Finally, a serious publication did the math:
John McCain's plan to revive the U.S. nuclear power industry with 45 new reactors may cost $315 billion, with taxpayers bearing much of the financial risk.
Who else should bear the financial risk? After all, taxpayers bear the meltdown risk thanks to the Price-Anderson Act. Why should a mature industry with 20 percent market share bear any risk at all?
The Republican presidential nominee wants the plants built in time to help the U.S. meet a 29 percent increase in electricity demand by 2030.
Well, that is what the increase in electricity demand would be if we embrace Cheney's third term. Kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Industry estimates put their cost at $7 billion each.
Or, 50 percent higher. But why do taxpayers bear much of the risk? Because the industry can't succeed without you, the taxpayer, putting your wallet on the line for each and every plant that gets built:
Investment bankers, citing the industry's cost overruns in the 1980s, say they won't finance its long-sought "nuclear renaissance" without federal backing. "Loan guarantees get reactors built, simply put," said Kevin Book, senior vice president and energy specialist at the Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co. investment banking firm in Arlington, Virginia.
No new nuclear plants have opened in the U.S. since 1996. The 1979 scare at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania and the 1986 explosion at Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union damped support for the technology.
Congress in December authorized $18.5 billion in guarantees that cover as much as 80 percent of nuclear plant construction costs -- enough to fund three typical reactors. Three power companies have already applied for the aid.
If we wanted 45 new nukes, a McCain administration might well have to put up $277.5 billion in guarantees -- I guess he is a maverick after all because I can't imagine any sane normal politician proposing that. But what could go wrong?
Taxpayers are on the hook only if borrowers default. A 2003 Congressional Budget Office report said the default rate on nuclear construction debts might be as high as 50 percent, in part because of the projects' high costs.
Hmm. Defaults that might cost taxpayers more than $100 billion. Sounds familiar.
But if we're bailing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage industry for the nuclear family, then isn't it only fair to mortgage our family's future to the nuclear industry?
(Note: Any resemblance between Mr. Burns and a chimera clone of Karl Rove and John McCain is purely prescient on the part of Matt Groening.)
This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
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Comments
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Russ Posted 6:53 am
13 Sep 2008
Yes, there's the taxpayer exposure at each of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. There's the anodyne get-out-and-shop "stimulus" package whose stimulation has already died as fast as it came, like a hit of crack.
There's also a month or two of Bush's private war.
But those aren't what I was thinking of.
Oh yeah - it was here on Grist just a few days ago: http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/9/10/9654/53161. "N ...
The new Center for American Progress study which shows that for $100 billion public investment in efficiency, mass transit, and renewables, over 2 years America could create 2 million construction and manufacturing jobs.
Sounds better than $100 billion more in welfare for this toxic industry and its handful of welfare billionaire beneficiaries.
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GreyFlcn Posted 8:55 am
13 Sep 2008
http://triplepundit.com/pages/environmental-groups-lead-e ...
http://grist.org/news/daily/2005/05/16/3/
http://greyfalcon.net/nuclear
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/9/8/9910/30616#comm ...
-David Ahlport
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GRLCowan Posted 8:59 am
13 Sep 2008
In the particular case of loan guarantees to developers of nuclear power plants, there is an interesting wrinkle: they correct a governmental conflict of interest.
If a developer spends a few billion on a nuclear plant and then, due to legal delays and rule changes, gives up, that's a few billion wasted. But in the past, government has not felt the pain of this waste. Quite the contrary: at current natural gas and uranium prices, a gigawatt-year's electricity production from natural gas means about $0.1 billion in royalties.
If a government fails to red-tape a nuclear project to death, and fails to kill it with intervention by astroturf protesters, that plant makes the same gigawatt-year from less than $0.04 billion in uranium. That's kind of hard to get $0.1 billion in royalties on.
Thus, if government doesn't lose a few hundred billion dollars paying back defaulted nuclear construction loans on 45 nuclear projects, it loses about the same in natural gas revenue in those plants' first few decades of operation.
One way the money is just wasted, the other, it stays in citizens' pockets.
