Obama Administration Won't Discuss Financial Risk Of Nuclear Program

Mother Jones:

The Obama administration has embarked on a high-stakes gamble: devoting billions of dollars to an expansion of nuclear power in the hope of winning Republican votes for a climate bill. But in its eagerness to drum up bipartisan support for one of the hardest sells on Obama's policy agenda, is the administration turning a blind eye to the financial risk?

Read the whole story: Mother Jones

Comments

[LarBear]

03:10 PM on 03/09/2010

Have People forgotten the Senator Obama Nuclear connections?

http://nuclear-news.net/2010/01/25/financial-connections-between-u-s-politicians-and-the-nuclear-lobby/

The industry is plugged in on its own at the White House through labor groups and Exelon. Exelon CEO John W. Rowe is the Nuclear Energy Institute’s past chairman and a current director.

The company, based in the president’s home state of Illinois, has funded Obama’s campaigns since his Senate run, when employees contributed more than $48,000, according to CQ Moneyline, and Exelon’s political action committee gave the maximum of $10,000. Exelon employees gave Obama nearly $210,000 for his presidential campaign, according to CQ Moneyline.

Exelon’s management includes two Obama bundlers who are friends of the president. One, director John W. Rogers, helped direct Obama’s Illinois fundraising during his presidential race and helped plan the inauguration. The other, Frank M. Clark, has lobbied on nuclear issues for the company.

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is close to Exelon, too. The merger that created the utility was the biggest deal of Emanuel’s brief but lucrative investment-banking career. Another White House connection is strategist David Axelrod, whom Exelon subsidiary ComEd once hired to create a fake grass-roots organization supporting higher electricity rates.

[maslin]

12:42 PM on 03/10/2010

I have not forgotten. Politics is a dirty, messy business, but Illinois and Illinois politicians have long experience with the benefits of nuclear power. This makes me hopeful that we can start the process of getting off coal immediately.

If it's not clear, I support doing that with nuclear power, as soon as possible.

[jfarmer9]

02:20 AM on 03/09/2010

“Westinghouse four NRC approved American designed AP-1000 Vogtle type units China 4 year construction time cost $1.2 B/Gw.” –Seth Mother Jones

“AECL's Qinshan Canadian regulatory agency approved 2 Candu 6's , 4 year construction time, $2B /Gw” –Seth Mother Jones

I only repeat what you said because I think you said it all w/ these two facts.

Don’t ever stop fighting. If we stop fighting for truth the result will be that a horrific devastation will end up blighting this planet. This forthcoming devastation is so great scientist continue to debate its epic proportions.

I say once again Viva the Nuclear Renaissance,

Jfarmer9

[research]

04:37 PM on 03/09/2010

yes, if we go with nukes power, humans will be destroyed.

[ReedYoung]

01:41 AM on 03/09/2010

Besides being a politically unnecessary, and inadvisable concession to the LOSERS, it's bad science.

Existing wind power technology can provide all of the United States' electricity.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/02/better-wind-resource-maps/#more-18355#more-18355
quote >
Current wind technology deployed in nonenvironmentally protected areas could generate 37,000,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity per year, according to the new analysis conducted by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and consulting firm AWS Truewind. The last comprehensive estimate came out in 1993, when Pacific Northwest National Laboratory pegged the wind energy potential of the United States at 10,777,000 gigawatt-hours.

Both numbers are greater than the 3,000,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity currently consumed by Americans each year.
/ quote>

http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/winds/aj07_jam.pdf
quote >
"It was found that an average of 33% ... of yearly averaged wind power from interconnected farms can be used as reliable, baseload electric power. Equally significant, interconnecting multiple wind farms to a common point and then connecting that point to a far-away city can allow the long-distance portion of transmission capacity to be reduced, for example, by 20% with only a 1.6% loss of energy.
/ quote>

Summing up, currently mass-produced windmills gives us installable "wind capacity" 12 times our current use, and current electrical grid practices, and variability of wind, limit us to baseload from wind about ⅓ of installed capacity.

⅓ (12) = 4 times the electricity we need, just from wind.

