[quote=StaunchLibertarian]Anyone who believes in free-market principles should be against nuclear power. Nuclear power plants would not be built without federally-guaranteed loans. Private investors realize the risk is greater than the reward and will not provide financing without the government guaranteeing that the loan will be paid back.
In fact, nuclear power is so uneconomical that if the government were to purchase power on the open market and give it away for free it would be cheaper than subsidizing nuclear power plants.
Additionally, there is no safe, economical way to store the spent fuel. Fukushima has 26x as much nuclear fuel on site as Chernobyl simply because all of the fuel ever used there is still stored there in the spent fuel pools.
This is clearly not safe. One of the explosions blew portions of the spent fuel up to a mile away from the plant.
The U.S. has 23 nuclear plants that are just like Fukushima. They store all of the spent fuel on-site above the reactors and are ticking time bombs.
Further, decommissioning a nuclear power plant at the end of its useful life is hugely expensive. It’s a process that can last up to 50 years and cost tens of billions of dollars.
Why would anyone be in favor of nuclear power? Many environmentalists are against nuclear power for obvious reasons (although some support them because they believe that they won’t contribute to global warming).
However, anyone who believes in free market principles should also be against nuclear power. Nuclear power plants would never be built in a truly free market with no federally-guaranteed loans.[/quote]
Spot on post.
to add, 1) no insurance company will insure nuke plants due to the huge and and uncalculatable cost of potential nuke failure and 2) no financing is available without US govt loan guarantees as a subsidy.
if truly the US followed free markets, nuke power would have been buried many years ago.
