A coalition of environmental and citizens’ watchdog groups urged the Senate Finance Committee to drop millions of dollars in subsidies for nuclear energy from the budget reconciliation bill containing President Joe Biden’s signature domestic spending programs, according to a letter mailed this week.
The roughly $35 billion in nuclear production tax credits proposed in the Build Back Better Act is “particularly wasteful and counterproductive” and “undermines the purpose” of the spending bill, the anti-nuclear groups headlined by the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) told Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and the Senate Finance Committee in a letter dated Tuesday.
“There is nothing transformative about giving yet another federal subsidy to the same nuclear power plants that have benefited from decades of direct and indirect public subsidies,” the letter said.
The anti-nukers pointed out that the feds have already provided roughly $6 billion in nuclear power subsidies into law as part of the Joe Biden administration’s bipartisan infrastructure bill, which the president signed in November. That cash is set to be auctioned off by the Department of Energy, which has said it might take until after new year’s to work out the details of that process.
With Congress facing a logjam to pass a fresh appropriations package to keep federal agencies open after Dec. 3 and an annual military policy bill, media have reported that it might be January, at the earliest, before lawmakers turn their attention to the Build Back Better act, which two key Senate Democrats still oppose.