[sethdayal]

02:30 AM on 03/09/2010

Your sources have been debunked here:

http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2010/01/review-comment-on-stanford-wind.html

Jacobson's " A Path to Sustainable Energy by 2030 “ Report gets chewed up and flushed here:

http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/11/03/wws-2030-critique/

The real definitive study on this issue is found here. It is done by a real practicing electrical engineer looking at repowering Australia with solar and wind.

http://bravenewclimate.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/lang_solar_realities_v2.pdf

http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/09/10/solar-realities-and-transmission-costs-addendum/

Solar PV with Pumped Hydro storage: $2800B
Solar PV with NaS battery storage: $4600B
Solar Thermal with storage: $4400B
Nuclear Power: $120B

The cost of the power lines with Wind & Solar was $180B - 50% MORE THAN THE ENTIRE NUCLEAR OPTION

While solar PV is three times the cost of wind, transmission and storage requirements are similar.

Most summers there are times when all across America there are no storm systems.

Virtually all wind sites would be producing well below average at a time when air conditioning needs and power needs are really high. There isno sun at night. A huge investment in storage or deadly radioactive radon and GHG spewing natural gas plant is required.

[alvdh1]

10:04 AM on 03/09/2010

More from Sethy's luni bin,

Not one of the stories you cited mentions energy efficiency which is the cheapest form of energy. Therefore, omitting energy efficiency to reduce demand does not mean anything has been trashed. Consequently, the stories are flawed and therefore meaningless. In addition, there is not an ounce of discussion regarding distributed energy and co-genration/combined heat power plants being utilized as base load power.

You can manipulate the facts anyway you want Sethy, to sell your cost overrun, toxic waste nuke story, but we will always be here to point out the holes and lies. There is no single solution as you propose. Clinging to your single solution mentality is an indication of your obsessiveness to bankrupt the world economies in your blind pursuit of nukes.

You are a grand cherry picker of facts and then lie repeatedly about the cost of your nuclear gennie. The only way to accomplish what you propose is to force the risk and cost on the genral population through taxpayers and rate payers.

[doubleB]

12:57 PM on 03/09/2010

You're still citing this grand piece of BS from Peter Lang?

Tell me, has he actually written his paper on what the effect diversity, a smart grid, and electric vehicles will have on the reliability of renewables? Or is he going to use the absolute worst case scenario in a 365 day period, design a PV system (ONLY a PV system) around that, and say it's too expensive to consider.

The man is obtuse, and short sighted. You can't design a good energy solution if you're too pre-biased to consider it to begin with.

[Mister Wu]

09:43 PM on 03/08/2010

Atoms for socialism?

[hibeam]

08:56 PM on 03/08/2010

Fire is also too dangerous for humans to handle. We should stop using fire. If God wanted humans to use fire he would have given us powerful brains and reasoning abilities.

[hibeam]

08:55 PM on 03/08/2010

When they first wired Boston for electricity some people tried to stop it. It was an insane and wildly dangerous idea. Too dangerous. Run away, run away.

[charles77]

11:50 PM on 03/09/2010

Excellent points and fanned.

People often fear what they cannot comprehend or understand. You will see alot of that here.
To the extreme anti-nuke people it is like an anti-nuke religion, facts don’t mean anything to them. It is like pointing out a ton of scientific information on evolution and they reply with a link to a Bible verse. Watch this Penn and Teller video on the antinuke nuts:
This video answers all the silly Anti-nuke junk science in 5 minutes, 31 seconds.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Usg7-xbQOcM&NR=1

[hibeam]

08:44 PM on 03/08/2010

Here come the nukes. Eat your heart out you environmentalist whackos. Your day has come and gone. Thanks to you boneheads I can’t even breath there is so much coal dust in the air. Bring on the clean air. Bring it on baby. I know there will be some nuclear waste buried in a desert somewhere. I don’t care. Bring on the clean air. Look look, I can see the mountain 3 miles away!

[doubleB]

01:06 PM on 03/09/2010

Yay! Bring on the clean air! Let's trade it for radioactive pollution that'll accumulate into 100 Yucca-sized mountains and last 100,000 years, and create an industry in and of itself just to manage it! And we'll hide that cost on the back of taxpayers! That way we'll be able to hide the fact that it's socialism, the very thing we like to scare people with at our tea-bagging rallies!

That sounds awesome!

[charles77]

11:54 PM on 03/09/2010

If you are concerned about radiation, you should know that a coal plant releases 100 times the radiation of a nuclear plant, you want less radiation, build more nuclear plants and stop burning coal.

