Excerpt: "The Department of Energy is about to guarantee $8.3 Billion of loans to the Southern Company and its partners to build two new nuclear reactors in Georgia. ... How bad an investment is this nuclear loan guarantee?"
Congressman Dennis Kucinich decries 'Bet the Farm' loan guarantees for nuclear reactors. (photo: Mark Wilson Getty Images)
The Folly of Nuclear "Bet-the-Farm" Loan Guarantees
30 April 12
he Department of Energy is about to guarantee $8.3 Billion of loans to the Southern Company and its partners to build two new nuclear reactors in Georgia. That is 15 times the size of the loan guarantee to Solyndra, the solar energy company that failed last year.
How bad an investment is this nuclear loan guarantee?
Nuclear reactors are so bad an investment that Wall Street won't touch them. Moody's has called them "bet-the-farm-investments." Moody's has downgraded the financial ratings of the utilities that are planning to build them. Citibank says that "Three of the risks faced by developers - Construction, Power Price, and Operational - are so large and variable that individually they could each bring even the largest utility company to its knees financially."
Even nuclear industry executives call new reactors "a large speculation" and say that they "are not economic" because of low gas prices, excess generating capacity and low growth in demand. Two of these executives have admitted that "We can't make the numbers work." The Economist magazine declared in its March 10th issue that nuclear power is "the dream that failed"--the plants are too costly and uncompetitive with alternatives.
Wind, solar and energy efficiency are all better investments, and their costs have been falling for years. So, why are we wasting $8.3 billion on corporate welfare to an industry that, for five continuous decades, has not been able to operate without large government subsidies?
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Comments
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Reminds me of my growing list of if not now then next time 3rd party potentials, Kucinich, Feingold, Stein, Sanders, Anderson, Grayson, Warren, S.Brown, W.Clark and a list to note:
http://www.mariaslist.net/national.html
President Obama should make him Secretary of Anything! Put him in the Cabinet, where he will put his extensive expertise to work! He kept the steel mill in Cleveland. He cleaned up the water. He has spoken truth for decades, and put truth into action. He knows so much about jobs, the environment, complex businesses and economics; but put him anywhere and he works the hardest, takes the least time off, and really takes seriously the job of public servant. And he is one of the few who is not corrupt. At all. He is not against business; he worked to keep the steel business open and working, not only for the lower scale jobs, but the American industry itself. Have I left anything out? Yes, plenty; the investigation of war profiteering, crimes in the Bush administration, etc.; he is the conscience of America. If he speaks, I always listen, because he never says something without careful consideration.
But I will say that it is likely that industries prefer nuclear over wind, solar, geothermal because the former is highly centralized, capital intensive, and hence produces a revenue stream that the investors like. Solar and wind are more labor intensive (lots of installation jobs, etc.-- wages to pay to local contractors) and decentralized-- many little companies could get into the act. Also a smaller revue stream, as it is harder to charge someone for sunlight. In this instance, it is likely that capitalism is in the way of appropriate technology.
WHO IS RATIONALIZING THIS TYPE OF DUMBNESS?
I guess all those big time Harvard, Wharton, Kellogg, Chicago, Stanford MBA's remain in intellectual limbo...conside ring the panoply of pitfalls, greedholes, pollutionpits and ruined economies we witness world wide...yawn, doing the same thing over and over etc.
It has always been this way. The U.S. pays for any accidents (disasters), and subsidizes the industry too! -a way for someone to profit from nuclear weapons' by-product. The creation of plutonium was a very bad move for US. Meanwhile I lived in a passive solar house that needed only a small morning fire while the sun rose over snow and -20 degrees. Built it 25 years ago, still works great.
Looking back at the BP spill in the Gulf there is a clear pattern. A decision by the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service (MMS) gave BP's lease at Deepwater Horizon a "categorical exclusion" from the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) on April 6, 2009. I believe this failure to follow existing regulation is the primary reason behind the BP disaster in the Gulf.
We now have to listen to the insane screaming from the right to permit the Keystone Oil Pipeline regardless of ANY environmental review. The government is also blocking any logical long-term energy policy. They want us to believe that this will help the national economy. This could instead become the most expensive legacy of our relentless swing to the right and away from common sense.
Ignoring the environmental effects of our flawed and archaic energy policy may be our biggest misjudgement to date.
America does not know enough about earthquakes: a minor earthquake in Virginia created a lot of damage in Washington D.C., but apparently not enough for them to wake up to dangers. The last time the New Madrid fault shifted at the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, the earthquake caused chimneys to fall in Washington D.C. and also Boston, Mass. When it happens again, several cities will be rubble, along with all the nuclear power plants in the area.
Incorporation seems to be a form of failure ~ as it becomes more and more unaccountable and less responsible. A responsible individual or a nation is successful.
Having been involved in work to insist on better shipment & storage of "Low Level Radioactive Waste" (there is no known 'safe' level of exposure to radioactivity) I've concluded that the all of the government 'studies', like the military-indust rial complex, are simply designed to postpone and prolong the conflict, dividing and subdividing the inevitable and obvious truth ~ to maximize profits.
I hope one day we will be lucky enough to have him for our president.
Every time I hear about nuclear energy and building nuclear reactors I get sick. Why are we being so stupid? Have we learned nothing from Fukushima, Chernobyl and Indian Point???
People, we've GOT to get these industrialists out of our government and back into Pandora's Box before they kill us all!!!
Vote Progressive Democrat and accept nothing less; no DemoRats and no DINO's.
The hour is growing late and we are on the brink of extincting if these kooks on Wall Street and the Big Box Industries are allowed to continue with their death march to one disaster after another.
W H A T A B O U T T H E W A S T E ?
Dennis Kucinich and Alan Grayson voted, contrary to their signed pledges, in support of the Affordable Care Act, its lack of a public option notwithstanding.
Then Rep. Kucinich, when asked by Amy Goodman in interview him jointly with Ralph Nader, why he supported the Act, said: I did not want to see the Obama presidency undermined (words to that effect). That was also Grayson's reason for violating his own word.
What they saw in the presidency of Barack Obama that was worth saving, I cannot imagine! They probably saw their positive vote as an absolute requirement on them as Democrats, one they could not escape without being cast out of the Party. Ultimately, their betrayal did not help them. They are now out of the House. They could just as well have preserved their integrity but did not.
Why did they betray progressives? They still look to the Party, to the administration, for appointments or support as possible candidates again. They are unprincipled when principles count.
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