Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Banks Comments on Nuclear Power Funding

The following shows that the nuclear power industry can not survive financially on it's own:

July 2, 2007
Mr. Howard G. Borgstrom
Director, Business Operations Center
Office of the Chief Financial Officer
U.S. Department of Energy
Mailstop CF-60, Room 4A-221
1000 Independence Avenue, S.W.
Washington, DC 20585

RE: Comments in response to Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Loan Guarantees for
Projects that Employ Innovative Technologies (RIN 1901-AB21), 72 Federal Register
27471 (May 16, 2007)

Dear Mr. Borgstrom:
Last March, five major U.S. banking institutions (Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, and Morgan Stanley) provided Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman a consensus summary of the major structural elements necessary to implement the Title XVII loan guarantee program authorized by the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Since then we have met with officials at the Department of Energy, the Department of the Treasury and the Office of Management and Budget to discuss our views, and we are pleased to share our comments on the above-referenced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR or Proposed Rule).

The six financial institutions below are convinced that loan guarantees are an important tool, along with supportive state government policies, to enable the financing in the credit markets of new nuclear power plants in the United States. We are concerned that the Proposed Rule is not workable, and are providing our perspective in the hope that it will assist the Department of Energy in developing final regulations to implement this essential program. We regard the attached comments as a set of minimum conditions necessary to secure project financing from lenders and from investors in the fixed income markets.

Mr. Howard G. Borgstrom
U.S. Department of Energy
Reference RIN 1901-AB21

Page 2

We remain committed to working with the Department of Energy in structuring a workable financing instrument to support construction of new nuclear power plants in the United States, while protecting the U.S. taxpayer.

Respectfully submitted,

Mini Roy, Managing Director
Export and Agency Finance Group
Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Joseph Sauvage
Managing Director
Lehman Brothers Inc.

Steven Greenwald, Managing Director
Jonathan Baliff, Managing Director
Alex Kroner, Director
Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC

Sylvia K. Barnes, Managing Director
Christopher Fink, Managing Director
Merrill Lynch & Co.

H. John Gilbertson Jr.
Managing Director
Goldman, Sachs & Co.

Ray Spitzley
Managing Director
Global Power and Utilities Group
Morgan Stanley & Co Incorporated

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