Bonnie Raitt News

The titian-haired songstress joined fellow rocker-activists Jackson Browne and Graham Nash in Washington, D.C., Tuesday to dissuade Congress from approving as much as $50 billion in federal loan guarantees for nuclear power plants.

The trio behind the No Nukes concert series in 1979 spoke out in a news conference on Capitol Hill to protest what they're calling a "virtual blank check from taxpayers," which is part of a larger energy bill currently making its way through the legislature.

"We're trying to encourage our lawmakers to know that the American people are paying attention," Browne said.

Raitt, Browne and Nash took with them an online petition containing 120,000 signatures and supported by the likes of R.E.M., Ben Harper, Maroon 5, Pearl Jam, Patti Smith, Wynton Marsalis and numerous environmental groups that disagree with the idea of equating nuclear power with clean energy.

Harper and blues singer Keb' Mo' have also recorded a YouTube music video in support of the petition that's available for viewing on the Website nukefree.org.

"The consequences of blowing up a field of wind generators would not be the same as blowing up a train full of nuclear waste," Browne, citing the risk of terrorism as another factor in the fight to steer clear of bomb-friendly material, told USA Today.

"I thought it was a rotting corpse of an industry," he said, expressing surprise at the industry's resurgence.

Instead, as the hunt for alternative power and fuel sources heats up, last month the Nuclear Regulatory Commission accepted its first application to build a nuclear power plant since the partial meltdown in Middletown, Pennsylvania, known as the Three Mile Island accident, in 1979. Three or four more requests to build reactors could be filed by year's end, as well, according to an industry group spokesman.

It was Three Mile Island, considered the worst civilian nuclear accident in history until Chernobyl seven years later, that inspired Browne, Raitt and Nash to organize the No Nukes concert series at Madison Square Garden and found the awareness group Musicians United for Safe Energy along with Orleans guitarist John Hall.

Crosby, Stills and Nash, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, James Taylor, Carly Simon, the Doobie Brothers and Tom Petty were among the artists who performed in the five-show series. A companion album and film, No Nukes, documented their efforts.

On Monday night, Raitt, Browne and Nash were joined onstage by Hall, who's now a Democratic congressman from New York, during a private concert on Capitol Hill for members of the House and Senate who might consider X-ing the loan guarantee from the energy bill.

"If it's such a great business, why doesn't business do it?" Nash said in an interview with the New York Times. "Why do they have to make the public pay?"

Meanwhile, advocates of the bill, which as a whole is intended to cut greenhouse gas emissions, are defending the loan provision, saying it won't cost taxpayers and will include other energy manufacturers besides nuclear power.

"We have proven that we are safe. We are competitive on the grid and we'll let the marketplace dictate if nuclear power plants are built going forward," J. Scott Peterson, VP of the nonpartisan Nuclear Energy Institute, told the Times.

The institute says that 104 reactors in 31 states provide one-fifth of the country's electricity without the use of carbon fuels, materials that are high on Al Gore & Friends' list of environmental no-no's.

Raitt said Tuesday that she and her fellow concerned rock stars haven't ruled out staging another series of musical events to rally for the cause.