First US nuclear reactor in over 30 years

The last successful order for a nuclear power plant in the US was in 1973. It took 23 years to build and cost US$6 billion. Last Tuesday 25 September 2007, an order was placed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build two nuclear power plants in Texas.

The applicant – NRG Energy – says that the price tag to build the two new reactors is US$6-7 billion. NRG Chief Executive Officer David Crane told Reuters that it could only afford these costs because of incentives provided by the US federal government in 2005.

"We would not have even started otherwise. It was created to start a race. We set out to move as quickly as possible," Crane said to Reuters.

In 2005, the US Congress approved President Bush’s Energy Policy Act. The Act authorized billions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies to trigger a new round of nuclear power plants in the US.

These subsidies included a production tax credit of up to US$125 million per year for companies that seek a construction and operating license application by the end of 2008, start construction by the end of 2013 and are operating before 2021.

As a result of these subsidies, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is expecting about 30 applications to be filed for new nuclear reactors in the next few months.

What is absolutely clear from this story is that nuclear power plants will only be built if a government provides millions or even billions of taxpayer dollars in subsidies.

It’s therefore extremely concerning that the Prime Minister’s Clean Energy Target announced recently does not rule out nuclear power.

The target states that 30,000 gigawatt hours of electricity each year would be sourced from zero or low emission sources – that’s about 15% of our electricity by 2020.

Is this the first step to a re-elected Howard government dipping into the pockets of taxpayers to provide millions of dollars to wealthy energy utilities to invest in nuclear power plants in Australia? If the Prime Minister is deadly serious about having nuclear power plants in Australia, that's the only way he could achieve it.