Releases in 1982 from worldwide combustion of 2800 million tons of coal totaled 3640 tons of uranium (containing 51,700 pounds of uranium-235) and 8960 tons of thorium. The population gets 100 times more radiation from a coal plant than from a nuclear plant. So in 2004 by burning 4.6 billions tons of coal, we released 5980 tons of uranium into the air and 14720 tons of Thorium.
This is like 80 truck size dirty nuclear bombs releasing 1 ton of radioactive material every day.
A Chernobyl twice a week.
http://advancednano.blogspot.com/2006/10/coal-chernobyl-twice-week-and-coal-9.html

[charles77]

12:14 AM on 03/10/2010

Most of us old enough to remember the 1970’s see the overall joke in this whole conversation.

I can remember seeing brown snow from coal ash. Most people thought Nuclear was a much better and cleaner solution. This was way before anyone talked about CO2.

The so-called environmentalists fought Nuclear; they said use Natural Gas and Coal “it’s natural” or “if God wanted us to use Nuclear he wouldn’t have gave us coal and gas and oil”! Never mind we dig uranium out of the ground just like coal or oil or iron.
Environmental groups TOLD US to put all of the CO2 from Coal and Gas used in power production in the air for the last 40 years.

And now that environmentalists are concerned about CO2, instead of just saying we were wrong, lets build Nuclear, many are still fighting it. (In fairness many environmental groups are now supporting Nuclear or at least not opposing it.)

And one environmental group or another is fighting every other solution.

Environmental groups fight wind farms because of birds or “sight pollution”.
Environmental groups fight solar farms in the desert that harm desert life.
Environmental groups fight biofuels as not “clean enough” or “compete with food for cropland”.

But even today the extreme environmentalists are STILL trying to stop Nuclear power, and they don’t seem even to realize that means more coal, or electric bills at least 5 times higher.

That’s the joke!

[alvdh1]

12:50 PM on 03/10/2010

Most of us are old enough to realize tha Charles77 is a nuclear huckster, who manipulates, fabricates, omits and -promotes outright lies about the glories of a radiation based techology that has never lived up to a single promise.

Safe: Charles77 guarantees that the waste will be safe for 240,000 years. We have barely been a country for 234 years. His remains not likely be around for 240,000 years, but the waste he promotes will be.

Clean: Thousands of planned and unplanned releases of radiation into the environment that Charles rights of as an either or choice between nuclear and coal when neither are needed except for in the very short term while we transition to energy efficiency and alternatives.

To cheap to meter: No, here is the biggest and most scandalous aspect of the industry. There has never been a commercial nuclear power plant built in the U.S. that didn't have massive cost overruns and the costs of the entire nuclear fuel cycle costs masked by government subsidies and the Price Anderson Act scam.

This is what hucksters do. They become slick, cherry picking sychophants of the industry and product they sell.

[research]

08:31 PM on 03/08/2010

Nukes suck

"Clean" and too cheap to meter. we remember your nukes industry lies.

The nukes power industry grow out of the bomb industry. That's why the Uranium once through cycle was adopted: it makes the best bomb material.

Nuke power industry has inherited all of the bad habits of the nuclear bomb projects: secrecy, deception, disregard for the safety of civilians, and a war desperation mentality that will risk the Apocalypse to keep their program running.

The nuclear power industry provides "Cover" for the weapons program.

It's much hard to hide a nuke program if you can't hide it behind civilians power reactor programs.

More nuke power = more proliferation risk.,

always has, always will.

25 cent per kwh nukes 9$ per W average. http://energyeconomyonline.com/uploads/Is_New_Nuclear_Competitive_July_10_2009_FNS_Event.pdf

25 cents per KWH for new Nuclear.

http://climateprogress.org/2009/01/05/study-cost-risks-new-nuclear-power-plants/

10$ per W nuclear minimum.

http://climateprogress.org/2009/07/15/nuclear-power-plant-cost-bombshell-ontario/

Solar wind and bio fuels are cheaper already.

see my profile for links and details.

[sethdayal]

09:00 PM on 03/08/2010

More Greenwash from research/

All of course from his usual discredited sources.

www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf02.html. 3 cents a kwh current US cost.

Korea UAE build 1.5 cents a kwh 60 years.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/12/20091227134925905562.html

The Ontario link is like most of climate progress reports inaccurate.

The $26B is for two reactors + fuel + O&M + highways + overpasses in short everything for 60 years. Works out to 1.5 cents a kwh including the two reactors at $2.3B/Gw.

