Engineering360: "NRC Accepts NuScale Reactor Application for Review"

NuScale is about 4 years into the five years worth of our $226,000,000.00. When the NRC renders judgment in 40 months, maybe, does anyone care to hazard a guess as to how much more NuScale will have out its hand for in current DC politics?

It is interesting that the media pounded the Obama Administration for Solyndra, Ener1 and A123 (advanced batteries), etc. amounting to losses for the taxpayer of about $1 billion, but the media back pages the massive subsidies and accumulated indebtedness and cost overruns of the nuclear industry, stuff that continues year in and year out unrelentingly.

And, then, there is Price-Anderson (60 years old this year), a deal that makes the gifts of land given to the 19th Century railroad tycoons a pittance. The current limit of all P-A liability for a single melt-down is $60 billion, or about the total size of the Deep Water Horizon episode. Does every one of the 100+ nukes in gringoland have the full $60 billion in P-A coverage? Or are the AIG's behind whatever coverage really on the hook for the $60 billion? And what happens to a nuke when the owner just de-pressurizes, throws the breakers and walks away? A so Solly, Cholly - Lehman Brothers scenario?

In the Big Picture from the beginning of P-A until the last nuke is shuttered and all the waste safely stacked somewhere for all eternity (or transmuted), the cost of the Solyndra's, the solar Investment Tax Credits and the wind Production Tax Credits will look like a roaringly good deal for those of us paying for it all.