Nuclear Energy: Not A Solution #2

For the last decade, watching the stealth of the nuclear industry and the long overdue eruption of energy and Climate Change on the consciousness of Americans, I have long advocated the necessity of doing the evaluation of the energy issue on a personal level to reach sensible solutions, rather than absorbing and repeating industry PR, like the spin of Entergy.

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Were weatherization and energy efficiency or renewables (solar or wind or geo-thermal or tidal/wave generation), subsidized at the levels of nuclear or fossil fuels, this would be a Congressional No-Brainer.

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And were the costs of disposal and decommissioning included, this would be a Congressional Non-Issue.

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I happened upon an article the clearly explained the chronology of the nuclear public relations and lobbying campaign in Washington Monthly.

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Excerpts of the massive subsidies, loan guarantees and exemption from liability and major lobbying efforts follow, but it is important to recognize that renewable are cost competitive.

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Nuclear only makes sense if $7,500 Per Kilowatt makes sense. That does not include disposal and decommissioning.

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In 2001, the Bush administration took office and began working to overhaul government agencies to make them friendlier to the industry. Layers of NRC regulation were stripped away. At the DOE, the top position in the Office of Nuclear Energy was promoted to an assistant-secretary-level appointment, and a host of new programs were added to promote the resurgence of atomic energy—among them Nuclear Power 2010, under which the government pays half the cost of site selection, planning, and licensing for new nuclear reactors.

The industry, meanwhile, worked to shift public perception, through an aggressive PR campaign that involved, among other things, planting ghostwritten op-eds advocating nuclear energy in local newspapers under the names of prominent local personalities, and setting up front groups that appeared to be independent environmental organizations, such as the New Jersey Affordable, Clean, Reliable Energy Coalition. It also began pressing Congress for subsidies and, starting in 2001, federal loan guarantees. But nuclear advocates made little headway on this front until 2003, when Republicans regained control of the Senate and Domenici was appointed chairman of the Energy Committee. He rehired Alex Flint, who had gone on to work as a nuclear power lobbyist, to direct the committee’s work. Flint spent the next two years wrangling with politicians, often in secret, over a new energy bill.

... [President George W. Bush] signed the Domenici-sponsored Energy Policy Act of 2005 into law. The act fulfilled many of the industry’s key legislative ambitions. Most importantly, it provided unlimited federal loan guarantees to cover up to 80 percent of project costs for next-generation nuclear plants and other "innovative technologies" to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It also included a twenty-year extension of the Price-Anderson Act, which limits the liability of nuclear power plant operators in case of accidents, and $13 billion in direct subsidies for nuclear power, including $2 billion in "risk insurance" to pay extra costs caused by delays in construction and licensing for the first six new reactors.

...in less than a decade, the nuclear power industry had gone from energy pariah to political heavyweight. Its lobbying operation was now among the most formidable on Capitol Hill, thanks to a generous infusion of cash. (Since the mid-1990s, the energy and nuclear power sector has spent at least $953 million lobbying Congress and the executive branch, according to the Center for Responsive Politics—more than any group except the pharmaceutical and insurance industries.) That money helped the industry to meet most of the goals laid out at the 1998 forum and win tens of billions of dollars in new subsidies. All told, the nuclear power sector has secured more than $100 billion in federal support, at least $25 billion of it in the last four years alone, according to the nonpartisan group Taxpayers for Common Sense.
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That’s far more than renewable energy sources.
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Nuclear Energy Institute... was estimating $1,100 and $1,500 per kilowatt capacity—roughly on par with natural gas plants and cheaper than coal.
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In October 2007, Moody’s Investor Services piled on with a report projecting that new reactors would cost $5,000 to $6,000 per kilowatt to build, or up to $12 billion per unit.
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...Moody’s, ... now predicts
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new nuclear power plants will cost $7,500 per kilowatt to build.

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That’s more than double the capital costs for solar power and three and a half times the cost for wind.