nuclear-news

Average hourly load over a one-week period in January, April and July 2009. Credit B. Posner.

This post first appeared on Power for the People, a blog focused on energy issues in Virginia, the home base of Dominion Resources–a company that is an industry laggard when it comes to renewable energy issues, and is still pursuing the possibility of building a third nuclear reactor at its North Anna site despite its costs projection of around $19 Billion, which would make it the most expensive nuclear project ever undertaken in the U.S. Those projections are not far off the costs anticipated for the UK’s highly controversial Hinkley Point reactor and, given the near-certainty of cost overruns and schedule delays, could go far higher if construction is attempted.

In this piece, Ivy Main explains–I think much more clearly than I have to date–exactly how deployment of expensive nuclear power (and baseload…