Media turns to expertise of Public Citizen's Tyson Slocum when it comes to nuclear power
Since the first reports of the nuclear crisis at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi facility, Public Citizen’s energy program director, Tyson Slocum, has been very busy. Slocum has had television appearances on everything from Fox Business to CBS Sunday Morning News.
CNN‘s Christine Romans’, host of “Your Bottom Line,” interviewed Tyson Slocum for a special edition on nuclear power. In the interview, Slocum pointed out that not only is nuclear dangerous, it is also expensive:
. . . the problem that Public Citizen has with putting all of our chips with nuclear power is that it is so darn expensive. You know, these new plants cost at least $10 billion, and they can’t be built unless taxpayers put up enormous subsidies and those subsidies that are directed to new nuclear power plants are crowding out subsidies available to competing technologies, like wind and solar and investments in energy efficiency that simply do not feature the kinds of massive risks that nuclear power does.
Slocum was interviewed by CBS this Sunday for a special report entitled, “Can America trust on nuclear power?“:
What Japan has done is it’s very rudely reminded us that nuclear power’s not safe, it’s not clean, that it is not risk-free . . .
Tyson Slocum took the lead in pointing out the limited liability parallels between BP oil and nuclear power. PBS Nightly Business Report, correspondent David Gersh’s interviewed him with the lead in:
The experience in Japan is reigniting a debate in the United States over liability for nuclear accidents. First passed in the 1950s, the Price Anderson Act now caps the U.S. nuclear industry`s financial risk at $12.6 billion in damages. Energy activist Tyson Slocum says U.S. taxpayers are on the hook for anything above that.
Click above to watch Tyson Slocum on PBS On Fox Business Report, Slocum maintained composure, even while taking hits regarding riding his bicycle to work. An informative and entertaining debate ensued. Tyson told Fox,
The nuclear industry in the US is proposing a record number of subsidies to build new reactors and if taxpayers are going to financing this I think we ought to have some better assurances . . . There are a lot of other competing sources that don’t feature the unique safety risks of nuclear.
Tyson Slocum concluded,
Watch Slocum debate nuclear and renewables by clicking above “All Public Citizen is saying is we don’t think we have exhausted our options on renewables yet and I think we ought to.”
Today, Tyson Slocum issued a statement calling on President Obama to reject Duke Energy’s $10 million dollar loan for the Democratic Convention. Read his statement.