Question by Dana1981: What are your thoughts on this nuclear power article?
Nuclear power is often touted as the key to solving global warming. Personally I don’t have any major opposition to nuclear power, as long as it can be produced economically.
However, as this article notes, no one has broken ground on a new reactor in the US for thirty years. Nuclear power projects require government-backed loans to fund their construction. According to a 2003 CBO study, these loans would have a default rate of “well above 50 percent.” If one loan were to default, it would cost taxpayers billions of dollars.
Of the 26 applications for new reactors submitted to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission for approval in the past three years, nine have been canceled and 10 have been significantly delayed. Several have attempted to raise electric rates before the plant is even built in order to fund their construction.
Even French nuclear company Areva’s project to build a new nuclear plant in Finland hit a wall last year after the anticipated price tag leapt by more 50 percent. Areva now refuses to even give an estimate of when the plant will be completed.
This information doesn’t give me much confidence that we can build new nuclear power plants safely from an economic standpoint. I mean geez, the French are nuclear power experts, and even they can’t seem to finish a new nuclear plant on time and on budget.
I’m hopeful that nuclear power will play a role in reducing our energy-related greenhouse gas emissions, but this article is troubling. What are your thoughts?
Best answer:
Answer by bestonnet_00
Given that non-hydro renewable energy has basically failed to do anything to the market share of fossil fuels and there isn’t enough hydro capacity you’d better hope that article is a load of nonsense.
It does however look like the thing that determines whether a nuclear reactor is on time and budget or late and overbudget is the regulatory environment where it is built and how many design changes are needed during construction (one of the main tactics the anti-nuclear movement used during the ’70s was to get the regulations to constantly change thereby requiring those building reactors to keep going back and changing something on the reactor).
The loan guarantees give the advantage of forcing the government to not do something to prevent that power plant being built (since if they set the regulatory environment such that it is possible to operate the plant profitably they don’t need to pay it).
AECL has a record of being on time and on budget when they build reactors outside of Canada which can be seen at http://www.aecl.ca/CANDU-Country/Record.htm
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