Reply #11: The objections are far more broadbased than that. [View All]

[kristopher]

This article from Nuclear Energy Industry Insider sums up well (and with pride) the solutions they've found at Vogtle to use as a blueprint for the revival of industry.

Industry Insight
Plant Vogtle: An industry blueprint in the making?
24 October 2010
Rebuilding nuclear energy units in the US is a mighy feat. In this edition we look at the progress of Southern Company's Plant Vogtle project in the US state of Georgia. Alison Ebbage finds out why a solid EPC contract and a Senate bill have had a lot to do with why this project could become a promising industry blueprint....
By Alison Ebbage
http://analysis.nuclearenergyinsider.com/industry-insight/plant-vogtle-industry-blueprint-making

What you will find in that article is a plan that transfers all financial risks away from the investor and onto the public. All of it that is except perhaps 1/4 to 3%. It doesn't matter what happens, those who get all the money if they build it will lose nothing if they fail to build it; or fail to build it for the price they promised; or fail to build it within the time promised.

It was my understanding from the MIT report that the goal of this policy endeavor was to prove the economic viability of merchant plants. The promise was that with "cost sharing" (that is the term for transferred risk) by the Federal govt for the first couple or three reactors, they would be able to attract the capital needed without further help.

Is that what it sounds like the lesson the Nuclear Energy Industry Insider writer is taking away from the "cost sharing" that is underway?

Next we could discuss the way they have, by law, dramatically curtailed the rights of the judicial, legislative and most administrative authorities to act in the public's behalf. It reminds me a lot of the way the new governor of PA has structured his energy regulatory authority by making all legal and regulatory challenges go though his hand picked special regulator and then giving that special regulator the authority to over-rule anyone.