The long-dormant construction of nuclear power plants in the United States is about to be reawakened:
In the next few days, the Energy Department plans to announce the first of $18.5 billion in loan guarantees for building new reactors.
How do these loan guarantees work?
If new plants built with government guarantees prove to be a commercial success, the program costs taxpayers nothing; if they prove too expensive to finish or are completed but cannot earn enough to repay the loans, the taxpayer is on the hook.
So assuming nuclear power can take the place of coal-fired power plants, very much out of favor with the Obama administration (at least compared to previous administrations), and stay in the black, the American taxpayer and the American lungs will be much better off. Especially when combined with some sort of cap-and-trade program.
The aversion to nuclear power, even among former critics, seems to be waning enough due to new understandings of global climate change and coal-fired power plants' role:
“There is an increasing number of people who have spent their lives as environmental advocates who believe that carbon is such an urgent problem that they have to rethink their skepticism about nuclear power,” said Jonathan Lash, the president of the World Resources Institute, who puts himself in that category.
An added bonus is the promise of thousands of new construction and engineering jobs that would be created if new nuclear energy products were given the green light. Ohio and Maryland are actively seeking new nuclear plants for this very reason, along with the added tax revenue a power plant brings.
So this sounds really good in principle, so why do I have a bit of pause? I'm not sure why, as taxpayers, we have to guarantee these loans. One would think studies of French nuclear power, its costs and benefits, would be a good enough arbiter for private industry itself to decide on whether or not to risk an investment. For what it's worth, in 2007, Areva (France's state-owned nuclear power company) posted a $1.1 billion profit.
So what do you think? Is this just more corporate welfare or a clean energy program worthy of our tax dollars?