nuclear-news

Under cover of the word “clean” US nuclear gets $36 billion

“We don’t think nuclear loan guarantees are a very good bet,” given the industry’s history of cost overruns, said Robert Cowin, a Washington representative for the Union of Concerned Scientists based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “The $36 billion the president has proposed is excessive.”

Obama Would Triple Guarantees for Nuclear Reactors, Bloomberg, By Simon Lomax and Jim Snyder – Feb 15, 2011 President Barack Obama’s 2012 budget almost triples U.S. loan guarantees for nuclear power-plant construction, funds development of a new breed of smaller reactors and spends more on “breakthrough” energy research.

The Energy Department would get $29.5 billion, a 12 percent increase, to support Obama’s proposed “clean-energy standard,” which requires 80 percent of U.S. electricity to come from low- pollution sources by 2035, according to the fiscal 2012 budget released today. The proposed standard is part of Obama’s policy “to ensure strong American leadership in the clean-energy economy,” according to the budget plan.

A program that guarantees as much as $18.5 billion in loans for construction of nuclear reactors would expand by $36 billion in 2012, to backstop $54.5 billion in lending. An initiative to develop designs for “small modular reactors” would get $67 million. Such reactors would be about a third the size of those now used by U.S. power companies, according to the department.

“We don’t think nuclear loan guarantees are a very good bet,” given the industry’s history of cost overruns, said Robert Cowin, a Washington representative for the Union of Concerned Scientists based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “The $36 billion the president has proposed is excessive.”

Obama Would Triple Guarantees for Nuclear Reactors – Bloomberg

February 15, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA