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The Advanced Hydrogen Reactor Co-generation Project: A Clean Energy Travesty

Hydrogen fuel offers the potential for abundant, affordable, clean and safe energy, but its promise is thwarted if tied to hazardous nuclear power. Yet, the current draft of the energy bill (both the House version, H.R. 6, and the Senate version, S. 2095) provides open-ended funding to the Department of Energy (DOE) to construct a nuclear reactor that generates both hydrogen and electricity at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, in partnership with private industry and international facilities. The bill authorizes spending over $1.1 billion on this project: $500 million on reactor construction, plus $635 million for research, development, and design activities over the next five years and “such sums as are needed” beyond 2008.

Oppose the Advanced Hydrogen Reactor Co-generation Project!

• The Senate wisely defeated a similar proposal in 1995 (Bumpers amendment 2055 to H.R. 1905 to cancel the Gas Turbine-Modular Helium Reactor program) and should do so again.
  
  
• This pork-barrel project stretches the boundaries of legitimate federal research and development by making taxpayers liable for the construction and potential operation of a reactor.  If this type of exploratory project is viable, the mature nuclear industry ought to be able to finance it without government handouts.
  
  
• Significant safety and security concerns remain about the proposed gas-cooled reactor designs, which have never successfully been implemented in the U.S.  The only commercially-operating gas-cooled reactor at Fort. St. Vain, Colo. was a dismal and expensive failure and was eventually closed due to low efficiency in 1989.
  
  
• The sale of electricity from this DOE-subsidized project would inappropriately distort commercial electricity markets.
  
  
• Paves the way for a hydrogen economy based on nuclear power, making a mockery of its clean energy goals.

Policy Recommendations

1. Cancel the Advanced Hydrogen Reactor Co-generation Project.
2. Invest in conservation, efficiency and renewable energy, rather than continuing to waste money subsidizing the mature nuclear industry.
3. Focus on reducing vulnerabilities at existing nuclear sites instead of creating new ones.

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