Solar PV is 50 cents a kwh on a commercial scale. Biofuel steals valuable land and fertilizer from the food chain and costs more than petroleum - no solution at all.

[research]

09:14 PM on 03/08/2010

More lies from Seth.

Seth think 1000 years of deadly waste,

is a good thing....

[ReedYoung]

01:20 AM on 03/09/2010

You complain about our sources while your references are Al Jazeera and the United Arab Emirates. You know most readers of this site are Americans, not al Qaidas, right?

[JShep]

05:21 PM on 03/08/2010

Most of the power generated in the US is from large utility companies with virtual monopolies in the areas they serve. There should be little risk to the US govt. on loan guarantees since the monopoly utility can raise their rates to cover any costs in excess of construction budgets. Financial risk to the US govt is negligable.

[alvdh1]

05:46 PM on 03/08/2010

Just a mere 80 percent of $54 Billion which will be directed not at the U.S. government, but instead at the txpayer and ratepayer in the event of default. You are absolutley right that it wont create risk to the government. It doesn't improve the economics of the defunct technology. It only shifts the burden. It is nice to know that you are a likely tea bagger except for when it comes to nuclear power. The all bets are off.

[charles77]

12:18 AM on 03/10/2010

Nuclear Plants only get “loan guarantees” but wind, solar and biofuels get “direct CASH SUBSIDIES”.
There is a huge difference in “loan guarantees” and “direct cash subsidies”. Loan guarantees only work in a business that is profitable because they have to be paid back with intrest. Direct cash subsidies are required when a business is “known to be unprofitable” and are never paid back.

There is a limit to our resources for direct cash subsidies.

[sethdayal]

04:49 PM on 03/08/2010

Here are some real recent sale prices and actual nuclear build costs and time frames without American bureaucrats and attorneys using state owned public power like Bonneville and TVA. Chance of default zero!!

Westinghouse four NRC approved American designed AP-1000 Vogtle type units China 4 year construction time cost $1.2 B/Gw.

AECL's Qinshan Canadian regulatory agency approved 2 Candu 6's , 4 year construction time, $2B /Gw.
Quotes received by Ontario last summer from both Areva and AECL were $2.4B/Gw and 1.5 cents a kwh.

AECL has projected a cost of less than $1B/Gw - and 3 year build times for its new ACR-1000 after only few dozen sales and Toshiba is doing the same with its AP-1000.

That is the cheapest power available to us - less even than fossils.

India's new nuke waste burning 500 Mw GenIV power plant coming into service next year at a cost of $1.5B/Gw. Six years construction time for first of a kind.

The difference between these costs and the American version labor. loan shark private power finance rates, and double the time frame delays caused by the NRC - things Obama could fix with a federal agency similar to Bonneville armed with nationwide site licenses for any coal plant in the US it wanted to convert to nuclear.

Better yet let Canada's very efficient public power companies rim the border with AECL reactors and make $trillions selling power to attorney operated US utilities.

[alvdh1]

05:15 PM on 03/08/2010

Sethy,

Do you really think were are stupid? How many time are you going to make up costs and then compare apples to oranges. Don't you think we understand that the pricing in China is never going to be achieved in America or Europe. Secondly, your numbers for the Canadian reactors are outright fabrications. The Indian GenIV reactor doesn't exist. Why is it that everything you speak of is provided without citing sources and is just a flat out lie. Wow, show me a financial report that verifies the Canada's reactors are making $trillions. You couldn't provide this information in your lifetime.

[ReedYoung]

01:25 AM on 03/09/2010

It's comforting to know I'm not the only one he's annoying.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carl-pope/loan-guarantees-for-safer_b_488176.html

[alvdh1]

05:35 PM on 03/08/2010

Sethy,

You lie you lie. The Ontario reactors were priced last summer at:

The AECL price for (2) 1,200 megawatt plants was $23 Billion.

The AREVA price for (2) 1,200 megawatt reactors was $26 Billion

and now they have been canceled.

It is a full time job out your misinformation, fabrications and outright lies.


The source for the nuclear pricing is the Toronto Sun July 20, 2009 Titled: Nuclear Future Dims For Ontario. See how this works. You make a statement and then provide the backup to substantiate it a opposed to just fabricating it.

