NBC-WSJ Poll: Majority of Americans Rank Nuclear Power Subsidies Top Target for Federal Budget Cuts

[kristopher]

NBC-WSJ Poll: Majority of Americans Rank Nuclear Power Subsidies Top Target for Federal Budget Cuts
New UCS Report Finds That Nuclear Industry, Which Wants Tens of Billions in New Subsidies, Has Never Been Economically Viable

The Wall Street Journal yesterday published the results of a new public opinion poll the newspaper conducted with NBC News that found the most acceptable budget cut out of 14 programs, including Social Security, college loans, Head Start and national defense, is for subsidies for new nuclear reactors. Fifty-seven percent of the survey respondents said cutting nuclear subsidies is either totally or mostly acceptable.

The poll comes on the heels of a new report issued last week by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), “Nuclear Power: Still Not Viable Without Subsidies,” which found that more than 30 subsidies have supported the nuclear power industry at every stage of the nuclear fuel cycle, from uranium mining to long-term waste storage, since the industry was born more than 50 years ago. Added together, these subsidies often have exceeded the average market price of the power produced by nuclear plants. In other words, if the government had purchased power on the open market and given it away free, it would have been less costly than subsidizing nuclear power plant construction and operation.

Elected officials are much more bullish about nuclear power than the general public. The Obama administration wants to triple the amount of federal loan guarantees for nuclear projects to $58 billion, which would shift the risk away from Wall Street and place it squarely on taxpayers. Congress, meanwhile, wants to greatly expand other subsidies for new reactors. Two Senate bills introduced last year would have provided incentives worth as much as $5 billion per reactor and tens of billions of dollars to the industry depending on how many plants are built. Those bills died, but will likely resurface.

“Despite the fact that the nuclear power industry has benefited from decades of government support, the technology is still uneconomic, so the industry wants a lot more from taxpayers to build new reactors,” said Ellen Vancko, manager of UCS’s Nuclear Energy and Climate Change Project. “The poll supports our conclusion that instead of committing billions in new subsidies that would further distort the market in favor of nuclear power, the government should focus on more cost-effective energy sources that will reduce carbon emissions more quickly and with less risk to taxpayers.”

http://www.ucsusa.org/news/media_alerts/nbc-wsj-poll-0508.html

Union of Concerned Scientists' report Nuclear Power: Still Not Viable Without Subsidies can be downloaded with this link:
http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/nuclear_power/nuclear_subsidies_report.pdf

[msongs]

1. that Obama, what a nice guy, always taking care of his "friends" if they have gobs of money lol nt

[phantom power]

2. I know I don't care if they take away nuclear subsidies

:shrug:

[Dogmudgeon]

4. Remember, to antis, paying into an insurance fund is a "subsidy"

Loan guarantees are also considered a subsidy, in spite of the fact that only part of any federal loan is guaranteed, and these are loans made by only the best-capitalized banks.

Nuclear subsidies are only about a buck and three quarters per megawatt, while "green" energy gets well over $20/MW. And much of the money nuclear gets, goes for the DoE to clean up the DoD's messes from WW2.

However, the antis will not be dissuaded. This is life-and-death stuff, like "the killing of innocent unborn babies" is to the Religious Right. They can always find a new "hidden cost" in The Devil's Lightning, and exempt their favorites from similar scrutiny.

It doesn't matter, though. Just like in the 1970s, almost all of the "go-go" money that now goes into nuclear, wind, and solar will go straight into natural gas production. You can bet that a small cut of wind and solar will remain as so many fig leaves, but never with any real contribution. Natural gas is very likely to become dirt cheap over the next few years and power an economic boomlet. More people will have jobs. They'll need them to buy bottled water.

China will build a nuclear energy infrastructure of over 100 GW by the early 2020s, and perhaps 250 GW or more a decade later, while the "new" energy economy in the West collapses once wellhead pressure increases by so much as an inch of water. (Remember, we're talking about deep, compressed, "dissolved" Paleozoic methane here. Small decreases in wellhead pressure usually indicate a rapid drop-off.) Only THEN will the West rediscover the value of nuclear energy.

Greed is stupidity. The Greens will put their human energy into strangling nuclear, again. Both of them will be swept down the river. Again.

--d!

[kristopher]

5. Those comments would be true if they were not false.

When the government transfers costs and risks that raise costs it is a subsidy. The fact is that when reviewed in their totality, the subsidies received by the nuclear industry OFTEN EXCEED THE MARKET VALUE of the electricity that the industry produces.

Contrary to nuclear industry claims the actual subsidies for nuclear come to about $70/mwh.

What is absolutely unfathomable is the degree of trust you place in the self-serving claims of an industry intent on marketing an undesirable product.




From the USC press release:
"The key subsidies for nuclear power do not involve cash payments, the report found. They shift the risks of constructing and operating plants -- including cost overruns, loan defaults, accidents and waste management -- from plant owners and investors to taxpayers and ratepayers. These hidden subsidies distort market choices that would otherwise favor less risky investments.

The most significant forms of subsidies to nuclear power have four principal objectives: Reduce the cost of capital, labor and land through loan guarantees and tax incentives; mask the true costs of producing nuclear energy through subsidies to uranium mining and water usage; shift security and accident risks to the public via the 1957 Price-Anderson Act and other mechanisms; and shift long-term operating risks such as radioactive waste storage to the public.