--- G.R.L. Cowan, H2 energy fan 'til ~1996
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GreyFlcn Posted 9:18 am
13 Sep 2008
....
I expected better of you Cowan.
-David Ahlport
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morganmghee Posted 9:38 am
13 Sep 2008
12,954 Nuclear Power Plants:
That's how many nuclear plants the world would need to build to replace its current fossil-fuel-based energy. 12,954 plants would cost $77.72 trillion - more than the total Gross World Product (GWP) of $65.95 trillion!
http://www.architecture2030.org/news/news_090608.html#Dri ...
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amazingdrx Posted 1:15 am
14 Sep 2008
Unlike the huge cost over run boondoggle of nuclear power, not to mention the incalculably huge cost of waste diposal, cleanup, and decommisioning all those nukes in a few decades.
Subsidy diversion is revenue neutral, it creates no new debt.
How about a democratic party slogan? NO NEW DEBT!
Better than the old lie the GOP pulls out every few years, no new taxes. They get in power then triple the national debt and double personal debt for 90% of US with recession enabled by huge tax cuts for the richest.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Jon Rynn Posted 1:35 am
14 Sep 2008
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amazingdrx Posted 1:40 am
14 Sep 2008
Now that's hope!
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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vakibs Posted 5:54 am
14 Sep 2008
I expected better of you Cowan.
I expected you to do better, greyflcn, than cite the same old list of cranky propaganda.
How about doing a bit-by-bit analysis of comparing costs of nuclear vs renewable power !??
Criticize my argument from this thread. I built my argument from the very sources that you have cited.
Nuclear power is cheap, and it will remain cheaper than your best completely renewable economy. If you think otherwise, face the criticism and do a complete cost analysis.
If you criticize nuclear for decomissioning costs, prove that the renewable decomissioning costs will be cheaper than nuclear. Prove it !
If you criticize nuclear for high amortization / construction costs, prove that renewable amortization will be cheaper. Prove it !
If you criticize nuclear for upgrades to the electricity grid infrastructure, prove that renewable requires less upgrade to infrastructure than nuclear. Prove it !
If you criticize nuclear for mining issues, prove that renewable technology requires less mining than nuclear for generating the same amount of power. Prove it !
The only power which can beat nuclear on cost terms is dirty coal. And along with 50% of the Democrat establishment, Joe Romm is doing propaganda for dirty coal and natural gas.. Without explicitly saying so.
Let's think in terms of eco-dollars.
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Jon Rynn Posted 6:49 am
14 Sep 2008
My sister's take is this: The French have a working system, and they're not very interested in changing anything. This even affect the renewable energy industry in France, which is way behind Spain and Germany,for instance -- they like, relatively, their electrical system, so why bother changing it?
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amazingdrx Posted 7:05 am
14 Sep 2008
"...prove that renewable technology requires less mining than nuclear for generating the same amount of power."
Which makes it dangerous, which makes it expensive.
What we are asking is that a few experimental nuclear plants be built to prove it. We can't determine the cost of nuclear, for any of it's stages, construction, decommisioning, operation, mining,fuel.. until a better safer design is tested and proven.
We can compare renewable to present nuclear plants, but that doesn't help. No one wants to build nuclear power the way it has been built so far, do they? At least no one here is proposing that.
A modular mass producible nuclear power design is needed, with a simple safe way to recycle waste internally. If complicated processing is needed that will be too dangerous and costly.
I'm sure nuclear engineers want the chance to try this, so why not let them? Go for it, but drop the idea of building more of the present flawed systems.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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vakibs Posted 7:40 am
14 Sep 2008
I will tell you the story of why it was shut down.
The breeder reactor started badly, because nobody in the nuclear industry were keen on breeder reactors. Though France has no natural Uranium, it can easily import Uranium from the world market (unlike for example India). And the price of Uranium is so very low. Secondly, France reprocesses some of the depleted Uranium already (a very crappy technology, and also inherently dangerous because it produces Plutonium). So the French nuclear industry was asking "why bother with breeders ?".
