nuclear-news

In June, the agency, whose own rules prohibit financing nuclear exports, proposed to fling the doors open to such financing, without limiting its scope to the agency’s mission to help the economies of the lower income countries with modest, environmentally sensible projects. There is no hint on what sorts of conditions would apply on funding nuclear reactors. Would the country have to have a system of safety regulation? Would it have to meet security requirements? Would it have to allow international inspections? It isn’t even clear whether the agency’s support would be limited to US reactor exports, and therefore subject to the requirements of the Atomic Energy Act’s Section 123 or whether they could also cover equipment purchases from other suppliers. Such details determine whether a federal bureaucracy is constrained to act responsibly, or whether it is free to cater to the latest whims of the White House.

To justify its proposed action, the agency relies on the administration’s ritual talking points—that nuclear exports will “offer an alternative to the financing of authoritarian regimes while advancing US nonproliferation safeguards and supporting US nuclear competitiveness.” These pearls are straight out of the administration’s April 2020 interagency report “Restoring America’s Competitive Nuclear Energy Advantage.”

So are the agency’s assurances that advanced “small modular reactors” and “microreactors” will have significantly lower costs than existing nuclear power plants and “could help deliver a zero-emission, reliable, and secure power source to developing countries, promoting economic growth and affordable energy access in underserved communities.” This is all pie in the sky: None of these plants have been built, and their characteristics and economics are speculative.

But if the proposed change is restricted to small reactors or microreactors, the nuclear industry’s influential registered lobby, the Nuclear Energy Institute, hasn’t heard about it. The Institute’s president crowed her unqualified approval: “The US International Development Finance Corporation’s proposed policy change to lift its legacy prohibition on nuclear energy projects supports the development of clean, reliable energy worldwide, helps countries reach their energy development goals, buttresses US national security, and can help level the playing field for US firms.”

Nor does her response suggest any awareness that the agency’s financing of nuclear projects will be limited to countries in the lower portion of the economic scale……,

This whole affair is the latest expression of the administration’s organizing principle for nuclear energy policy—finding ways to loosen rules and to create subsidies to propel nuclear exports. This is supposed to energize the much-diminished domestic nuclear manufacturing sector. Since the whole policy doesn’t make any economic sense, the ultimate argument is based on the dogma: Come what may, we have to head off sales by our adversaries China and Russia…….

The agency does have on its books good environmental, social, and economic criteria for evaluating projects. But will they be applied as intended?,………..https://thebulletin.org/2020/07/trumps-new-foreign-investment-agency-itching-to-build-on-nuclear-quicksand/#