Obama to Announce Loan Help for US Nuclear Power

[Tilted (Premo)]

Obama to Announce Loan Help for US Nuclear Power

The Obama administration, advancing nuclear power use to help cut greenhouse gas emissions, will announce Tuesday an $8.3 billion loan guarantee to help Southern build two reactors, a government official told Reuters.

The reactors are in line to be among the first nuclear generating facilities to win U.S. government approval in three decades.

...

A spokesman for Southern said the loan guarantee would cover up to 70 percent of the company's portion of the project's costs. He said the company would provide more details Tuesday.

Southern applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in March 2008 to build two reactors at the company's Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia, which already has two reactors. The Vogtle plant is about 170 miles east of Atlanta.

Southern says it expects to receive license approval for the new reactors next year.

[Larry Gude (Premo)]

The reactors are in line to be among the first nuclear generating facilities to win U.S. government approval in three decades.

It's a start.

[Pete]

Funny how this is a positive story for Obama. I was just down there last year floating down the Savannah River by Vogtle and they were already clearing land and dredging the river to get barges up to deliver reactor materials.

This was happening long before Obama came along and well before these "loan guarantees"

[Tilted (Premo)]

Originally Posted by Pete

Funny how this is a positive story for Obama. I was just down there last year floating down the Savannah River by Vogtle and they were already clearing land and dredging the river to get barges up to deliver reactor materials.

This was happening long before Obama came along and well before these "loan guarantees"

Yeah, I don't think there's any contention that the Administration is responsible for getting these projects going generally. There have been a number of reactors in the pipeline, and a spokeswoman even acknowledged that this project was selected for the first loan guarantee because it was the closest to receiving final approval.

I still don't think the government should be involving itself in the marketplace in these kinds of ways, but this is a more welcome involvement than most. We'd be better off if the government would just stop doing whatever it can to scare private capital back into its hole, so that it could more readily and efficiently be put to work, instead of the government assuming for itself the roles that it deters private capital from.

The nuclear industry doesn't need the government to be pro-nuclear power so much as it needs it to not be anti-nuclear power.

[Larry Gude (Premo)]

Originally Posted by Pete

Funny how this is a positive story for Obama. I was just down there last year floating down the Savannah River by Vogtle and they were already clearing land and dredging the river to get barges up to deliver reactor materials.

This was happening long before Obama came along and well before these "loan guarantees"

Look at all the road projects that started last summer, including a bunch in Maryland, that got brand new sign when he took office: "Your Obama Bucks at Work! Hail, Caesar!"

Originally Posted by Tilted

Obama to Announce Loan Help for US Nuclear Power

Never Happen ..... the Enviro's will shut them down with lawsuits

[Pete]

Originally Posted by EmptyTimCup

Never Happen ..... the Enviro's will shut them down with lawsuits

This is a plant that has been going for 20 years in Burke County Georgia. There are no granola munchers there. They hunt them, especially the out of towners.

Originally Posted by Pete

This is a plant that has been going for 20 years in Burke County Georgia. There are no granola munchers there. They hunt them, especially the out of towners.

[kwillia]

I am certainly no granola eating tree hugger, however, I am very concerned with wanting to know what the plan is for spent fuel. This needs to be decided before additional reactors are built... heck, there isn't even a plan for the reactors we already have...

Spent fuel news at nuclear.com

... the waste from more than 100 nuclear reactors that the federal government was supposed to start accepting for burial 10 years ago is still at the reactor sites, at least 20 years behind schedule. But it is making itself felt in the federal budget. With court orders and settlements, the federal government has already paid the utilities $342 million, but is virtually certain to pay a total of at least $7 billion in the next few years and probably over $11 billion, government officials said. The industry said the total could reach $35 billion... The payments are due because the reactor owners were all required to sign contracts with the Energy Department in the early 1980s, with the government promising to dispose of the waste for a fee of a 10th of a cent per kilowatt-hour. It was supposed to begin taking away the fuel in the then far-off year of 1998. Since then, the utilities have filed 60 lawsuits.

[bcp (Premo)]

Originally Posted by EmptyTimCup

Never Happen ..... the Enviro's will shut them down with lawsuits

Maybe the power to the enviros offices should just be turned off so they can actually live like they want. Without using any fossil fuels.

Im sure they would find a way to power their organizations quickly, and by them doing so, they might come up with a new power supply that could actually work.