Press Room

In Alvarez’s opinion, the state of Vermont “should be prepared for the real possibility that spent nuclear fuel will remain on-site and require careful and expensive management for decades to come, whether or not VY [Vermont Yankee nuclear plant] keeps operating.”

However, Alvarez said, part of the problem in the relationship between the NRC [Nuclear Regulatory Commission] and nuclear industry is that operating license requirements, intended to ensure safe operating conditions, have changed in favor of the operators.

“If you can’t meet the rule, you move the goal post,” Alvarez said . . . “The NRC basically adopted the economic motivations of the entities it regulates.” 

"A former U.S. Department of Energy official told Vermont lawmakers Thursday that nuclear plants like Vermont Yankee pose big risks in their handling of nuclear waste — both financial and radiological.

"The testimony of Robert Alvarez, a senior scholar at the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies, comes as some lawmakers are urging that Vermont consider a new tax on the highly radioactive nuclear waste being stored at the Vermont Yankee plant in Vernon. Alvarez said Minnesota levies such a tax.

"Alvarez, a former senior policy adviser at the federal Department of Energy, told the House Natural Resources and Energy Committee that Vermont Yankee has generated more than 600 metric tons of high-level radioactive waste during its 41 years of operation. He urged that it be moved more quickly from the plant’s spent fuel storage pool to dry concrete and steel casks on the plant’s grounds, where he said it would be safer."

"The support for more equal wealth distribution 'should surprise no one,' said Sam Pizzigati, an Associate Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and Editor of Too Much, an online weekly on excess and inequality.

"'Previous research has shown clearly that Americans, given the choice, opt for the much more equitable distribution of wealth in Sweden over the top-heavy distribution we have today in the United States,' he continued.

"'And keep in mind that no Americans have ever voted for greater inequality,' he said.

"Of course, policies are not framed to the public as filling the pockets of a select few. 'The rule changes over the past three decades that have so tilted our nation's treasure toward the richest of our rich have all been cloaked as moves that would enrich all Americans, not a special wealthy few,' Pizzigati noted."

“From what we’ve heard from those inside the room, the climate finance mobilizer’s meeting convened by the US State department appeared to be more of a technical dog and pony show about how US agencies and organizations are engaging the private sector,” Janet Redman, from the DC based think tank the Institute for Policy Studies told RTCC.

“Any discussion of innovative sources of new public finance, like a financial transaction tax, was sidelined – in spite of demonstrators outside calling for a Financial Transaction Tax and the Norwegian Minister of International Development, Heikki Holmås, joining the rally calling for new public money.”