NEI Nuclear Notes

Let’s take a step back, shudder, and look at a dire report from Mark Cooper of the Institute for Energy and the Environment at the Vermont Law School. Cooper releases reports like this occasionally, although why he continues to be interested in nuclear energy is difficult to pin down. He’s not trying to dispute the “lies” propagated by the industry nor try to show that nuclear energy does something other than it claims to do. He just sees the business crumbling into dust every couple of years – I guess that can qualify as an academic pursuit, even if it’s not exactly productive. You can read the earlier articles linked above to see how Cooper’s ivory tower musings have not been as rigorous as they might be. In the current instance, he wants to grab the San Onofre/Kewaunee “nuclear is unviable” wave to assert that “more than three dozen U.S. reactors in 23 states are at greatest risk of early retirement, including nine reactors that exhibit the largest number of risk factors.” T...

Uprate at St. Lucie impossible without CWIP. Two nuclear critics, Peter Bradford and Mark Cooper, recently published a report (pdf) explaining how “advanced cost recovery” for nuclear plants in Florida and South Carolina “creates another nuclear fiasco.” Cooper’s main argument seems to be that Construction Work in Progress (CWIP) shifts to ratepayers all of the risks of building nuclear plants. This is either a deliberate distortion or a misunderstanding of how the cost recovery mechanism works. How “advanced cost recovery” (aka CWIP) works When a utility builds any type of project, it uses a mix of debt and equity to pay for the construction. The debt comes from banks and other investors and, of course, the utility must pay interest to use the debt. The equity comes from the utility’s shareholders and also requires a return for its use. The CWIP financing mechanism, which is also allowed by the federal government for interstate transmission projects, allows a company building...

Welcome to the 99th Carnival of Nuclear Energy Bloggers, a get together that we at NEI Nuclear Notes have been honored to host from time to time since its inception. This week, we've got selections from seven of the best blogs the online nuclear energy community has to offer. If you would like to host a future edition of the carnival, please contact Brian Wang of Next Big Future to get on the rotation. And please, don't ask to host the 100th edition of the carnival, as that honor has already been parceled out to a well-deserving blogger. Nuclear Power Talk: What's Good for the Goose . Gail Marcus takes a hard look at Mark Cooper's claims about the economics of nuclear energy. The Nuclear Green Revolution: The Clinch River Reactor Failure, Lessons Unlearned . Did AEC make a mistake by pursuing the Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor over other designs? Read and find out. Yes, Vermont Yankee: Green Jobs and Taxes . In this guest post, Guy Page of the Vermont Energy ...

If you are in a lull at work or have time this afternoon, click here around 2 PM Eastern time to watch an oversight hearing titled “Nuclear Power’s Federal Loan Guarantees: The Next Multi-Billion Dollar Bailout?” The chair of the subcommittee that is holding the hearing is Mr. Kucinich from Ohio. NEI’s Leslie Kass will be testifying on the first panel along with former NRC commissioner Peter Bradford, IEER’s Arjun Makhijani, and Heritage Foundation’s Jack Spencer. Panel two includes a few familiar names as well: Mark Cooper and Richard Caperton among others. Pretty much everyone from all sides will be speaking at this hearing. The Q&A should be quite interesting, especially from the Chairman … Update 2:15: Well, it looks like we won't be able to watch the webcast after all. We were told that it's not working today and the committee will archive the video for viewing later this week. Update 4/21, 8:00 am: NEI's Donn Salvosa who was at the hearing said that it was l...