Maggie's Farm

Re the article Stossel points to, the author is in favor of natural gas over nuclear. OK, in at least some ways natural gas is cheaper than nuclear power. And unlike, say, France the US does not have to import it via three or more other countries, from supply through rights-of-way, etc. I'll go along with that. But with reservations, especially for here in the Northeast.

Stossel quotes from the article at Cato. Well, look at that quote:
"If nuclear power made economic sense, we wouldn't need to subsidize it."
Uh-huh. Of course, that may also be said of much of our food supply. Else why do we subsidise Big Agriculture - right? Or roads - go back to toll roads, they worked (unless, like the Mass Pike, it is actually a government operation). Or just plain "free" roads - which were always paid for somehow, usually - yes - via government handling of the funds.

From the Cato article itself
"Economist Douglas Koplow calculates that federal nuclear subsidies have totaled $178 billion from 1947-1999."
Or, two billion a year. Yes, a lot of money to me - but to Congress? Rounding error.
And
"Building a light water breeder reactor is a technologically challenging and costly undertaking whether regulators are on the scene or not."
Which is true enough. But note he carefully mentions only one, highly-specialised, type of reactor. Granted, building any type of power plant is expensive, and nuclear may be more expensive than some others, but this is still cherry-picking.

Stossel goes on with another quote:
"He also notes that when the Department of Energy proposed offering to guarantee 80 percent of the cost of new nuclear plants, the big investment banks told the department that even 80 percent loan guarantees wouldn't be enough. They needed 100 percent guarantees, or they wouldn't make the loans.
Which is probably why they got the loans from smaller banks. It was after they got the loans that the administration said, well, OK, we'll "guarantee" them. I suspect for the sake of the banks, not the nuclear plants.