“Rising steel prices, interest rates could push NuScale Utah project cost to $100/MWh, but support remains” by Robert Walton (Utility Dive: November 16, 2022)

Dive Brief:

• Higher steel prices and interest rates are driving up the projected cost of energy from Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems’ planned 462 MW small modular reactor project, multiple municipal utilities have reported. 
• Previous cost estimates were for the project to generate power at a price of $58/MWh, but at least one municipal power provider says project developers told it that prices could run $90/MWh to $100/MWh. The Utah project consists of a half dozen 77 MW reactors, being developed by NuScale, with the first expected online in 2029.
• The rise in prices likely means the UAMPS project will not hit certain engineering, procurement and construction benchmarks allowing participants to renegotiate the price they pay or abandon the project, experts said.

David Brooks farewell column

In reality, I’ve long believed that there is a weird market failure in American culture. There are a lot of shows on politics, business and technology, but there are not enough on the fundamental questions of life that get addressed as part of a great liberal arts education: How do you become a better person? How do you find meaning in retirement? Does America still have a unifying national narrative? How do great nations recover from tyranny?

Four decades of hyper individualism expanded individual choice but weakened the bonds between people. Multiple generations of students and their parents fled from the humanities and the liberal arts, driven by the belief that the prime purpose of education is to learn how to make money.

“The U.S. oil industry has long opposed government intervention in the fossil-fuel business….”…