The report evaluates legacy subsidies that helped build the industry, ongoing support to existing reactors, and subsidies available for new projects. According to the report, legacy subsidies exceeded 7 cents per kilowatt-hour (¢/kWh), well above the average wholesale price of power from 1960 to 2008. In effect, the subsidies were more valuable than the power the subsidized plants produced.

“Without these generous subsidies, the nuclear industry would have faced a very different market reality,” said Doug Koplow, the author of the report and principal at the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based consulting firm, Earth Track. “Many of the 104 reactors currently operating would never have been built, and the utilities that built reactors would have been forced to charge ratepayers even higher rates.”"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=275881&mesg_id=275881

[Confusious]

6. So I suppose you will be up in arms against solar subsides also?

Every form of energy gets them. It's like complaining because fish are wet.

Solar and wind wouldn't be viable without them either, and considering, we pay less for nuclear per hour then we do wind and solar.

The only thing thing that beats them is geothermal, which is common knowledge, which am sure you will argue.

probably even argue that they get subsidies, when I know damn well the government will pay for half the 30 grand to put solar on a house.

[kristopher]

8. See post #7

[kristopher]

7. Technology subsidies are not supposed to be permanent.

They are designed to help socially desirable technologies get a foothold in the marketplace. That is clearly never going to happen with nuclear, but we are seeing tremendous accomplishment in the area of renewable energy where prices are rapidly approaching parity with coal.

[Confusious]

9. Coal, which has recieved subsidies as still does?

http://sierraclub.typepad.com/mrgreen/2010/03/does-the-coal-industry-get-subsidies.html

or oil?

[kristopher]

10. Coal and nuclear are two sides of the same coin

Both use their economic and political power to abuse the system and profit from pilfering the public purse.

Ag & ethanol mandates are in the same category.

Wind, solar and the lesser known emerging renewable technologies, however, are responding exactly as we would hope to see with dramatically declining costs and rapidly escalating rate of deployment.

[Confusious]

11. Still doesn't mean they're not going to get subsidies

You're living in your own little world aren't you?

Once there there, they aren't going away. I.e. farm subsidies. Been around since the 40's.

As a matter of fact, they've been rising.

"Both use their economic and political power to abuse the system and profit from pilfering the public purse."

And solar and wind aren't by getting subsidies? No, they just do less, for more.

The subsidies on a KWh are higher for wind and solar then for nuclear. The only reason they get less is because they generate less.

You always seem to want to tell people the sky is red, when they can see for themselves it's blue.

[kristopher]

12. It depends on the specific technology

Let's start with solarPV - it is a commodity that is subject to the normal economic process that guides the manufacturing and use of things like HVAC systems, septic systems and large home appliances. It is extremely hard to envision an environment that endows cost plus manufacturing with the clout to command unwarranted subsidies, although anything is possible. Wind is largely the same. It is a basic manufactured commodity that lends itself to a manufactured commodity business model where a mature industry competes in an environment where competition can enter and exit the market with relative ease. They largely empower the individual instead of the energy controlling entities that are behind oil, coal, and nuclear.

You would benefit from reading this:

http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/E77-01_EnergyStrategyRoadNotTaken

Agriculture is a totally different scenario where the issue of food supply, food security and entire state/local economies form a mixture that can leverage the political system.

Your statements about the relative amounts of subsidies is highly questionable considering the information in the OP; a message that bears repeating - nuclear energy has received more in subsidies than the market value of all the electricity it has produced.

[Confusious]

13. As a history buff, I look at history, and take lessons from it

There is no reason why solar or wind will be any different then oil, gas, coal or anything else. To think so is delusional. Automobiles receive massive subsidies in the form of roads. Without roads, cars would be useless. But we spend money on it because we deem it valuable.

Your statements about the relative amounts of subsidies is highly questionable considering the information in the OP; a message that bears repeating - nuclear energy has received more in subsidies than the market value of all the electricity it has produced.

The OP says nothing about solar or wind. There is no connection in the OP. Solar or wind could have received 4x the subsidies of all the power it has ever generated ( Which I would not find surprising, given the cost of a plant vs it's output. 2 to 3 billion dollars for 500MW.). Just because the OP does not state that doesn't make it not true. It only looks at nuclear.

Repeating it doesn't make things any different.

[kristopher]

14. Good, then you'll appreciate this...

I've laid this paragraph out sentence by sentence to help you parse the details since actually reading the papers you comment on seems beyond your abilities.

4.2.4. Stranded-Asset Charges for Nuclear Power
“Stranded” asset charges represent a retroactive subsidy to capital.

Historically, nuclear power has benefited from significant market price support, often through regulatory interventions.

During deregulation of electricity markets, for example, $110 billion (2007$) in uneconomic investments in nuclear power capital was shifted from investors to ratepayers (Seiple 1997).

The scale of this residual loss amounted to 1.05 ¢/kWh for every single kWh of net nuclear generation between 1957 and 1997.

As some reactors had already paid off the majority of invested capital by the point of deregulation, the actual subsidies realized for the remaining plants would have been significantly above this average value. Pg 48

NUCLEAR POWER:
Still Not Viable without Subsidies

[Confusious]

15. Those were 2007 numbers, not 1957 to 1997.

subsidies

nuclear $.00159 per KWh generated
solar $.02434 per KWh generated
wind $.02337 per KWh generated

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.