New Reactor Costs Daunt U.S. Utilities as TVA Restarts Old Unit
New Reactor Costs Daunt U.S. Utilities as TVA Restarts Old Unit
By Elliot Blair Smith
Enlarge Image
TVA’s nuclear reactor at Browns Ferry, AlabamaJuly 9 (Bloomberg) — President George W. Bush plunged into the cotton fields of northern Alabama last month to fete the restart of the Tennessee Valley Authority’s oldest, most troubled nuclear reactor after a $1.8 billion renovation.
“We want to start building plants,” said Bush, whose administration is promoting loan guarantees and tax breaks to get the first new U.S. reactors constructed since 1996.
U.S. electricity producers aren’t leaping to embrace that vision. Bankers and their utility clients are demanding more generous loan guarantees than the Bush administration is offering. And consumers probably will have to pay more for power to make the $4 billion needed to build each new reactor a worthwhile investment.
“It’s a whopping amount of money,” says Rob Graber, vice president of EnergyPath Corp., an energy consulting firm.
Far more than safety and environmental concerns, the biggest hurdle to fulfilling Bush’s ambition to build the equivalent of three new nuclear plants a year by 2015 is money.