Is the "Nuclear Renaissance" Dead Yet?

America's much hyped "reactor renaissance" is facing a quadruple bypass.
In actual new construction, proposed projects and overseas sales,
soaring costs are killing new nukes. And the old ones are leaking like
Dark Age relics teetering on the brink of disaster.

As renewables plummet in cost, and private financing stays nil, the
nuclear industry is desperate to gouge billions from Congress for loan
guarantees to build new reactors. Thus far, citizen activism has
stopped them. But the industry is pouring all it has into this fall's
short session, yet again demanding massive new subsides to stay on life
support.

Here's a lab report:

• Soaring costs at Vogtle, the US's one active new reactor
  project, have stuck Georgia ratepayers with $108 million in unplanned
  overcharges....and that's just for starters at a site where actual
  construction has barely begun. Georgia's PUC now says it will hike
  rates by nearly 3x as much as the original $1.30/month promised when it
  first agreed to soak ratepayers for the plant---in advance. This new
  hike was opposed by the PUC's own staff, which blasted the whole deal for being shrouded in secrecy.

  Currently calculated to cost a sure-to-soar $14.5 billion, the Vogtle
  project got $8.33 billion in federal loan guarantees from Obama in
  February. Citizen/taxpayer groups have since sued to see the details,
  which the administration is keeping secret.

Such soaring rates and slipping schedules defined the first generation
of "too cheap to meter" reactors, which almost without exception came in
years late and billions over budget. Costs of the two original Vogtle
reactors jumped by 1,263%---from an original $660 million budget to
nearly $9 billion---forcing up statewide rates more than 12%.
Construction was promised for 7 years, but actually took 16.

The French giant AREVA's "new generation" projects in Finland and
Flamanville, France, have also soared hugely over budget and behind
schedule. So there's every indication the new generation of reactors
will be as catastrophically behind schedule and over budget as the
first.

• John Rowe, the CEO of Exelon, America's top reactor owner (17 in
  3 states), says low gas prices could delay construction of new merchant
  nukes in the US by a "decade, maybe two."
  Merchant power plants sell electricity into open competitive markets.
  Because atomic energy can't compete with natural gas or renewables and
  efficiency, Exelon has withdrawn its application to build two reactors
  in Victoria County, Texas. "We haven't totally abandoned" the project,
  says Rowe. But "it's very unlikely we would do it for a long time."

• American reactor component makers are angry with India for passing a new law
  requiring the industry to assume substantial liability for a
  catastrophe they might cause. The horrifying aftermath of Bhopal, where
  Union Carbide killed thousands of local citizens with a lethal gas
  emission for which they have not been held fully accountable, still
  weighs heavily in India. But the atomic industry will not tread where
  it's held liable for the true costs of its potential disasters. In the
  US, liability is capped at around $11 billion, even though the financial
  damage from a full-scale catastrophe could easily soar into the
  trillions. Minimum estimates from the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, which
  occurred in a remote, impoverished area, have exceeded $500 billion. By recent estimates the death toll is 985,000 and still counting.
  On behalf of US corporations, the Obama Administration is demanding
  the Indian liability requirements be lifted. Especially in the wake of
  BP's Deepwater Horizon catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, it is a
  stunning admission that even after 50 years, reactor technology cannot
  be held accountable for its technical vulnerabilities, here or abroad.

• America's aging fleet of first generation reactors is leaking profusely. Indian Point, north of Manhattan, has suffered seven unplanned shut-downs in two years.
  In recent months serious emissions of tritium and other radioactive
  substances into the air and water have been found at Vermont Yankee,
  Indian Point, New Jersey's Oyster Creek and many more. Ohio's infamous
  Davis-Besse, where boric acid ate virtually all the way through a
  reactor pressure vessel, has sprung some two dozen leaks which cannot be
  explained by its owner, First Energy. In Vermont, leaks from pipes the
  operators said did not exist have seeped contaminated water into the
  Connecticut River. As reactor owners petition to extend operating
  licenses for decades to come, the rickety, embrittled old plants become
  increasingly dangerous.

According to official records, the nuclear industry has spent at least
$645 million in the past decade lobbying for taxpayer handouts. It got
$18.5 billion in loan guarantees from the Bush Administration in 2005.
Obama has asked for some $36 billion more. But so far a national grassroots movement has kept that from happening.
The industry is demanding more from Congress, and will continue to do
so as long as legislators need cash to run their campaigns.

But it is now clearer than ever that atomic energy cannot compete, that
new construction means new rate hikes, that delays and cost overruns
will always outstrip the industry's initial public assurances, and that
after a half-century this technology still can't face the prospect of
full liability for the disasters it might impose...or even for the
"minor" radiation it constantly emits.

Will this will finally kill the much hyped "Renaissance" of a Dark Age
technology defined by quadruple failures in human health, global
ecology, sound finance and shaky performance?

That will depend on the power of citizen activism. Nuclear power can't
survive without protection from accident liability. Nor can new plants
be built without huge public subsidies.

The longer those are stopped, the more the more likely a Solartopian
transition to the only sources that can sustain us: increased
efficiency and the green-powered birth of the Age of Renewables.