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U.S. taxpayers to pay nuclear build costs, and nuclear waste costs

Nuclear Power Boosts Bills and Piles On Radioactive Waste, Florida PSC to consider more rate hikes for nuke projects at FPL and Progress Energy, Kenric Ward, Sunshine State News,  August 10, 2011 For an energy source once touted as too cheap to meter, nuclear power bills sure are piling up. U.S. taxpayers are on the hook for a growing, multibillion-dollar tab to dispose of tons of radioactive waste and Florida’s two biggest utilities are seeking another round of rate increases to help pay for new reactors.
The cost of nuclear power takes center stage Wednesday when the state’s Public Service Commission opens a series of rate hearings.

Florida Power & Light and Progress Energy are seeking to pass along about $335 million in additional nuclear costs to ratepayers next year. The higher bills would fund upgrades at existing plants and provide additional seed capital for four more proposed reactors…..

But construction of new reactors has been virtually nonexistent. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has not granted a construction permit for a new plant nationally since 1978. And amid skyrocketing costs, few utilities have even proposed new facilities.

“The cost of building nuclear power plants is so enormous that investors on Wall Street refuse to engage in such projects,” says Thomas Saporito, a West Palm Beach-based nuclear-power expert who has worked both in the industry and at the NRC.

Saporito said the $21 billion cost of FPL’s proposed new reactors at Turkey Point south of Miami “is about the entire market-cap of the parent company NextEra Energy.”

“So utilities like FPL and Progress Energy Florida convinced state lawmakers to allow recovery of nuclear plant construction costs before the plants are even built and operating,” he said.

Some skeptics, in opposing the proposed rate hikes, doubt that the plants will ever be built. Attorneys for environmental groups are pushing for more detailed information about cost and duration of construction.

RADIOACTIVE WASTE PILES UP, WITH NO PLAN IN SIGHT

Meanwhile, radioactive waste in the form of spent fuel rods is piling up. Florida’s reactors account for more than 2,000 metric tons of the 65,000 tons awaiting final disposal at the nation’s 104 nuclear plants.

And in the wake of Japan’s nuclear disaster, skeptics note that the spent-fuel pools at Florida’s nuke plants are fuller than those at Fukushima.

http://www.sunshinestatenews.com/story/nuclear-power-boosts-bills-and-piles-radioactive-waste

August 11, 2011 - Posted by | business and costs, USA

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