Obama administration wrestling with financial risk of new reactors

The high financial risks for U.S. taxpayers of new reactor loan guarantees have led the Office of Management and Budget to take a more cautious approach than the nuclear power proponent, U.S. Department of Energy, ClimateWire reports. Such caution is wise, given the litany of new reactor cancellations, suspensions, skyrocketing cost overruns, and licensing/construction schedule delays, as documented by Physicians for Social Responsiblity in "Nuclear Power: The Renaissance That Wasn't."

"Nuclear Retreat" continues as new reactor designs shown to be unsafe

In the space of just a few weeks, the two leading new nuclear reactor designs currently on the international market have been revealed to have serious safety deficiencies by nuclear safety authorities in four countries. Both the U.S.-Japanese Westinghouse-Toshiba AP-1000 design and the French European Pressurized Reactor (EPR) have been shown to be potentially unsafe. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said last month that the AP-1000 containment design was structurally vulnerable to collapse from events like earthquake, tornadoes and severe storm damage. The NRC has already required the AP-1000 design to show it could withstand a major aircraft crash. The EPR, under construction in France and Finland, but also proposed for Britain, the U.S. and elsewhere, was found not to meet safety requirements for reactor control systems by the British, Finnish and French nuclear safety agencies. The U.S. and European agencies have demanded design modifications to both the AP-1000 and EPR reactors before declaring them “safe.” For more, read the Beyond Nuclear press release.