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April 7, 2012

[SSJ: 7353] Re: A couple of reasons why the electricity has keptflowing despite the nuclear shutdowns

From: Ellis Krauss
Date: 2012/04/07

Japan might want to consider this from a very good article, "A Farewell to Fossil Fuels, " by Amory B. Lovins in FOREIGN AFFAIRS (March/April 2012), pp. 140-141:

"Choosing electricity sources is complicated by copious disinformation, such as the myth that nuclear power was thriving in the United States until environmentalists derailed it after the March
1979 Three Mile Island meltdown. In fact, bad economics made orders for nuclear power plants in the United States fall by 90 percent from
1973 to 1975 and dry up completely by 1978. Indeed, soaring capital costs eventually halted nuclear expansion in all market-based power systems, and by 2010, all 66 reactors under construction worldwide had been bought by central planners.
Even after the U.S. government raised its subsidies for new reactors in 2005 to at least their construction costs, not one of the 34 proposed units could attract private capital; they simply had no business case….

After the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, John Rowe, chair of Exelon (the United States’ biggest nuclear power producer), pronounced the nuclear renaissance dead. In truth, market forces had killed it years earlier.
New coal and nuclear plants are so uneconomical that o⁄cial U.S.
energy forecasts predict no new nuclear and few new coal projects will be launched. Investors are shunning their high costs and financial risks in favor of small, fast, modular renewable generators."

Best regards,
Ellis
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Approved by ssjmod at 11:04 AM