Then the breeder reactor has run into problems. The molten Sodium coolant reacts violently with water, and this coolant was leaking all the team. It was wrecking the nerves of the administration, and the plant was shut down quite often to fix the leaks. (The IFR developed at the Argonne laboratory in USA fixes the molten Sodium problem by having an additional coolant loop. So this problem is solved. The other technology that I am interested in (LFTR) doesn't have molten Sodium at all).
Since the French breeder was a pilot project and because of all its problems, the cost of the produced electricity was much higher than standard nuclear fare. There were huge protests that the govt stop subsidizing this plant.
Finally, an eco-pacifist group (!) based in Switzerland obtained missiles from Jackal the arms dealer and fired it at the reactor, partially destroying the core but without radiation damage. This put a full-stop to the program. I seriously wonder who was behind this operation.. It is clearly not some eco-nuts, there is sure some fossil money behind it, but we would never know.
The result : the French shut down their breeder reactor. But the French nuclear scientists are largely still passionate about the breeder reactor program. You should ask your brother in law if he knows anyone in the nuclear physics research labs. They will give you more details.
Here is a 2006 article from the lab in Grenoble (where I live) analyzing how fast the world can convert to breeder reactor based nuclear power.
The opposition to breeder reactors come from different sources.
fossil fuel (coal+oil+gas) industries : this is the most dangerous and the most well-funded opposition. The coal industry especially will die rapidly if breeder reactors become popular. They spread FUD against breeder technology, and highlight the economic aspects of pilot projects. They also spread FUD against plutonium running lose.
inertia in nuclear industry : the second most important opposition. The nuclear industry does not want to invest in R&D. They do not want to change their designs, and they do not want to change their business model (they currently earn money by changing fuel rods.. which will not exist in LFTR type breeder reactors)
environmental groups : the least important opposition to breeders. They are against nuclear power in general, but only recently getting to notice the differences amongst LWRs and breeders.
Who are campaigning for breeder reactors ?
No well-funded publicity exists for this technology. Only nuclear physicists and engineers know the details of this technology, and they don't spend too much time talking about it. One exception is Dr Bernard Cohen (a physicist at the University of Pittsburgh) who has an outdated online book. There is also the book of Tom Blees which will be published sometime soon.
Let's think in terms of eco-dollars.
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GRLCowan Posted 8:57 am
14 Sep 2008
You'd think they'd have appointed one member to take the hit.
It was wrecking the nerves of the administration, and the plant was shut down quite often to fix the leaks. (The IFR developed at the Argonne laboratory in USA fixes the molten Sodium problem by having an additional coolant loop. So this problem is solved.
Actually all sodium-cooled reactors have had that additional coolant loop. It ensures that if sodium and water get at each other, at least the sodium is sodium that has not been near the reactor.
Finally, an eco-pacifist group (!) based in Switzerland obtained missiles from Jackal the arms dealer and fired it at the reactor, partially destroying the core but without radiation damage.
That's all correct, except it wasn't finally, it was initially, before the plant started; the core was not destroyed, nor in any way affected, rather, a shallow divot was made in the outer containment shell; and the plant subsequently was completed and operated.
Vakibs' account is sufficiently error-ridden that I wonder if there were actually sodium leaks during this phase. Elsewhere, at Monju for instance, yes there were. But maybe not at Superphenix.
The technical conservatism part is true. Since it set in, several much nicer-seeming ideas have been advanced, e.g., cooling with lead rather than sodium. Lead cannot react with water, nor support combustion, although it does oxidize superficially.
--- G.R.L. Cowan, H2 energy fan 'til ~1996
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amazingdrx Posted 2:02 pm
14 Sep 2008
You guys have to admit that this all looks pretty shakey as far as a long term investment in it's present form.
Obama is for this research, development, and testing.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Jon Rynn Posted 3:30 pm
14 Sep 2008
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vakibs Posted 5:43 pm
14 Sep 2008
I think they did have some sodium leaks in superphénix, I remember somebody telling me this, but I don't know for sure.
Let's think in terms of eco-dollars.
