As reported by Steven Mufson in the Washington Post.
The Reuters Washington, D.C. bureau chief, featured in the article's posted video, mentioned the untested U.S. federal government guarantees associated with the implicated Vogtle 3 & 4, Georgia new reactor construction project.
Mufson reports:
Another wrinkle in the Westinghouse saga is the $8.3 billion in loan guarantees the Energy Department provided to help finance the Vogtle reactors. Those guarantees were given to the utilities, so taxpayers would not be liable for losses unless the utilities were unable to make payments. (emphasis added)
But Toshiba-Westinghouse Nuclear's bankruptcy has undoubtedly increased the risk of default on the federal taxpayer-backed nuclear loan guarantees, which was high to begin with.
Note that $8.3 billion of taxpayer-back nuclear loan guarantees are at risk of being lost, if the Vogtle 3 & 4 new reactor construction project defaults on its loan repayment. This is 15 times the amount of taxpayer money lost in the Solyndra solar loan guarantee default, as Michael Mariotte of NIRS pointed out many years ago.
Critics of the nuclear loan guarantee program warned about such risks in May 2001, when the Cheney Energy Task Force Report first floated the proposal of nuclear loan guarantees; again in 2005 when nuclear loan guarantees were made legal by passage of the Energy Policy Act; and again in 2007, when Congress and George W. Bush approved more than $20 billion worth of new reactor loan guarantees; and again leading up to the 2014 Obama administration approval of the $8.3 billion nuclear loan guarantee for Vogtle 3 and 4, without requiring any skin in the game by any of the companies involved -- an economic moral hazard with a radioactive twist!