[ RadSafe ] Letter to the Editor: Funding US Nuclear Power Plants

[John Jacobus]

>From the February 2006 issue of Physics Today at
http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-59/iss-2/p11a.html

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Funding US Nuclear Power Plants

The US has substantial precedence and rationale for
governmental support of the next generation of nuclear
power plants (see "Nuclear Power Needs Government
Incentives, Says Task Force," PHYSICS TODAY, May 2005,
page 28). The early commercial nuclear plants were
built with direct federal subsidies and loan
guarantees; an example is the Yankee Rowe nuclear
power plant built in 1960 under the Atomic Energy
Commission's power-demonstration reactor program. The
aim of those early demonstration plants was to prove
to a fledgling industry that such facilities could be
built and operated economically.

A significant era for US nuclear funding was the 1970s
and 1980s, when nuclear units came in at costs often
many times the original estimates. Some plants with
billions of dollars invested were never completed. The
overspending and stalled projects stemmed from
government actions often in response to activists or
legal maneuvering. Organizations and individuals with
specific agendas took advantage of the Three Mile
Island accident to exploit unrelated issues.1 Plants
already under construction were stymied by new
requirements that caused tremendous uncertainty both
in building and in the actual start-up of power
production. The Long Island Lighting Co's Shoreham
nuclear plant, for example, was completed at a cost of
$5.6 billion, brought briefly to criticality, and then
decommissioned, all because of activism and political
demagoguery.2

Today, the reasons for government loan guarantees and
other support programs are somewhat different. Vendors
having gained experience with overseas projects know
how to build advanced nuclear plants, although some of
their advanced designs have yet to be implemented. Not
surprisingly, any vendor or electric utility, before
investing huge amounts, would want some assurance that
it would be allowed to complete the plant at a
reasonable cost and then operate it. Particularly
important is that safety rules and systems
requirements not change drastically during
construction without very compelling reasons. Given
the way governmental entities contributed to the
problems of past nuclear power plant construction, it
is only fitting that the federal government share
substantially in the investment risk. Building nuclear
plants is in the nation's interest. 

References
1. See, for example, R. Duffy, Nuclear Politics in
America, U. Press of Kansas, Lawrence (1997). 
2. For a discussion of the Shoreham plant's
difficulties, see S. McCracken, [LINK]. 

Edwin A. Karlow
(ekarlow at lasierra.edu)
La Sierra University
Riverside, California

+++++++++++++++++++
"It is not the job of public-affairs officers to alter, filter or 
adjust engineering or scientific material produced by NASA's technical 
staff."
MICHAEL D. GRIFFIN, NASA administrator.

-- John
John Jacobus, MS
Certified Health Physicist
e-mail:  crispy_bird at yahoo.com

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