[sethdayal]

07:08 PM on 03/08/2010

Google india nuclear fast breeder 2011. See how easy that is.

If you had taken the time to read about the Ontario quotes you would find that the $23 and $26 billion quotes were for all fuel, O&M, highways, bridges etc for 60 years not just the reactors. That works out to 1.5 cents a kwh. The reactors themselves were $2.3B/Gw.

Independent power providers borrow money at 15% compared to public power at 4%. That's why the public power model OPG, bonneville, TVA is so much more efficient that any private operation. With any type of power generation including wacky solar and wind schemes the public power option wins every time.

They aren't making $trillions yet but they sure could be selling nuclear power to the US, because folks like you are keep America generating power using a discredited private utility model.

[KIVPossum]

04:05 PM on 03/08/2010

Obama has proved he isn't green, isn't open, and isn't responsible with money

[higherstrategy]

03:11 PM on 03/08/2010

for a supposedly 'Green' president

he sure isn't doing anything Green

and Nuclear energy sure isn't clean or safe for the environment

[jsarets]

03:59 PM on 03/08/2010

Pressurized light water uranium-235/plutonium-239 fission reactors aren't inherently safe or clean or cheap. But liquid fluoride thorium-232/uranium-233 fission reactors are much, much better in every way (except you can't use them to make bombs).

[charles77]

11:58 PM on 03/09/2010

Why do you think Obama is for “clean coal” and Nuclear? Because 50% (20% Nuclear today) of our electricity comes from coal, switching to Nuclear would raise our electric bills a little, switching it to wind and solar, not possible without storage anyway, would mean electric bills 5 TIMES HIGHER THAN TODAY! He dosen’t have any politically viable choice. People cannot pay electric bills higher than their rent or mortgage.

Dr. Chu, Obama’s Energy Dept Head, was asked since solar is now a proven technolgy why are utilities not putting up millions of them. His response, “the price of solar would have to fall by a factor of 5 to 10 for that to happen”. Google his interviews.

Even people in the solar industry, the true believers of the true believers, don’t see the systems getting much cheaper in the near future because building solar cells has already become a commodity industry. They take a fixed amount of raw materials and the price of those raw materials is not falling and in some cases, like rare earth elements, is rising.

[alvdh1]

02:48 PM on 03/08/2010

It is corporate welfare plain and simple. For a dose of nuclear economic reality, read the November 9, 2009 Citibank economic analysis of nuclear power. This is a Bush era example of privatize the profits and socialize the costs and risks carried over into the Obama administration. If he wants to get the Rebulicans on board, he could deregulate the utility industry in 48 states using the outdated Guaranteed Rate of Return (GROR) investor owned utility model and replace it with the California Independent Service Operator (ISO) and open up the grid to small business and residential producers of clean renewable energy and allow them to sell their excess capacity at full market rates.

The GROR model prevents competition in the electricity markets at every level. Obama could litterally beat the Republicans over the head for not supporting free energy markets. Making this change alone would do more for preventing climate change than the current climate legislation could ever do. Imagine the Republicans mounting a nationwide campaign to thwart free energy markets. The California ISO demonstrates that everyday the wind blows and the sun shines, the California utilites turn on their fixed cost assets (wind, solar, hydro and geothermal) first before they turn on their variable cost assets (nuclear, natural gas and coal gasification). Why? Because it makes economic sense to reduce their fuel costs by not burning it until they have to.

[charles77]

06:55 PM on 03/10/2010

Nuclear Plants only get “loan guarantees” but wind, solar and biofuels get “direct CASH SUBSIDIES”.
There is a huge difference in “loan guarantees” and “direct cash subsidies”. Loan guarantees only work in a business that is profitable because they have to be paid back with intrest. Direct cash subsidies are required when a business is “known to be unprofitable” and are never paid back.

There is a limit to our resources for direct cash subsidies.

[lightningbolt]

02:32 PM on 03/08/2010

The corporations who are bribing Obama to support nuclear power don't care about any kind of fallout, financial or radioactive. They are forcing Obama to support something very dangerous in the name of corporate profit. We must break the power of corporations. We must make bribery illegal. It is our most urgent priority.

[lightningbolt]

02:31 PM on 03/08/2010

Obama is not trying to win republican support for anything. Everyone knows that the republicans are going to say no to EVERYTHING. Obama is supporting republican causes because his campaign donors are forcing him to do so.