nuclear-news

Add a new name to the list of groups coming hat-in-hand looking for financial help from Harrisburg: the nuclear power industry.

A leader in the movement is Exelon Corp., which operates three of Pennsylvania’s five nuclear plants. In other states, the industry sought and won “zero-emission credits” arguing, that much like wind and solar power, nuclear plants produce clean, carbon-free energy.

We don’t believe taxpayers should be asked to subsidize industries that can’t compete in the open market.

We realize that subsidies are part of the political landscape, especially in the energy sector. The government has given subsidies and grants to encourage growth of new industries – wind and solar got such subsidies in their early days. But the theory behind those breaks was that once those industries reached a larger scale, they could fend for themselves.

What’s different now is that we have mature industries that are big businesses – and we include coal on this list – that want government to intervene to artificially protect their market share. Even with actions taken by the Trump administration to help the coal industry, most economists believe use of coal will continue to decline because it remains both “dirty” and expensive.

Is the situation in the nuclear industry different? No one is predicting a sudden or even long-term demand for nuclear power in this country. Utilities aren’t building new plants, in the same way they are not building new coal-fired plants. Demand for electricity generally has been flat since the Great Recession.

That means that subsidies given today could end up becoming permanent price supports – for the industry’s bottom line……http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/editorials/pennsylvania-residents-cost-nuclear-industry-subsidies-energy.html