Aborted nuclear loan guarantee causes global ambitions for EPR to "cool"

Peggy Hollinger of the Financial Times reports that Constellation Energy's withdrawal from the Calvert Cliffs 3 new reactor project in Maryland -- due to its unsuccessful attempt to transfer hundreds of millions of dollars of financial risk onto U.S. taxpayers -- has sent shock waves through the French government owned companies Areva and Electricite de France. She writes of the Areva Evolutionary Power Reactor's (EPR) global prospects "...the EPR has suffered a series of devastating blows, and even the [French] government today questions whether it has wasted years of research and billions of euros on a highly complex white elephant."

Watchdogs warn that other nuclear loan guarantee finalists are as much at risk as the now-toppled Calvert Cliffs 3

NIRS, Public Citizen, South Carolina Sierra Club, and former NRC Commissioner Peter Bradford have warned in a press release that the same forces -- skyrocketing new reactor construction costs, decreased demand for electricity, competition from renewables and efficiency, low natural gas prices, etc. -- which just undermined the Calvert Cliffs 3 new reactor proposal in Maryland are also battering away at the new reactor proposals in Texas (South Texas Project Units 3 and 4) and South Carolina (V.C. Summer Units 2 and 3). Calvert Cliffs, South Texas Project, and Summer were the top three federal nuclear loan guarantee finalists after Vogtle Units 3 and 4 in Georgia, which the Obama administration awarded a conditional $8.3 billion taxpayer-backed loan guarantee last February. The audio recording of the full press conference is also posted online.

The U.S. doesn't need new nukes

An excellent conclusion (see headline) and a great lead in this excellent piece in Green Energy News by Bruce Mulliken: "Why would anyone in his right mind want to build a large, complicated conventional power plant when simpler, more sophisticated technologies to generate power are available?"

"Shockingly high" financial risks doom new reactor proposal in Maryland

The New York Times' Matt Wald reports that low natural gas prices, no price on carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion, high new reactor construction costs, and the ongoing economic recession have dimmed the nuclear power industry's hopes for a "renassiance" as one of the lead new reactor proposals -- at Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland -- may very likely be cancelled. ClimateWire's Peter Behr declared the "nuclear renaissance" -- if not dead, then comatose, given Constellation's precipitous abandonment of Calvert Cliffs 3.

So-called "nuclear renaissance" pushed back "a decade, maybe two" as proposed new reactor in Maryland bites the dust

The Center for American Progress's Joseph Romm quotes Exelon Nuclear's CEO, John Rowe, as saying that due to the low price of natural gas and no price on carbon -- not to mention the skyrocketing construction costs of new reactors -- the nuclear renaissance has been pushed back "a decade, maybe two...We think natural gas will stay cheap for a very long time,” Rowe said in an interview today at Bloomberg’s headquarters in New York. “As long as natural gas is anywhere near current price forecasts, you can’t economically build a merchant nuclear plant...Absent a price on carbon dioxide emissions, gas would have to rise to $9 or $9.50 to make the reactors economically attractive," Rowe said. In addition to links to other good Romm blogs, this entry includes an analysis by CAP's Richard Caperton on Constellation Nuclear's withdrawal from the Calvert Cliffs 3 new reactor proposal in Maryland.