“Absolutely I think they should build another [nuclear plant], because I think they’ll get better at it, It’s the cleanest energy you can possibly have out there, and we’re gonna need a tremendous increase in energy production.” [Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.), quoted in Politico. June 27, 2024]

Nuclear power is a government-created and government-enabled industry. It was born of government largesse and regulatory favor, led by these five policies:

• Federal research & development by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC, founded 1946)
• The Price-Anderson Act of 1957 limit on accident liability
• Five years of ‘free’ enriched uranium from AEC
• Federal jawboning to parties to construct plants
• State utility commissioners granting rate-base status for new plants

Nuclear’s history of cost overruns, construction delays, and in-progress cancellations speaks for itself. Suffice it to say that the free market would have never allowed this industry to jump from military applications to civilian ones.…

Ed. note: Nuclear Power is a much talked about technology in the current climate debate. Electricity veteran Ken Maize of Quad Report provides an update on three current nuclear issues: a new, mysterious NuScale power agreement; Plant Vogtle legal restitution; and the recommissioned 805-MW Palisades plant in Michigan.

NuScale’s Mystery Deal

NuScale Power has landed a deal with privately-owned blockchain data center developer Standard Power to provide two planned data centers in Pennsylvania and Ohio, 924-MW each, with electricity from arrays of NuScale’s 77-MW VOYGR small modular reactors, 12 for each data center. NuScale’s partner ENTRA1 Energy has the exclusive rights to develop, manage, own and operate energy production plants powered by NuScale’s SMRs.

NuScale (founded 2007) and ENTRA1 created an exclusive global partnership in 2022 to commercialize NuScale’s small modular reactors (SMRs). …

“The failure of the uncompleted V.C. Summer Units #2 and #3 ($10 billion), and the continuing woes at Vogtle, have marked the complete failure of Congress to create a ‘nuclear renaissance’ through the 2005 Energy Policy Act. The act provided for up to $8 billion each in ‘loan guarantees’ for new nuclear plants.”

“Nuclear ‘loan guarantees,’ it turns out, is a politically constructed term to cover the fact that the ‘guarantees’ are actually Treasury funds, and loan payments are made to the Treasury.”

The sun rises in the East and sets in the West. And Southern Company announces further delays in the startup of Georgia Power’s Vogtle Units 3 and 4, the only nuclear power plant under construction in the U.S.

In its annual financial report issued Feb. 16, Southern said it will push back the startup date for Unit 3 of the two-unit, Westinghouse AP-1000 reactor project to May or June of this year. …

The pile of missing or incomplete documents added up to a delay of three to six months, Southern said. That additional time is costing $920 million…. While Georgia Power customers have been bearing the brunt of Vogtle’s costs, Southern said in a regulatory filing that … “[the] incremental costs associated with these provisions will not be recovered from retail customers.”

Plant Vogtle’s latest move highlights the nuclear industry’s chief troubles with building large, baseload reactors: safety and cost. (Kristi Swartz, February 18, 2022)

“Plant Vogtle hits new delays; costs surge near $30B,” read the headline from EnergyWire (E&E News) last week.

The 2,200 MW project was supposed to cost $14 billion and be completed in 2016 (Unit 3) and 2017 (Unit 4); the project now nears $30 billion with a start date in 2023.…