Press Room

Robert Alvarez, a senior scholar for the Institute for Policy Studies and a former Department of Energy senior adviser, is highly critical of the disposal plan, suggesting the department is “moving the goalposts” to justify burying the waste in Nevada rather than a more expensive disposal strategy.

“This, in my mind, creates a very terrible precedent because if this administration is concerned about control of loose nukes as it says it is, it shouldn’t be setting such an exceptionally bad example, disposing of essentially weapons-usable material in a landfill with a promise it will be 40-feet deep and don’t worry nobody will find it, we will have plenty of guards,” Alvarez said.

“Nicholas Stern puts a significant emphasis on getting the price of carbon right, and clearly bank officials do understand this,” Janet Redman, director of the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network at the Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington think tank, told IPS.

“Yet, there’s a sense that the poorest of the poor still need dirty fuels to facilitate energy access. In fact, there’s been a lot of work, including by the bank, showing that burning fossil fuels not only doesn’t increase energy access for the poorest of the poor, but actually increases poverty.”