Under the proposed subsidy plan, the industry could receive up to $40 billion if it builds eight new reactors over a 15-year period. But if companies complete all 31 reactors the industry wants, they would be in line to get between $65 billion and $147 billion from the federal government.

 

The Union of Concerned Scientists argues against this attempt to “shift massive construction, financing, operating and regulatory costs and risks from the industry and its financial backers to U.S. taxpayers.”

 

The group adds: “Congress should reject these overly generous subsidies to this mature industry whose history of skyrocketing costs and construction overruns already has resulted in two costly bailouts by taxpayers and captive ratepayers—once in the 1970s and 1980s when utilities cancelled or abandoned more than 100 plants, and again in the 1990s when plant owners offloaded their ‘stranded costs.’”

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Billions of Dollars in Subsidies for the Nuclear Power Industry Will Shift Financial Risks to Taxpayers (Union of Concerned Scientists) (pdf)