Friday, August 14, 2009
Congress / Woods Lamar's Nuclear Dreams: A Trillion-Dollar Bailout in the Making
Posted by Jeff Woods on Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 8:05 AM
"You want to talk about bailouts - the next generation of new nuclear power would be Fannie Mae in spades," says Mark Cooper, senior fellow at Vermont Law School's Institute for Energy and the Environment. Dr. Cooper is among several economic analysts who contend that - waste and safety issues aside - nuclear energy is too costly. "Funding nuclear power on anything like the scale of 100 plants over the next 20 years would involve an intolerable level of risk for taxpayers because that level of new nuclear reactors would require just massive federal loan guarantees," says Peter Bradford, a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and former chairman of the New York State Public Service Commission.
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The various quoted gas lobbyists are indeed concerned about how much a new nuclear fleet might cost the government. But it's not the possibility of defaulted loans that concerns them. It is the money that might remain in citizens' pockets, and never become natgas money.
It is the loss of natural gas revenue that will result when the loans are *not* defaulted. If the government's choice is limited to losing either natgas revenue or the value of the loans the people force them to guarantee, they will, of course, choose to lose the gas revenue; they don't, after all, mind living near American nuclear installations, and they do mind living near natural gas pipelines.
With loan guarantees, it won't be as it was in the 1970s. Sabotaging nuclear power development, no longer profitable, will simply be a betrayal of both the people and the environment. As it always was, but it once was *profitable*.
By the way, the CBO did *not* say half of anything would default.
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Nuclear power is expensive to build, but not to operate. If instead of a cap-and-trade system the United States had a national mandate to replace coal generation plants with natural gas and nuclear energy, plus if we replaced our commuter cars with battery-powered electric cars, we would drastically reduce our dependence on foreign oil and reduce CO2 emissions faster and beyond the proposed cap and trade targets.
-- Robert Moen, www.energyplanUSA.com
Mr. Moen, the problem with your plan is that Nuclear is expensive and produces dangerous byproducts (France runs almost entirely on Nuclear and has serious radioactive waste issues). The advantage of the clean energy bill is that it allows for implementation of the most cost-effective emission reduction measures. For example, wind is typically cheaper than nuclear and also has low operating costs. Under the clean energy bill, if wind is cheaper than nuclear it will be built. This allows the free market to continue operating normally and encourages technological innovation. Congress has, for once, hit the nail on the head with the clean energy bill. It is designed to be the most cost-effective possible way to limit greenhouse gas emissions. After all, the first cap-and-trade legislation in our country was initiated by George HW Bush and proved to be enormously successful.
Our country can’t risk the economic dangers of global warming, we must act now.
This makes absolutely no sense at all. Yes nuclear plants are a little more expensive than dirty pulverized coal plants-- but not IGCC plants with CCS. Zero carbon emissions costs a little more, nothing is a free lunch. But once these plants are built you're home free-- very low pollution, low cost energy for 60 years. They pay for themselves! Cheap energy is what allowed us to get rich during the last century. Without energy, we have no economy. As coal and oil deplete, where do we turn? Windmills? They're even more expensive, wear out quickly, and only work when the wind blows. Thanks to the liberals not understanding energy peak oil is now here, we have done nothing to conserve or move away from it, and the fossil fuels bonanza is now over. Nuclear is coming, and it won't go away.
