New Nuclear Plants Get More Expensive

[jpak]

http://www.redorbit.com/news/business/1427881/new_nuclear_plants_get_more_expensive/

At a cost of more than $6.2 billion when it was completed in 1996, TVA's Watts Bar Nuclear Plant is both the newest and most expensive nuclear reactor ever built in the United States.

But rising costs for everything from cement to steel are threatening to shatter that cost record for the next generation of nuclear power plants.

Despite streamlined licensing requirements and more advanced engineering and design, the latest projected costs for some of the next generation of nuclear reactors are double some initial estimates made five years ago.

TVA President Tom Kilgore said the rising costs of materials for nuclear reactors is causing the agency to re-examine its pursuit of new reactors. But the Tennessee Valley Authority, at this point, appears to still be committed to building more nuclear units.

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[bananas]

1. Here's a better url

"Unlike the 17 different reactors TVA began designing in the 1960s, the authority now is taking its power additions one reactor at a time to better align new power generation and power demand and to focus management attention on each reactor."

Wow - that'll stop global warming! Building one reactor at a time! We're saved!


http://www.redorbit.com/news/business/1427881/new_nuclear_plants_get_more_expensive/index.html

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"Once again, we're seeing the sticker shock from nuclear power," said Stephen Smith, executive director for the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, a Knoxville group opposed to nuclear power. "What we continue to see from this industry are overly rosy estimates about construction costs to lure utilities into building nuclear. By the time they recognize what it is actually going to cost, they already have so much money sunk in a plant that they want to finish it."

The TVA, the nation's biggest government utility, in the 1970s and '80s sunk nearly $10 billion into nuclear plants that it ultimately decided to scrap when plant costs escalated and the growth in power demand slowed. But TVA officials insist they are using a different, more cost-competitive approach today toward building more nuclear units.

Unlike the 17 different reactors TVA began designing in the 1960s, the authority now is taking its power additions one reactor at a time to better align new power generation and power demand and to focus management attention on each reactor.

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