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In Bid to Revive Nuclear Power, U.S. Is Backing New Reactors
Matthew L. Wald, New York Times
WASHINGTON — President Obama told an enthusiastic audience of union officials on Tuesday that the Energy Department had approved a loan guarantee intended to underwrite construction of two nuclear reactors in Georgia, with taxpayers picking up much of the financial risk.
If the project goes forward, it would be the first nuclear reactor built in the United States since the 1970s.
In a speech in Lanham, Md., Mr. Obama announced government approval of an $8.3 billion loan guarantee to help the Southern Company build two reactors in Burke County, Ga., near Augusta.
The new aid for the nuclear power industry serves many of the Obama administration’s objectives, helping broaden support for its energy policy proposals, which face obstacles in Congress; helping control emissions of greenhouse gases; and to some extent bolstering employment and domestic energy production.
Mr. Obama said, “Make no mistake: whether it is nuclear energy, or solar or wind energy, if we fail to invest in these technologies today, we’ll be importing them tomorrow.”
But these reactors were designed by Westinghouse, a subsidiary of Toshiba, and many major components will be fabricated abroad. And nuclear power is of limited use in offsetting oil imports.
(16 February 2010)
The Nuclear Energy Debate
Sarah Kuck, worldchanging
Employing the right set of renewable-energy technologies can help cities create the power they need to maximize production and delivery the kind energy that — in the long run — will help us to create greater prosperity for all.
But how do we select the right zero-emission power sources? There are a wide variety of renewable resources, like solar and wind, but some say the solution set could be more robust if we included nuclear energy. Others are strongly opposed, as nuclear power carries with it serious environmental, political and safety concerns. Yet, many deep-pocketed game changers are starting to show huge amounts of support for nuclear energy, touting it as the solution to global climate change. For this reason, we thought it might be a good idea to explore the prose and cons of this energy answer.
The following is a list of resources and stories that we’ve found helpful in understanding and exploring the issue:…
(17 February 2010)
Good summation of links to articles covering the topic. -KS
Obama’s Nuclear Giveaway
Kate Sheppard, Mother Jones
In September 2007, the city of San Antonio and NRG Energy announced a partnership to build two new nuclear reactors—the first new nuclear project to be initiated in the United States in decades. The project represented, one of the partners promised, “a milestone for our long-term energy future.”
The project, initially estimated to cost $5.8 billion, quickly became a leading candidate for a Department of Energy (DOE) program in which the government would guarantee loans to finance new nuclear plants. In less than a year, however, the plant’s projected cost had more than doubled to $13 billion. By April 2009, an independent report had calculated that the real cost of the plant could be as high as $22 billion. In December, San Antonio’s municipal utility, CPS, announced it was bailing out of the venture entirely and suing NRG, arguing that NRG and Toshiba—which was contracted to construct the reactors—had lied about the price tag of the venture.
After this debacle, one would think the government would be wary about underwriting projects with such dicey finances. Yet the Obama administration’s 2011 budget proposes tripling the loan guarantee program—from the $18.5 billion that Congress has already approved to $54.5 billion. The program’s expansion is just one of several signs that the Obama administration is throwing its muscle behind the nuclear industry’s push for a massive expansion.
“We are aggressively pursuing nuclear energy,” said Energy Secretary Steven Chu on Monday when he rolled out the department’s budget proposal. Several days earlier, Chu had unveiled a blue-ribbon panel to assess nuclear waste disposal, seen as one of the most significant barriers to a nuclear revival. And in his State of the Union address Obama argued that creating new clean energy jobs “means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country.”
…Chu estimated on Monday that tripling the loan program could help launch seven to ten new nuclear facilities. That seems overly optimistic. When the program was first launched, its supporters claimed that the 18.5 billion in loan guarantees would help launch as many as five new projects. Thanks to steadily rising cost projections, it’s now expected to cover—at best—just two. And the leading contenders for government backing are all mired in controversy. The San Antonio plant is in jeopardy thanks to its soaring price tag (NRG has said it won’t go ahead without a government-backed loan). Plans for plants near Augusta, Georgia, and Columbia, South Carolina, are on hold after federal regulators discovered major safety concerns in the design proposal for the reactors. A proposal for a plant in Calvert Cliffs, Maryland, would use a design from French nuclear power company Areva that nuclear regulators in France, Finland, and the United Kingdom have said has “a significant and fundamental nuclear safety problem” with its instrumentation and control system. “Even their top candidates are very flawed proposals,” said Kamps. “You can just go down the list, and they’ve got problems—safety design problems, concealment of actual price tag.”…
(4 February 2010)
