$17 billion for unsafe, dirty energy? Tell your Mayor and City Council to pull the plug on nuclear energy!

Recent revelations leave no doubt that top officials at the City of San Antonio's electric utility, City Public Services, deliberately misled the public and the city council about the true cost of nuclear power.

For months, Clean Water Action and our allies have issued warnings that the $13 billion price tag for the two new nuclear reactors proposed for the South Texas Nuclear Project was two low. CPS has now admitted that this figure is $4 billion too low!

CPS needs a thorough housecleaning, and the mayor and city council need to get serious about promoting energy efficiency and renewable energy instead of expensive and polluting nuclear power. CPS Board Chairwoman Aurora Geis has now heeded Mayor Castor's call and resigned from the board of CPS. Trustee Stephen Hennigan should do the same.

What's wrong with nuclear power?

• Cost: Nuclear reactors are extremely expensive and typically suffer from cost overruns and construction delays. The last time reactors were built in South Texas, they ran 8 years late and cost 6 times more than the projected budget. CPS wants to purchase more nuclear energy than San Antonio needs and sell the excess energy to neighboring cities. Yet these cities are also considering ramping up investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy, so there is no guarantee that San Antonio would be able to find buyers for this excess power. This is especially true now that it is clear that this power will cost far more than CPS was telling us. This would be a huge financial risk for San Antonio ratepayers.

• Waste: Nuclear power produces high-level radioactive waste that remains dangerous to all living things for tens of thousands of years. There is still no plan to safely and permanently contain the waste after 60 years of trying to find one.

• Water: Nuclear plants, like coal plants, use huge amounts of water--a resource in Texas that we cannot afford to waste. The lawsuit filed by CPS against the Lower Colorado River Authority asserts that one of the reasons that the LCRA backed out its plan to bring Colorado River water to San Antonio is so it could provide water to new power plants planned along the Colorado River.

There are cheaper, safer, more flexible ways for San Antonio to get its electric power. By investing in clean sources of energy like solar, wind, geothermal, and the cheapest energy resource, energy efficiency, San Antonio can gain more control over its energy future and spend more of its energy dollars locally rather than rely on massive and unnecessary mega-projects of CPS Energy.

What you can do

Send an e-mail to Mayor Castro and the city council and tell them you don't want any additional nuclear power as part of San Antonio's energy mix!