Very interesting, although not surprising, to learn about the nuclear industry’s success hitching its deregulation wagon to bills having to do with green jobs, energy independence, and climate change.

Are you aware of similar problems with the Cantwell/Collins CLEAR Act?

How about other similar bills that start out being well-intentioned efforts to address energy problems & climate change and end up becoming deregulation vehicles?

BTW, the PSR radio interview with Patterson, Bradford, Lyman, and Curran was very good. We need more of those. About 6-8 months ago, I searched for intelligent discussions re subsidization of the nuclear industry and its claims of being safe, and came up with only marketing claims from the NEI and shouting matches between industry CEOs/NEI representatives and people who disagreed with their claims.

It’s going to be very tough to keep deregulation of the nuclear industry out of energy/climate legislation, especially given President Obama’s reference to it being a necessary part of energy independence in his first SOTU.

The grants you are talking about are 30% tax credits, these tax credits were allowed to be taken as cash upfront to help pay for equipment like a solar installation, due to the recession, only if the company had no profits the next year (due to the recession!) to take tax credits against.

Most clean energy got loan guarantees like Solyndra. And a solar loan guarantee is a much surer bet than a nuclear one. Very little chance of a default? Where does this statement come from?

After several plants were either built and prohibited from operating by a government fiat; or plants canceled and abandoned as the government kept changing the rules of the game such that everything would have to be scrapped and redone so the costs went ballistic, it is not surprising that investors need a guarantee from the government that they will not be cheated out of money again.

In contrast, the nuclear projects that you are referring to will be getting loan guarantees that cover loans that must be repaid. They will pay a fee to the government, just like a person that gets an FHA loan or a student loan that covers the cost of the guarantee. The companies also have to invest at least 20% of the project cost as equity that would be lost if they defaulted on the loan.

The DOE is doing serious due diligence on these loan guarantees and there is very little chance of a default.

The reasons that the projects are in trouble is that the loan guarantee program was authorized by the Energy Policy Act of 2005, but the very first awarded guarantee did not get issued until a couple of months ago. The company have already invested hundreds of millions of their own money, but they need to have a completed financing package before they can move forward. The government will get its money back unless some obstructionists who would prefer for electricity to be generated by burning coal or natural gas gets in the way of the project completion.

Rod Adams

Publisher, Atomic Insights

You don’t like solar. What technology do you have in your pocket that can be scaled to the size of a 3,000 MW plant in any location across the country and run base load power night, day, windy or not, sunny or not without producing any air emissions?

2. Renewable technology gets similar loan guarantees.

3. Loan guarantees have nothing to do with safety. They are designed to reduce premiums by lowering risk, hence lowering cost which allows Nuclear to become viable. Risk, as in construction delays. Most safety ‘issues’ raised with both the AP-1000 and EPR designs need to be corrected before any plants enter construction so it’s a non-issue.

3. RE: Subsidies – what you said it at odds with other sources such as: i. ‘A half century of US federal government energy incentives’ – Roger H. Bezdek* and Robert M. Wendling. ii. ‘Federal Financial Interventions and Subsidies in Energy Markets 2007′ – EIA. It is also a better idea to look at the underlying reasons why previous Nuclear builds had failed.

Your posts on nuclear power show a lack of research and misunderstanding of the issues at hand.