Fission industry reveals plan to pilfer public purse.

[kristopher]

If you've paid attention to the effort of the fission industry to reinvent itself as "the solution to global warming" you'll know that the cost is so high, and the risk of default so great, that there seems no chance that these plants can be built as a market based project. This article from Nuclear Energy Industry Insider sums up well and with pride the solutions the fission industry has found at Vogtle (S. Carolina project site) to use as a blueprint for the revival of industry.

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

Next, as an added reason to appreciate the political skill of the fission industry, 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.

Vogtle...

I wonder if that is also a town on Vogsphere? There is certainly something Vogon-ish about their single-minded drive to build this plant.

[jpak]

1. K&R brownies suck

yup

:D

[AdHocSolver]

2. Getting the public to essentially pay to build new nuclear reactors.

After Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Japan, building new nuclear reactors is simply more evidence that the U.S. is really a plutocracy.

It is unfortunate that all the wonderful technology that is being developed these days will be destroyed by a politico-economic system known as capitalism.

The destabilizing of the climate, the pollution of our planet, and the poisoning of land and water will create chaos that will destroy modern civilization, which (with the assistance of "teabagger" know-nothings) will bring about the loss of technological knowledge and the onset of a new "Dark Age".

If any humans survive to rebuild civilization a few thousand years hence, their archaelogists will dig up artifacts of an advanced civilization. However, since their historical knowledge will tell them that no humans ever existed who had such knowledge, some in the future will hypothesize that aliens came here from outer space and left the evidence of advanced technology.

[kristopher]

3. The process was described by the CBO

The expected outcome is bankruptcy, which would then allow the plant to sell its electricity at far lower rates (pushing out renewable competition) because it has shifted more than 1/3** of the capital costs on to the distributed tax base.

**I say "more than" because the CBO report that details this was based on financing assumptions that still required a large, private, unsecured equity stake to develop projects. That unsecured private capital stake has since disappeared for all intent and purposes, so the actual amount the taxpayers would be saddled with would really be determined by how competitive renewables are able to become. It is a potential poison pill aimed at future development of renewables if it is adopted as the "model" envisioned in the OP article.

[madokie]

4. It would be interesting to somehow see what the next civilization thinks of ours

with pieces of pipe running every which way, some seemed to have transported water, some a tar like substance and what in the hell would they be using that shit for, evidence of giant stadiums, I can imagine what they'll think those were used for, the pieces of our everyday lives found here and yonder that makes no sense but they'll have to try to make some sense of it anyway, pieces of our hiways systems, our airports and on an on. How the runways run mostly northly and southerly and what the northstar had to do with that. I can't wait to wake up a couple hundred thou years from now and see all this. :-) trust me I will too.
As I am the time traveler ;-)

add: didn't mean to derail your otherwise excellent discussion with my fanticies you were on the way to having Kris
Peace and have a great day :hi:

[kristopher]

5. it is hard to envision what will be going in then, isn't it?

Modern humans have been roaming around for a couple of hundred thousand years, but we only starting organizing ourselves like now for the past 10K years.

I think we have a lot of growing up to do if there is to be anyone for you to talk to when you wake up.

[madokie]

6. Over at our home place it is mostly chert rock

and you'll find all kinds of what appears to be water creatures fossils in those rocks. Theres just really no telling how long this earth has had living creatures on it because it looks like it is constantly re-arranging itself like a big pot of boiling water.