Barack Obama's 2012 budget marks a major escalation in the nuclear war against a green-powered future, whose advocates are already fighting back.
Amidst massive budget cuts for social and environmental programs, Obama wants $36 billion in loan guarantees for a reactor industry that cannot secure sufficient private "marketplace" financing for new construction.
In the past decade the reactor industry has spent at least $640 million lobbying for these massive advance bailouts. But since 2007, safe energy advocates have succeeded in keeping them out of the federal budget.
The $36 billion Obama wants to underwrite new reactor construction would be added to $18.5 billion set aside under George W. Bush. In 2010 Obama allocated $8.33 billion of that for two reactors under construction in Georgia. The Continuing Resolution for funding the government until the end of the 2011 fiscal year slashes all loan guarantees for energy except those for nuclear reactors and uranium enrichment.
Obama's proposed 2012 budget does contain some additional money for renewables. But it also allocates $97 million for Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) which are untested and unproven. SMRs are vulnerable to public health, radioactive waste and potential terror problems that parallel those plaguing the larger light water reactors that have proven so economically and ecologically disastrous throughout the past half-century.
Industry allies in Congress are joining the White House in trying to classify such both large and small reactors as "clean energy." Though cosmetic, the designation would allow reactor backers to fit atomic power under the rubric of long-term goals for cleaning up America's hugely polluting energy supply.
Price tags for proposed new reactors have recently doubled and tripled. Projected at $2-3 billion as few as three years ago, proposed projects in Florida, Texas and elsewhere have soared to $10 billion and more.
The Congressional Budget Office has warned that the failure rate for reactor loan guarantees could well exceed 50%. The economic history of atomic power has been catastrophic, with the previous generation of reactors coming in on average around 200% over original cost projections. Reactors now under construction in Finland and France have soared to billions of dollars over budget and are years behind schedule.
In Georgia, where rate-payers are being forced to fund reactor construction even if the plant never opens, critics fear costs at the Vogtle site are certain to soar. New projects proposed for Texas, Maryland and South Carolina are also plagued by financial doubts.
At the same time, major breakthroughs in solar cell technology have prompted a wide range of studies showing deployment of green energy to be cheaper than new atomic power, and growing moreso.
But while slashing social programs, Obama seems determined to use taxpayer money to fund a radioactive technology that grows ever more expensive and uncompetitive.
Can the green power movement again stop the new loan guarantees, as it's done since 2007?
"This year, with more public attention on government spending, it seems even unlikelier that Congress will approve" more nuke guarantees, says Michael Mariotte, Executive Director of the Nuclear Information & Resource Service.
For a green-powered future, says Mariotte, "no funding for new reactors is acceptable."
In fact, large hydro alone would fulfill renewable energy standards already legislated in many states. That is one of the reasons people such as Mr. Wasserman made sure large hydro was purposefully excluded from the legal language used to develop renewable portfolio standard bills passed by various state legislatures over the past decade.
Why would nuclear and large hydro not meet clean energy standards? Neither type of power plant discharge emissions during the process of generating electrical energy.
Why does California, Washington and other states only allow hydro facilities 30 MW and under to be declared "clean" and "renewable" Why would a 30 MW hydro facility be any different than a 800MW hydro facility? That makes no sense unless of course your real business is creating markets for direct cash payouts to the wind and solar industries while providing additional markets to sell natural gas.
The slow death spiral of the wind and solar industries once nuclear energy is legally declared "clean" is what really gives Mr. Wasserman nightmares, not the additional loan guarantees.
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The federal push for more solar and wind through direct cash subsidies started around 1978. I can go back and pull up articles from decades ago that say basically the same thing over and over again: "Solar and wind will be cheaper in the future".
It’s similar to what Robert Bryce states when he discusses EV’s: "The electric car is the next best thing and always will be"
And it does not matter how cheap solar panels are to buy or install. What really matters from a legal and financial concern is that the market has been rigged by people such as Mr. Wasserman to exclude large hydro and nuclear from being labeled "clean". This was accomplished through political gamesmanship years ago for the primary purpose of excluding competition and forcing the government to mandate the use of weak technologies when better options are on the table.
Solar and wind are not stand-alone technologies which makes them weak from a grid reliability standpoint as was discovered in dramatic fashion in Texas.
Adding more wind and solar does not add capacity to the grid. They only temporarily displace gas turbines or hydro resources. In fact wind and solar really do not displace that much natural gas since the turbines are required to be spinning reserve mode by FERC which means they are still burning gas, just not as much.
http://theenergycollective.com/ansorg/48350/fitting-wind-electricity-grid
They really really really dislike discussion of the economics. The economics are a failure for nuclear power. Life-cycle costs give the game away. No plant in the USofA (or France, or the UK or Germany) has been constructed on budget, collected enough money for waste storage, or for decommissioning. Consequently it IS making sense to run these financial black holes for longer to further amortise the storage and decommissioning costs, still with no guarantee that there's enough in the kitty.
