Not A Viable Climate Strategy: With More Than Half of US Reactors Expected to Be Uneconomical by 2020, $160 Billion Would Still Be Required for “Narrower” Subsidy Program; Huge Infusion of Support Would Crowd Out Renewables.
WASHINGTON, D.C.///November 3, 2016///Nuclear power started out in the United States with the promise it would be “too cheap to meter,” but may end up being “too big to bail out.” A new report by the nonprofit Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) finds that a national bailout of nuclear energy patterned on the model advanced this year in New York State would cost ratepayers and taxpayers more than $280 billion by 2030. Based on an independent analysis that over half of existing nuclear power in the U.S. will be unprofitable by 2020, a narrower bailout would still cost the U.S. $160 billion by 2030. In addition to enormous expense, NIRS found that one major side-effect of bailing out nuclear power on a large-scale basis would be the starving of renewable energy of needed capital.
Available online at http://bit.ly/too-big-to-bail-out-nuclear, the “Too Big to Bail Out: The Economic Costs of a National Nuclear Power Subsidy” report notes that since 2014 nuclear power companies have lobbied aggressively for new subsidies to benefit existing nuclear power stations in the U.S. So far, such proposals have only been adopted in one state (New York), and legal and regulatory challenges have resulted today in only one nuclear reactor receiving temporary financial support to date: the R.E. Ginna Nuclear Power Plant in New York. A long-term, statewide subsidy policy recently adopted in New York, to be implemented beginning in April 2017, is now being touted as a model for other states and for national implementation. The total cost of the 12-year subsidy New York is offering to four reactors is substantial: an estimated $7.6 billion -- more than three times as much as the subsidies for new renewable energy sources ($2.44 billion by 2030) under the state’s new standard. More.