ATLANTA (AP) — The first American nuclear reactor to be built from scratch in decades is sending electricity reliably to the grid, but the cost of the Georgia power plant could discourage utilities from pursuing nuclear power as a path to a carbon-free future.
The federal government is nudging us toward an all-electric future. Gas stoves and wood stoves are being regulated to extinction and gas hot water heaters will be next. Wealthy people are given a $7500 incentive to buy electric cars with conventional cars to eventually banned. This is happening while the electric grid is getting less reliable. Wind and solar power are being subsidized while they are known to be intermittent, fair weather electrical generators.
If the federal government wasn’t actively trying to make our lives less secure and comfortable, we’d be building a new nuclear power plant every two years, like China is.
The third and fourth reactors were originally supposed to cost $14 billion, but are now on track to cost their owners $31 billion. That doesn’t include $3.7 billion that original contractor Westinghouse paid to the owners to walk away from the project. That brings total spending to almost $35 billion.
That sounds expensive, but two years ago, the federal government spent $2 trillion on a Covid stimulus package, and we’ve got nothing to show for it. Biden’s college loan forgiveness plan was going to cost $30 billion per year, and again, we’d have nothing to show for it. Instead, build a new nuclear power plant every year so Americans could have cheap and abundant electricity. Nuclear power plants are one of the safest ways to generate electricity and produce no carbon dioxide (if you care about that sort of thing).
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