nuclear-news

Tax-payers giving a blank check to the U.S. nuclear industry?

“With hundreds of billions in bailouts already on the shoulders of US taxpayers, the country cannot afford to move forward with a program that could easily become the black hole for hundreds of billions more,” …The Senate energy bill approved by the Energy and Natural Resources Committee last June would create a Clean Energy Deployment Administration (CEDA) within the DOE that could distribute a virtually unlimited number of loan guarantees without any congressional oversight.

Obama’s Nuclear Giveaway, Buried in the budget is a plan to underwrite the nuclear industry’s revival.

Mother Jones 4 Feb 2010  By Kate Sheppard

“… the Obama administration’s 2011 budget proposes tripling the loan guarantee program—from the $18.5 billion that Congress has already approved to $54.5 billion. The program’s expansion is just one of several signs that the Obama administration is throwing its muscle behind the nuclear industry’s push for a massive expansion.

“We are aggressively pursuing nuclear energy,” said Energy Secretary Steven Chu on Monday when he rolled out the department’s budget proposal. Several days earlier, Chu had unveiled a blue-ribbon panel to assess nuclear waste disposal, seen as one of the most significant barriers to a nuclear revival. And in his State of the Union address Obama argued that creating new clean energy jobs “means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country.”……But as Mother Jones has reported, there will be no nuclear renaissance unless the US taxpayer covers the tab. While the country’s 104 nuclear power plants currently produce nearly 20 percent of American electricity, growth has flatlined in the past three decades.. projected construction costs for new plants have soared, with a single reactor now estimated to cost as much as $12 billion. In fact, the outlook for nuclear plants looks so dire that even Wall Street banks have balked at financing them unless the government underwrites the deal.

Of course, that means the government would also assume almost all the risk. The chances of default on the government-backed loans are “very high—well above 50 percent,” according to the Congressional Budget Office. “If they go belly-up, taxpayers get to pay it,” said Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste specialist at Beyond Nuclear. “With hundreds of billions in bailouts already on the shoulders of US taxpayers, the country cannot afford to move forward with a program that could easily become the black hole for hundreds of billions more,” wrote the heads of the National Taxpayers Union, Taxpayers for Common Sense, the George C. Marshall Institute, and the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center in a letter to the administration [PDF] this week….

And the leading contenders for government backing are all mired in controversy. The San Antonio plant is in jeopardy thanks to its soaring price tag (NRG has said it won’t go ahead without a government-backed loan). Plans for plants near Augusta, Georgia, and Columbia, South Carolina, are on hold after federal regulators discovered major safety concerns in the design proposal for the reactors. A proposal for a plant in Calvert Cliffs, Maryland, would use a design from French nuclear power company Areva that nuclear regulators in France, Finland, and the United Kingdom have said has “a significant and fundamental nuclear safety problem”……

The Senate energy bill approved by the Energy and Natural Resources Committee last June would create a Clean Energy Deployment Administration (CEDA) within the DOE that could distribute a virtually unlimited number of loan guarantees without any congressional oversight. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.), who is working with Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) on a climate and energy package, has made additional subsidies for nuclear a centerpiece of his efforts. This week The Hill obtained a draft of the three senators’ legsilation. It calls for $100 billion in loan guarantees, with $38 billion of that sum designated for nuclear projects….

February 5, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear costs, nuclear secrecy, nuclear spin