclear power and coal technologies, many of the
excesses in earlier versions of the legislation were addressed.</p>
<p>For example, the version passed by the House
Energy Committee does <b>NOT</b> allow unlimited loan guarantees to
any technology. Instead, the amount of loan guarantees available would
follow the current process, which requires annual Congressional
authorization and appropriations. No single technology could receive
more than 30% of the bank's overall funding. And priority is supposed
to be given to those technologies that can provide the greatest
greenhouse gas emission reductions within a reasonable period of time
per dollar invested as well as the earliest reductions in greenhouse
emissions.</p>
<p>All of these are improvements from the clean
energy bank included in the Senate energy bill, which continues to have
unlimited loan guarantees, does not limit the amount a single
technology could receive, and does not provide any priority in terms
of efficiency or speed of reducing carbon emissions. We will soon post
on NIRS website a more complete comparison of the two clean energy bank
approaches.</p>
<p>Amendments to the Waxman-Markey climate bill are
continuing in the House Energy Committee (the Republicans had prepared
450 amendments--most of which they know will be defeated and some of
which are downright silly)--in an effort to delay the bill's passage
out of the Committee. We will let you know if any significant
amendments that affect nuclear issues are adopted.</p>
<p>It is likely that, as in the Senate, pro-nuclear
amendments will be offered when the bill reaches the House floor. We
will all need to be prepared to act accordingly.</p>
<p>We will keep you posted on developments as they
occur; let you know when the bills are ready for consideration on the
Senate and House floors; and when you can effectively take more action
to stop taxpayer support for nuclear power and to promote clean, safe,
and cost-effective renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies.
In the meantime, it is always helpful to keep your elected officials
aware of your positions, and to keep organizing and reaching out to
everyone around you. If you know people who want to be kept informed,
please encourage them to join our e-mail Alert list by sending their
name, city and state to <a href="mailto:nirsnet@nirs.org">nirsnet@nirs.org</a>.</p>
<p>And if you haven't yet signed the simple statement
on nuclear power and climate, please do so on the front page of our
website: <a
href="http://org2.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=NGdzb81rDbKg3YAz2Q0sMazKRju7N6rH">www.nirs.org</a>.</p>
<p>Thanks for all you do,</p>
<p>Michael Mariotte</p>
<p>Executive Director</p>
<p>Nuclear Information and Resource Service</p>
<p><a href="mailto:nirsnet@nirs.org">nirsnet@nirs.org</a></p>
<p><a
href="http://org2.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=7jxsdL0MMFgqTC%2FAplsm%2F8wTilyuWmoI">www.nirs.org</a></p>
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