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vakibs Posted 5:46 pm
14 Sep 2008
I don't buy the McCain plan. It is stupid to build 40 bulky second generation nuclear reactors. Moreover, they don't even have a standardized design yet. Until the reactors are modularized and mass produced, they will be very expensive.
McCain's plan looks very stupid, even though he probably likes nuclear.
Let's think in terms of eco-dollars.
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GRLCowan Posted 3:21 am
15 Sep 2008
... except on a per-unit-product basis, of course.
"Bulky"?
You are buying into local opposition to reactors of the kinds that are taking billions of dollars per week from the fossil fuel interests, have never been involved in nuclear weapon proliferation, and have never harmed anyone.
They say their concerns about safety and proliferation can be allayed if we quit with the rollout of the darned fossil fuel interest defunders, and instead try to solve various problems whose existence cannot be demonstrated. If the prototypes also harm no-one and also aid no bomb-seekers, this will merely continue the non-demonstration of hazard, not prove that there is none.
Maybe these very conditional nuke fans don't know their own minds, but surely they are transparent to us?
--- G.R.L. Cowan, H2 energy fan 'til ~1996
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KenG Posted 3:41 am
15 Sep 2008
Modularization? The Japanese have already built modularized units and a new facility is being built in Louisiana to build AP1000 modules.
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jas Posted 5:51 am
15 Sep 2008
Lots of Reagan-era villains involved, lots of money flying around... point in the pointless forest being, millions, maybe billions, made it into the pockets of the big engineering firms (Bechtel and Burns and Roe were involved, among others) as well as the financial guys. The NW never got the power, the investors were screwed, the original power needs forecasts were proven ludicrously wrong, the plants that did get started were abandoned due to irreversible safety problems (one plant had CARDBOARD pipe whip restraints painted to look like metal--you wanna see hot radioactive steam running through that baby)... well you get the picture.
I believe these projects are, or could easily be, fronts for more backhanders to politicians' rich friends (at that time the former CEO of Bechtel was in Reagan's govt, the former head of BPA--Don Hodel--was his Sec of Interior, etc).
No wonder McCain supports them.
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vakibs Posted 6:39 pm
15 Sep 2008
Standardized design is the first step to slash down costs. Once we have a design completely accepted, the next step is to build factories which produce each and every component in the reactor, assemble the parts together in a robotized assembly unit and ship the reactor to the location concerned.
This is how automobiles, aeroplanes, computers .. are manufactured.
Unlike this, nuclear power plant construction is proceeding in the manner of large infrastructure building - such as construction of ports, highways, bridges etc. Due to this, the construction costs are much higher (7 to 9 billion dollars per plant).
There are several standardized designs.
No KenG. A standardized design means there is only one design. I agree that all the alternatives are equally good. But we should pick one design, and then several companies will manufacture these reactors in factories. This is how we cut down costs.
You are buying into local opposition to reactors of the kinds that are taking billions of dollars per week from the fossil fuel interests, have never been involved in nuclear weapon proliferation, and have never harmed anyone.
Any nuclear reactor, even the 2nd generation ones that are being planned to build, is a thousand times better than a coal / natural gas plant. But just because it is better, doesn't mean it is the optimal way of doing things.
If the prototypes also harm no-one and also aid no bomb-seekers, this will merely continue the non-demonstration of hazard, not prove that there is none.
There is an insanity element in the anti-nuke argument. And you are right to point this out GRL. And we can never convince such folks.
But what I am asking for is a quick prototyping of the several 4th generation nuclear reactors that are in the pipeline. The nuclear industry has plans of getting these out by 2020 or 2030. We don't have the luxury of that much time, in my opinion. We should deploy nuclear power rapidly in the world, if we intend to kill coal usage. This deployment should proceed (a) with breeder reactors which maximize fuel usage (b) foolproof designs with safety and anti-proliferation requirements (c) mass production of these reactors in factories.. preferably of small reactors. I hope this process will begin by 2010 to 2015. All the prototyping, standardization, testing etc.. should be finished before that time.
Let's think in terms of eco-dollars.
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