Trigaux: Blind to runaway costs, nuclear power industry abandons another nuke plant

Business column in the Tampa Bay Times, by Robert Trigaux.

Reporting on the cancellation of two partially built, proposed new reactors in South Carolina, Trigaux notes "It all adds up to another black eye — and there have been many — for nuclear power in the United States."

He then quotes Peter Bradford on the dismal financial history of ultimately abandoned atomic reactor construction projects in the U.S.:

"South Carolina is joining a dozen other U.S. states with multibillion-dollar ruins in the place of promised nuclear plants," stated Peter Bradford, a former commissioner of the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission and a frequent critic of the industry's mismanagement.

"From Seabrook 2 and Shoreham in the Northeast to Midland, Marble Hill and Zimmer in the Midwest, to the Washington Public Power Supply System in the Northwest and back across the country to Clinch River and Bellefonte in Tennessee in Alabama and Levy County in Florida," he said, "the list of cancelled billion-dollar nuclear plants represents mountains of money that could have contributed to useful energy infrastructure."