Let Them Eat Yellow Cake

Texas and US Lag Unlikely Player in Nuclear Energy

This morning's Wall Street Journal piece on nuclear energy by William Tucker is one of the most cogent yet easy to understand stories I've seen on the virtues of nuclear energy and the arguments of nuclear opponents. Money quotes:

While we may be at a turning point, one enormous question still hangs over this revival of nuclear power in the U.S.: Who is going to pay for it?.... the capital will have to be raised from Wall Street. But not many investors are willing to put up $5 billion to $10 billion for a project that could become engulfed by 10 to 15 years of regulatory delay -- as occurred during the 1980s.

Of course, the inevitable "regulatory delay". Who can blame investors for not wanting to fork over $10B of of hard-won money on the vague hope that some regulatory bureaucrats will get off their keister in time to get a decent ROI. I'm all for proper environmental protections, but does it take 15 years to get those issues figured out? Surely somebody, somewhere in the world has figured out how to responsibly handle nuclear waste and accelerate their nuclear energy development.

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