Sen Bernie Sanders: It's Time to Stop the Nuclear Energy Program!

The US is facing a $15 trillion national debt, and there is no shortage of opinions about how to move toward deficit reduction in the federal budget. One topic you will not hear discussed very often on Capitol Hill is the idea of ending one of the oldest American welfare programs, the extraordinary amount of corporate welfare going to the nuclear energy industry. Many in Congress talk of getting "big government off the back of private industry". Here's an industry we'd like to get off the backs of taxpayers. As,respectively, a senator who is the longest-serving independent in Congress and the president of an independent and non-partisan budget watchdog organization, we do not necessarily agree on everything when it comes to energy and budget policy in the US. But one thing we strongly agree on is the need to end wasteful subsidies that prop up the nuclear industry. After 60 years, this industry should not require continued and massive corporate welfare. It is time for the nuclear power industry to stand on its own two feet. Nuclear welfare started with research and development. According to the non-partisan Congressional Research Service, since 1948 the federal government has spent more than $96bn in 2011 dollars on nuclear energy research and development. That is more than four times the amount spent on solar,wind, geothermal, biomass, bio-fuels, and hydro-power combined . But federal R&D was not enough. The industry also wanted federal liability insurance too, which it got back in 1957 with the Price-Anderson Act. This federal liability insurance program for nuclear plants was meant to be temporary, but Congress repeatedly extended it, most recently through 2025.