Want to Reduce the Debt? Cut the Billions a Year In Nuclear Subsidies

Zero Hedge


Excerpts:

• We’ve previously documented that even top nuclear executives admit that nuclear energy is expensive, and only survives due to massive government subsidies.
• federal subsidies now worth up to $13 billion a plant — roughly how much it now costs to build one
• the costs of nuclear power are shared by the public but the profits are enjoyed privately. [crony capitalism, anyone?]
• loan guarantees covering 50 percent of the cost of building 8,400 Megawatts of new nuclear power..The Congressional Research Service estimated that these loan guarantees alone would cost taxpayers $14 to $16 billion. The Congressional Budget Office believes “the risk of default on such a loan guarantee to be very high — well above 50 percent...The key factor accounting for the risk is that we expect that the plant would be uneconomic to operate because of its high construction costs

Comment:

I don't see anything here that supports the development of molten-salt reactors.  It therefore looks like they are spending all of this money for old technology that has a risk of failure that is too high and too costly.

But not all of the subsidies are that bad, viz

• Generation IV program to develop new reactor designs
• Research and development of radioactive waste reprocessing and transmutation technologies
• Investment in human resources and infrastructure in the nuclear sciences and engineering fields through fellowships and visiting scientist programs; student training programs; collaborative research with industry, national laboratories, and universities; upgrading and sharing of research reactors; and technical assistance

That's the best part of the spending, but this article criticizes even that.  This is an anti-nuke piece, and it is more on than off, but the part that is off is unfortunate.  It isn't as if the anti-nukes are always wrong, it is that they really don't address the problem---that solid fuel, water-cooled reactors are the problem and that the nuclear industry doesn't want to modernize away from these technologies because it isn't to their advantage.

Update:

I should have included the following closing sentence to this anti-nuke screed

The bottom line is that if we want to reduce the debt, we should stop all nuclear subsidies.

Wrong.  We need to develop the LFTR.  It will not need the kind of subsidies mentioned, and will be cheaper than coal.  But it needs some help in getting started.