Why the Scariest Nuclear Threat May Be Coming from Inside the White House
As reported by Michael Lewis in Vanity Fair.
The article begins:
Donald Trump’s secretary of energy, Rick Perry, once campaigned to abolish the $30 billion agency that he now runs, which oversees everything from our nuclear arsenal to the electrical grid. The department’s budget is now on the chopping block. But does anyone in the White House really understand what the Department of Energy actually does? And what a horrible risk it would be to ignore its extraordinary, life-or-death responsibilities?
The article includes a long section on the loan guarantee program at Energy Dept. It mentions the Solyndra solar loan guarantee default -- with a loss of $535 million to American taxpayers.
The article then goes on to say the remainder of the $70 billion energy loan guarantee program had been successful, even making a profit for the U.S. Treasury.
However, it left out a very high risk nuclear loan guarantee from the DOE, for $8.3 billion, toward the Vogtle 3 & 4 proposed new reactors in Georgia.
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Despite the bankruptcy of Westinghouse Nuclear last spring, and the cancellation of the Summer 2 & 3 atomic reactors in South Carolina last summer, the Trump administration has nonetheless upped the nuclear loan guarantee offered for Vogtle 3 & 4 in GA to a tidy $12 billion sum. That is, to the $8.3 billion nuclear loan guarantee offered by the Obama administration several years ago, the Trump administration has added the offer of another $3.7 billion dollars' worth. $12 billion of taxpayer-backed nuclear loan guarantees is more than 22 times the $535 million lost the U.S. Treasury in the Solyndra solar loan guarantee default!