All they think about is money, money, money.
Why can’t they be public spirited like Donald Trump?
The top federal official in charge of giving loans to nuclear plants had some harsh words this week for nuclear industry officials who want the government to invest more taxpayer funds into building reactors.
“At a certain point, it’s just greedy,” said Julie Kozeracki, the acting chief investment officer for President Donald Trump’s Office of Energy Dominance Financing.
Kozeracki was speaking in front of hundreds of nuclear industry CEOs and financiers on a panel at the Nuclear Energy Institute’s finance conference in New York on Tuesday. She told them the industry needs to stop asking for new funding streams from the government and start building reactors. “The tools are there, and it’s time to deliver,” she said.
Trump has called for the U.S. to start construction on 10 large nuclear reactors by 2030, to produce enough electricity to meet growing American energy demands, including the power needed by artificial intelligence data centers. That goal is likely to cost well over $100 billion, almost all of it paid by private companies.
As of yet, no reactors are under construction.
One reason that industry officials say that reactors are not being built is that developers don’t want to take the risk that the project will go way over budget and end up costing ratepayers and investors.
The last nuclear project in the U.S. consisted of two reactors in Georgia owned by publicly traded utility Southern Company, and it has become a cautionary tale. When construction started in 2009, the reactors were expected to cost $14 billion and be complete by 2016 and 2017. They finally came online in 2023 and 2024, and cost more than $30 billion. Electricity customers in Georgia are paying off much of that cost overrun in their monthly bills.
The Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry group, has been advocating for federal cost-overrun insurance that would pay nuclear developers back if their projects went way over budget. Sen. Jim Risch, a Republican from Idaho, introduced a bill in 2024 that would do just that, but it failed to advance. John Kotek, a vice president at the Nuclear Energy Institute, says the bill can “mitigate potential construction cost overruns” and “enhance confidence and stability for investors, helping subsequent projects move more efficiently from design to operation.”
Kozeracki, the Energy Department official, said in her comments at the conference that she believes the government has already provided a financial framework that essentially acts as cost overrun insurance.
Trump’s tax bill that passed last year extended subsidies that were introduced in Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, giving nuclear developers tax credits for constructing or operating plants. Under the right circumstances, a developer could receive credits for as much as 50% of the project value. Kozeracki called it a “buy one reactor, get one free” deal.
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Some industry executives at the conference disagreed with Kozeracki, though they did not want to do so publicly, so as not to upset the administration. Many of the government tax credits she mentioned are difficult to claim for logistical reasons, one said after the speech.
One panelist on stage with Kozeracki said that the fact that no reactors are being built is a sign that the current financial incentives aren’t enough.
“This is the greatest capitalist system in the history of mankind,” said Mike Scott, founder of private-equity firm Pelican Energy Partners. “We have so many greedy people who want to make money, and if they could make money today building a nuclear plant, they’d be doing it.”
Duke Energy Integrated Resource Plan 2025:
It is essential that the current tax credits that incentivize new nuclear generation remain in place, as they provide critical financial support for these investments and decrease investment risk, which will lead to lower overall costs for customers. In addition, the current tax credits that incentivize the efficient operation of the existing nuclear fleet are also essential, as they help keep energy prices low, with every dollar going back to customers. Further, the federal loan guarantee program, federal grant opportunities, and other mechanisms like public-private partnerships could provide crucial support.
Given the risks and long-lead time associated with constructing new nuclear, cost overrun protection would further decrease investment risk in a manner that would benefit customers.
In sum, without continued federal support, the financial risk of nuclear construction could deter development, slowing, delaying, or eliminating progress despite the substantial potential benefits of new nuclear generation for customers. Importantly, because Duke Energy is a regulated utility, federal support directly benefits customers in the form of lower rates and lower overall financing costs.
Finally, I’ll do another post on the thread below, recommend to anyone that they take a look.
NextEra’s $NEE Investor Day was a masterclass on the energy industry and the base case for the next decade. Anyone interested in this sector, or with investments in any energy company, should listen and analyze every word that came out of here. This is the biggest utility company in the world. They are the largest: gas, nuclear, renewable and storage operators IN THE WORLD. They’ve built more infrastructure than the next 20 biggest utilities COMBINED. If they speak, you listen. They clearly stated that the real bottleneck in U.S. power isn’t generation – it’s capacity. And THE ONLY CAPACITY RESOURCE AVAILABLE AT SCALE THORUGH THE END OF THIS DECADE IS: ENERGY STORAGE. They’re planning 8X more storage than gas through 2032, 53X more than nuclear, and highlighted that extending BESS duration to 8 hours doubles their opportunity set. This is the strongest, most detailed endorsement of grid-scale BESS we’ve ever seen from a major utility.
