#1 Obama Acts to Ease Way to Construct Reactors
Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2010 5:14 pm
nytimes
[quote]The Obama administration moved vigorously on two fronts Friday to promote nuclear power, proposing a tripling of federal loan guarantees for new projects and appointing a high-level commission to study what to do with nuclear waste.
Administration officials confirmed that their 2011 federal budget request next week would raise potential loan guarantees for the projects to more than $54 billion, from $18.5 billion. A new Energy Department panel will examine a vastly expanded list of options for nuclear waste, including a new kind of nuclear reactor that would use some of it.
The current loan guarantees were provided in the 2005 energy act but have not been disbursed because of bureaucratic elays. The Energy Department has said it would start issuing those soon. Because the loan guarantees are supposed to cover 80 percent of construction costs, the current amount of $18.5 billion would cover only about three projects.
Energy Secretary Steven Chu has been saying for weeks that the administration would seek a greater amount of guarantees; commercial investment has been hard to come by because there is so much uncertainty about the cost and schedule for building plants.
When President Obama said in his State of the Union address on Wednesday that the country should build “a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants,â€
[quote]The Obama administration moved vigorously on two fronts Friday to promote nuclear power, proposing a tripling of federal loan guarantees for new projects and appointing a high-level commission to study what to do with nuclear waste.
Administration officials confirmed that their 2011 federal budget request next week would raise potential loan guarantees for the projects to more than $54 billion, from $18.5 billion. A new Energy Department panel will examine a vastly expanded list of options for nuclear waste, including a new kind of nuclear reactor that would use some of it.
The current loan guarantees were provided in the 2005 energy act but have not been disbursed because of bureaucratic elays. The Energy Department has said it would start issuing those soon. Because the loan guarantees are supposed to cover 80 percent of construction costs, the current amount of $18.5 billion would cover only about three projects.
Energy Secretary Steven Chu has been saying for weeks that the administration would seek a greater amount of guarantees; commercial investment has been hard to come by because there is so much uncertainty about the cost and schedule for building plants.
When President Obama said in his State of the Union address on Wednesday that the country should build “a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants,â€