Nuclear projects face financial obstacles

[wordpix]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/01/AR2010030103975.html

By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Hopes for a nuclear revival, fanned by fears of global warming and a changing political climate in Washington, are running into new obstacles over a key element -- money.

A new approach for easing the cost of new multibillion-dollar reactors, which can take years to complete, has provoked a backlash from big-business customers unwilling to go along.

Financing has always been one of the biggest obstacles to a renaissance of nuclear power. The plants are expensive, and construction tends to run late and over budget. The projected cost for a pair of proposed Georgia plants would be $14 billion; the Obama administration last month pledged to provide them with $8.3 billion in federal loan guarantees.

So utilities have turned to state legislators and regulators to help contain capital costs. In states such as Georgia, Florida and South Carolina, utilities have won permission to charge customers for some of the cost of new reactors while construction is still in progress -- a financing technique that would save utilities a couple of billion dollars for each reactor. Previously, utilities had to wait until power plants were in operation before raising rates, as they still do in most states. snip

"It's a terrible idea," said Jim Clarkson, a consultant with Resource Supply Management, a Georgia firm that advises companies on how to reduce electricity use. "We've had decades of subsidies for nuclear plants and all sorts of preferential treatment. They still require loan guarantees because the smart money won't touch them." more http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/01/AR2010030103975.html

:puke: Here we have the nuke industry wanting state and federal bailouts to build plants they cannot afford, and they're hitting up electric customers and federal taxpayers for decades to pay for them. AND Obama is promising billions in "fed loan guarantees." So if the cos. default, there goes our money. Not to mention, nuke cos. may start building the plants at no risk since electric customers and taxpayers have to pay, and then the co. goes belly up or just can't afford to continue building. As usual, the fat cats have figured out they can build these plants for free on the people's backs, and then reap in the profits while we patsies ante up from the start of building through the finished product. :grr:

[Zoeisright]

1. No shit. Nuclear is the most heavily subsidized energy industry.

If we had put that much money into solar and wind, we'd be set now. Anyone who thinks that nuclear energy is feasible doesn't understand much.

[ThomWV]

3. Silly silly silly.

Tell the United States Navy that nuclear power is not feasible.

It isn't the people who know it to be feasible that don't understand much - it the knee-jerk opponents who babble nonsensical and utterly unsupported claims that yet to be built in quanity, essentially non-existant arrays of yet to be proven technologies - virtually all of which lack load-following capability, are somehow the solution.

Fer christsakes son, if you don't know what you're talking about at least don't call your opponents stupid.

[BeFree]

8. hmmm

When can I get me a nuke powered ship? If it is so feasible, why isn't there a ship on e-bay?


Fer christsakes son, if you don't know what you're talking about at least don't call your opponents silly.

[wordpix]

2. note the states that agree to the utilities' demands are FL, GA and SC

The red state repug residents are really idiots, aren't they?

[ThomWV]

4. And note the nations that get most of their power from Nuclear without problems Japan, France

[John N Morgan]

5. I agree that raising electric rates is a regressive tax. But two things ...

we need the energy.
State and federal audits of payrolls to keep the graft down.
Unions would go a long way to balancing the equation of wealth distribution, but Democrats have to register and vote.
Consider, you are an investor. Where do you put your money?

[HillbillyBob]

6. Well If the runnyraygun drizzlin shits economics had not ruined me

years ago. I would still not put a damn dime in a nuke plant, especially one that is effectively up wind of where I live, which the ones in Ga would be.
What to do with the left over toxic waste? We still have toxic waste many places soaking into ground water in every state are we going to add nuke to that.

And to the pro nukes..how bout in your back yard?

To the those who think that solar cannot work day and night look at the solar concentrator in Spain, that boils salt and stores enough of that heat to run the turbines day and night and even several days w/o Sun.
That IS PROVEN technology and still costs are in line with nukes, but w/out that toxic waste that will 'glow' for half a million years. Actually I think they cost a good deal less than nukes and take up a similar foot print and do not suck water from nearby ground water or rivers to use as coolant.

Nukes are dandy on a ship I served on USS Enterprise, but you have disciplined people running it and on a schedule not Souther Corpse who would try to put some minimum wage hs drop out in there to watch gauges. My stepfather worked for S Corp his whole life..when he got ill with Picks(similar to alzheimers, but faster) they fired him and his seniority did not mean shit to them. He worked there for 38 yrs.

I still don't see why we can't get low cost loans to put up solar power in our roof.
We keep bringing our power needs down, but our power bill keeps going up. We have gone frm using 33-3500 kwhrs to using between 900 and 1200 kwrs..That will go down even further when we instal a solar water heater, and pv panels to run our well. We have done this by replacing energy hungry appliances as they die off with much more efficient ones and swapping lights from incand to cfl then to leds as they die off.
If we all did that instead of bitchin about cost we would not see the need for new plants for some time. We have invested 3700$ over 3 1/2 yrs it saves us between 100 and 400$ a month(depending on if its ac or heat time). We don't even use the central ac or heat anymore instead wood stove or kero heater which uses much less and close off parts of the house we are not using when it is very cold. Flat screens instead of crt tvs and monitors. Our savings avg out over the year to be about 2800$, that is $ we don't have to come up with to pay the power company.

[wordpix]

7. another issue: these warm, sunny states could run on solar---put the billion$ into solar!