Can you imagine how many solar farms and wind generators could be built with 100 Billion dollars!
Imagine how many more solar, wind, and BESS could be built if: taxpayers were on the hook for cost overruns (lowering overall financing costs), a president didn’t cancel projects because of cancer causing windmills,…. Why do things like “mitigate potential construction cost overruns” and “enhance confidence and stability for investors, helping subsequent projects move more efficiently from design to operation.” only seem to apply to fossil fuels and nuclear?
Solar typically costs about $1 million/MW.
Onshore wind $1-1.3 million.
Offshore wind typically costs $1.5 million. This month. Next month less.
So $100 billion for solar &/or wind in your back yard would get you 100GW, assuming your back yard’s in a good place. Enough to do popcorn on your induction cooker and run the home theater at the same time, fer sure.
IOW the solar would equal about 20-25 big nukes in yearly output; the wind, 30-40 of em. But either way, way less operating expense than nukes.
Offshore wind you’d get about 65 GW, but with a correspondingly higher capacity factor—2/3 the capacity with 1/3 more yield, so about the same. Fewer turbines but expensiver maintenance per, so again the same. But the higher capacity factor of offshore wind makes it more valuable to the grid because it’s available more of the time. But it’s more in a non-numerical way, AFAIK.
I got curious.
thanks, can you shoot a source for those numbers?
BTW, 10 reactors at $15 billion each plus inflation is maybe $200 billion. If things turned as well—or as badly—as in Georgia, they’d be finished in 2041 & after. (Think the US under Republican dictatorship or civil war (or full scale peaceful revolution) could manage 10 at the same time? Moonwalking and chewing gum, patting their heads, rubbing their stomachs, getting out of a Chinese finger trap, singing “The Streets of Minneapolis”, playing the silver spoons, sleight of policy to distract everyone from the lack of Epstein files, dancing backwards in high heels, and stopping another war, all at the same time?)
In (S?) Australia they installed 1 GW of home battrees in 3 months*. In 2024 the US added a record 50 GW solar. The first 5 months of that China added more than 200 GW—3 GW/day.
But suppose it was just the $100 billion.
65 GW of offshore wind @ 60% capacity factor, built in an average of 3 years = 341,640 GWh/yr = 4,099,680 GWh before the first nuke is done.
4.1 PWh
*https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qavFbOpt4jA
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qIp9TwSEgFg
I hate to use AI, but it’s making the internet a toilet. It comes up first and crowds out real facts, makes it harder and harder to find good credible information (or this site, btw—besides the less searchable, less unique new name). And proofreading gets harder and harder with AI discorrecting and re-discorrecting everything with non-words and mush… And I had several other things going on—repairing fences between the dickens and chooks was just 1, so I cheated and just used the AI summary on my phone. Sorry, hate it.
That’s chickens and ducks, btw.
Duke Energy: “It is essential that the current tax credits that incentivize new nuclear generation remain in place, as they provide critical financial support for these investments and decrease investment risk, which will lead to lower overall costs for customers.”
Objection, your honor. Assumes facts counter to reality.
California, 2025 24% solar, 9% wind, 7% nuclear, average domestic rate 33 cents/kWh.
Georgia, 3% solar, 0% wind, 24% nuclear, 14.5 c/kWh. (@ElectricityMaps and electricchoice.com)
avg price of generation in California is 4 cents/kwh.
Additional costs come from massive lawsuits following PG&E found liable for starting
destructive fires with faulty transmission lines. 30 billion payout and massive
costs for updating, under grounding.
Prices actually coming down now with greater battery, solar, wind penetration.
? There are no new nuclear power plants (operating or planned) in California.
The claim that tax incentives for →new← nuclear will lead to lower overall costs for customers is bogus. There is no reason to expect that new nuclear plants will start being built in the US near schedule* or near budget, especially if they have a financial safety net that says that ratepayers/taxpayers will soak up costs that the investors themselves didn’t forecast.
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*Running over schedule itself adds to capital costs.