On 6/29/2008 4:49 PM Paul M. Eldridge spake thus:

Perhaps if the nuclear industry paid more attention to winning over
the hearts and minds of the financial sector rather than pointing
fingers at so-called "environuts" they could move forward. Of course,
there's always the tax payer:

"....So risky and expensive, in fact, that building new ones won't
happen without hefty government support. NRG Energy (NRG), Dominion
(D), Duke Energy (DUK), and six other companies have already leaped to
file applications to construct and operate new plants largely because
of incentives Congress has put in place. The subsidies include a 1.8
cents tax credit for each kilowatt hour of electricity produced, which
could be worth more than $140 million per reactor per year; a $500
million payout for each of the first two plants built (and $250
million each for the next four) if there are delays for reasons
outside company control; and a total of $18.5 billion in loan
guarantees. The latter is crucial, since it shifts the risk onto the
federal government, making it possible to raise capital from skittish
banks. "Without the loan guarantees, I think it would be very
difficult for the first wave of plants to move forward," says David W.
Crane, CEO of NRG...."

See:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine... e_top+stories

Ever wonder if those pinko hair-shirt environuts are in bed with the
evil capitalist pigs? ;-)

Thank you for that.

The commonly-believed myth is that the forward march of nuclear power
generation was stopped dead in its tracks by those aforementioned
commie-pinko hair-shirt NIMBY environmeddlers back in the 1970s and 80s.
This is basically bull****: the industry collapsed for very easily
explained financial reasons, with just enough public distaste for nukes
on account of Three Mile Island and other disasters to put it under.

It would be instructive to go back and read the story of the Rancho Seco
plant near Sacramento, which was shut down not by environmeddlers, nor
by money managers, but by voters in the municipal utilities district
which operated the plant.

[sorry, couldn't find good links in a minute search; it's out there ...]


--
"Wikipedia ... it reminds me ... of dogs barking idiotically through
endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it.
It drags itself out of the dark abyss of pish, and crawls insanely up
the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and
doodle. It is balder and dash."

- With apologies to H. L. Mencken