The Obama administration on Tuesday announced $8.33 billion in loan guarantees for the construction and operation of two new nuclear reactors at a power plant in Burke, Georgia.
These will be the first new nuclear reactors built in the US in nearly three decades. They will be built and operated by Southern Company (NYSE: SO) and its subsidiary utility Georgia Power.
During his State of the Union Address, Obama announced that he would give greater support to nuclear power, expanded oil and gas drilling and carbon capture for coal-fired power. In return he said he hopes to receive cooperation from conservatives on his goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and growing renewable power generation.
In its 2011 budget request, the administration expanded Department of Energy loan authority for nuclear power three-fold to a total of $54.5 billion.
The vast expense of building new nuclear power plants is one of the reasons SustainableBusiness.com opposes it. And the discussion of costs rarely includes the costs of storing and securing nuclear waste in the long-term (i.e. thousands of years).
A March 2009 UCS report, "Nuclear Loan Guarantees: Another Taxpayer Bailout Ahead?," recounts the nuclear industry’s disastrous financial history and documents the hundreds of billions of dollars taxpayers and ratepayers already have spent to keep the industry afloat.
In the most recent analysis on the feasibility of new nuclear power plants, the Citibank group concludes that some of "the risks faced by developers … are so large and variable that individually they could each bring even the largest utility company to its knees financially." Read the full IPS story at the link below.
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