Nuclear costs spell the dying of this industry?

Nuclear power’s new debate: cost

Issues of safety and waste make way for a focus on funding.

By Mark Clayton |  Staff Writer for The Christian Science Monitor/ August 13, 2009

“…………a new wave of concern is rising – not over traditional anxieties such as radioactive waste or weapons proliferation – but about the mammoth financial cost of nuclear power and who will bear it.

The big hurdle for Calvert Cliffs III and at least 21 other nuclear power reactors now in the US development pipeline is all about money – finding the billions in loans to build them. And the key to getting those loans is winning federal guarantees to back them.

Today, the US has 104 nuclear reactors, providing about 20 percent of the nation’s power. No new nuclear plants have been ordered in the US since 1978. This is not because of protestors, but because of a lack of investor funding and Wall Street remembering the ghosts of nuclear power’s past – massive construction cost overruns, utility defaults, and bankruptcies. Yet these no longer seem to haunt the nuclear industry or its supporters.

……………….“Despite industry efforts to frame nuclear energy as the cheapest option, the reality is that nuclear power’s very survival has required large and continuous government support,” writes Doug Koplow, president of the Boston energy consulting company Earth Track, in a recent analysis of public subsidies for nuclear power. Mr. Koplow tracks $178 billion in public subsidies for nuclear energy for the period from 1947 to 1999. Others have reached similar figures.

ALTOGETHER, NUCLEAR-INDUSTRY BAILOUTS in the 1970s and ’80s cost taxpayers and ratepayers in excess of $300 billion in 2006 dollars, according to three independent studies cited in a new nuclear-cost study by the Union of Concerned Scientists.

New guarantees in coming years could also leave US taxpayers picking up the tab if nuclear utilities defaulted on their loans. In 2008, the Government Accountability Office said the average risk of default on Department of Energy guarantees was about 50 percent. The Congressional Budget Office projected that default rates would be very high – well above 50 percent.”

On that basis, the potential risk exposure to US taxpayers from federally guaranteed nuclear loans would be $360 billion to $1.6 trillion, depending on the number of power reactors built, the Union of Concerned Scientists’ study found.

http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2009/08/13/nuclear-power%E2%80%99s-new-debate-cost/

August 14, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, USA | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear costs