USA nuclear loan guarantee the last gift to a dying industry?

The guarantees are to go to Georgia Power, a subsidiary of the Southern Company, which owns 45.7 percent ofthe Vogtle nuclear project, near Augusta, and theOglethorpe Power Corporation, a nonprofit consortium of smaller companies, which owns 30 percent. A third company, MEAG, a consortium of municipals, which owns 22.7 percent, will get a guarantee of $1.8 billion soon, according to government officials.

Little in the nuclear loan guarantees program has gone as planned. Congress authorized $17.5 billion in lending authority in 2005, on the theory that a nuclear renaissance was about to begin but that it would require credit help from Washington. In 2011, the administration, with bipartisan support, called for adding $36 billion.

But the construction boom never happened. The Energy Department offered a $2 billion guarantee toAreva, a European nuclear company, to build an enrichment plant in Eagle Rock, Idaho, but Areva later dropped the construction plans. Another company, USEC, is seeking a $2 billion loan guarantee for the same purpose, to commercialize a new enrichment technology it is demonstrating in Piketon, Ohio, but it is having a hard time convincing the department that it is a good investment……..

February 21, 2014 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized