nuclear-news

Exelon Nuclear company begging for taxpayer charity

State Help Needed for New Nuclear Units, Exelon Chief Says Bloomberg News, By Brian Wingfield   April 11, 2012 U.S. utilities will need government help to build nuclear reactors as other forms of electric power become less expensive, a top executive of Exelon Corp. (EXC) (EXC), the nation’s largest commercial producer of atomic energy, said.

State support may include letting companies recover costs from customers during construction, providing loan guarantees or agreeing to buy power from the plant, Mayo Shattuck III, executive chairman of Chicago-based Exelon, said today at a conference in Washington.

Building reactors may require “the sovereign support of that state, which really means it’s on the backs of the ratepayers, not the backs of the shareholders,” Shattuck said at an event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The Nuclear Regulatory
Commission on March 30 awarded Scana Corp. (SCG) (SCG) a permit to build two reactors at a plant near Columbia, South Carolina, and on Feb. 9 approved Southern Co. (SO) (SO)’s plan for two units at its Vogtle plant near Augusta, Georgia. Southern expects its project to
cost $14 billion. Scana will cover 55 percent of the estimated $10.2 billion for the South Carolina reactors. The plants, being financed partly by customers, may be among the last in the U.S. this decade…..
Economic conditions raise “very serious questions” about the possibility of building new reactors without government support, Shattuck said……
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-04-11/state-help-needed-for-nuclear-units-exelon-chief-says

April 12, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, politics, USA