nuclear

New Report Raises Troubling Questions for Vogtle Nuclear Project

A group of environmentalists says taxpayers should be worried about extending an $8 billion credit line to Georgia Power's Plant Vogtle nuclear expansion project in Augusta.

To kickstart more nuclear development, the Obama administration in 2010 conditionally committed the government to the massive loan.

Sara Barczak, an attorney with the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, says given ongoing project delays and cost overruns, taxpayers should be leary of the investment.

Nuclear Opponents Invoke Solyndra

While no nuclear loan guarantees have been granted, one has nonetheless been promised to the companies now building the Vogtle 3 and 4 reactors, near Augusta, Ga. It is not clear whether those builders, led by the Southern Company, will actually accept a federal guarantee; Southern says it has been shopping in the private market.

Groups Unearth Documents On Vogtle

Environmental groups are crying foul on loan terms acquired by Southern Company for its Vogtle nuclear plant.

The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy and others are calling for a greater degree of transparency in the federally-backed financing of the delayed and over-budget project.Anti-nuclear activists are drawing comparisons to the failed energy company Solyndra in a report that took three years to complete.

The nuclear plant near Augusta is the first new reactor to be built in the US in over a decade.

Review of Documents Pertaining to Department of Energy Conditional Loan Guarantees for Vogtle 3 & 4

Hundreds of documents released from DOE under a Freedom of Information Request and subsequent litigation shed new light onto DOE's management of an $8.33 billion loan guarantee on offer to support the construction of two new nuclear units at the Vogtle reactor in Georgia.  The documents raise questions about how project risks were screened, the loan terms in the conditional committment agreement provided by DOE, the adequacy of the credit subsidy payments from borrowers to the US Treasury under the deal, and involvement by political appointees focused on getting the deal done.

The Hidden Costs of Nuclear Power: UK’s Route to its 2050 Low Carbon Target

The UK operates 19 reactors that provided 15.7% of the country's electricity needs in 2010. The cost of supplying this electricity is cheap. The big six electricity suppliers make their profit from an industry which provides poor value for money to the taxpayer and leaves us with a toxic legacy that exceeds 1,000 lifetimes. Maintaining the infrastructure surrounding electricity supplied by nuclear fuels is prohibitively expensive. An argument can be made that all ancillary costs must be included in the generation cost of nuclear power in order to calculate a realistic cost per MWh.

Federal Loan Guarantees for the Construction of Nuclear Power Plants

Administered by the Department of Energy (DOE), the loan guarantee program encourages private investment in nuclear energy by lowering the cost of borrowing and possibly increasing the availability of credit for project sponsors—usually an individual utility, a consortium of utilities, or a merchant power producer. In exchange for providing a loan guarantee, DOE is authorized to charge sponsors a fee that is meant to recover the guarantee's estimated budgetary cost.

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