Ultimately, the money spent on nuclear is sunk. We could be changing the energy efficiency profiles of these economies and installed solar-PV, largely leaving the existing nuclear plants to run their course while decommissioning coal plant. That should buy enough time to get excellent geothermal resource developed, wind, CSP etc.... Renewables are an investment. Non-renewables are sunk costs.
"At the same time, major breakthroughs in solar cell technology have prompted a wide range of studies showing deployment of green energy to be cheaper than new atomic power, and growing moreso."
I have been tracking this claim for the past six months. It is traceable to a single paper that was commissioned by an organization named NC Warn whose mission statement clearly shows that they oppose nuclear energy and support alternatives like solar.
"NC WARN is a member-based nonprofit tackling the accelerating crisis posed by climate change – along with the various risks of nuclear power – by watch-dogging utility practices and working for a swift North Carolina transition to energy efficiency and clean power generation."
The SINGLE paper was written by a former economics professor from Duke named Blackburn who retired to Florida more than 20 years ago. He was assisted by a candidate for a master's degree in environmental management who happens to be attending Duke.
The paper has been the subject of an echo chamber of articles CLAIMING that it was a study by Duke University; those articles do not make up a "wide range of studies." The NY Times version of the story displays an editorial note disclaiming the result.
The paper showed that installed rooftop solar systems produced electricity costing 35 cents per kw-hr, but it publicized the computed cost AFTER taxpayers picked up 65% of the installation cost.
In the words of Howard Cosell - Down goes Wasserman.
http://www.cleanenergy.org/images/factsheets/Lazard2009_LevelizedCostofEnergy.pdf
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/energy-smart/nuclear-power-failing-price-test-20101130-18fjb.html
From the second:
"The paper, to be given at a solar industry conference in Canberra today, finds the cheapest renewable energy sources – including landfill gas, onshore wind, conventional geothermal and hydro – are already cost-competitive with conventional nuclear energy power plants.
By 2020, offshore wind farms, solar thermal and solar photovoltaics are all projected to be less expensive than nuclear energy."
List of papers by Mark Diesendorf here:
http://www.ies.unsw.edu.au/staff/mark.html
Here's some real professional electrical engineers in a recent peer reviewed article in rhe prestigious publication Energy kicking Diesendorf 's nonsense out of the ballpark.
http://theenergycollective.com/barrybrook/47728/nuclear-least-cost-low-carbon-baseload-power-source
The World Health Organization - you know, REPUTABLE DOCTORS, said 56 people died as a direct result of Chernobyl.
You can lie until you're read in the face but you can't change the truth.
China has learned the key to wealth the key to prosperity is cheap energy not cheap labor! That's why the Asian nations are planning and building more nuclear power plants!
Look I want green energy but anyone who thinks you can compete in a free trade world using green energy verses nations using cheap dirty coal energy needs to mail back their engineering diploma!
Why has China captured over 50% of the solar cell business in less than 10 years in what are basically automated factories? Cheap dirty coal energy! Why did Intel build its largest microchip factory in Viet Nam? Cheap coal energy!
Nuclear is the only non CO2 emissions energy source that can compete with dirty coal energy and that is only if we keep the lawsuits down!
We could become an isolationist nation and transform to green energy but it really doesn't address the Climate Change issue does it?
What's sad is, I don't think Wasserman lies for the sake of money; I think it's that he's been on this kick since he was a teenager, and can't swallow his pride long enough to look at the issue objectively, see the damage to the environment caused by anti-nuclear propaganda, see the exaggeration of danger proposed thereby, and change his mind. It's a large crow to eat, I understand - but it's become more cowardice than anything else, in my opinion.
'Course, I'm a programmer, not a psychologist.
Nuclear energy is such a good investment that the German government recently decided to allow its nuclear plants to continue operating so that it could collect a new tax of $2.3 billion marks against just 17 plants. Though the owners were not terribly happy about paying extra taxes, the certainty that they would be allowed to operate their well-built, carefully maintained facilities has resulted in a subsequent announcement that two reactors that were shut down a few years ago because they needed some minor investments will soon be restarted.
The only real risk that has kept many financial sources away from loaning money to nuclear plants is one that Wasserman himself helped to add to the mix - the "Shoreham syndrome". That is my own name for the risk that a nuclear plant can be completely built and licensed - at the cost of several billion dollars - and then prevented from operating and earning revenue by the political act of a hack who owes his career to the fossil fuel companies who supported his campaign.
Rod Adams
Publisher, Atomic Insights
"In part, my parents are still living in their 40-year old house because the economics of tearing it down and buying a new house are still dismal."
Why on earth would we wont to tear these plants down, they are operating just fine. If you are confused with the difference between the length of an operating license and the useful lifetime of a reactor, I image there are a couple of people on this thread who would be willing to explain it to you or at least point you to a good source of information.
Only Harvey and the violent fanatics who attacked and injured security officers at a power plant in Spain yesterday are left on the fringe opposing nuclear power.