City Public Services (the City of San Antonio's electric utility) and New Jersey based NRG are currently seeking investors for two new nuclear reactors they hope to build at the South Texas Project site in Bay City, Texas. They are also seeking commitments from communities like yours to purchase the power these reactors would generate.

Recent revelations leave no doubt that top officials at the City Public Services deliberately misled the public and the San Antonio City Council about the true cost of nuclear power. Clean Water Action and our allies have issued warnings for several months now that the $13 billion price tag for the nuclear reactors proposed for South Texas was too low.

CPS has now admitted that this figure is $4 billion too low! Top staff
at CPS and chair of its Board have now resigned in disgrace.

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 communities like yours. We now know that this energy would be far more expensive than CPS has been telling us.

• 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 use huge amounts of water, more than any other technology currently employed in Texas. With our population growth and recurrent drought, water is not a resource that we afford to waste.

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

Please e-mail your mayor and electricity provider!