Moody's and CBO 2003 on New Nuke Costs
Sep. 25th, 2008 04:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
webfarmerI've been looking around for this one and I finally found what appears to be the original reference for this. Thanks to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
paisleychick's friends for the motivation that helped to find it.
New Nuclear Generating Capacity: Potential Credit implications for U.S. Investor Owned Utilities - Moody's Corporate Financing - May 08
"The technology is very costly, potentially reaching over $7,000 per kilowatt (kw) of capacity – by some estimates almost twice as much as new, scrubbed coal-fired power plants and three times as much as new, combined cycle natural gas power plants."
As far as archived documents go, I also recently found the Congressional Budget Office's cost analysis of nuclear power from 2003 which has an interesting note in it. Since those days the percentage covered by the government has moved up to 80% for the energy bill of 2005 and I understand that the industry is trying for 100% guarantees now.
Congressional Budget Office Cost Estimate - S.14 Energy Policy Act of 2003 - 07 May 08
"Based on current industry practices, CBO expects that any new nuclear construction project would be financed with 50 percent equity and 50 percent debt. The high equity participation reflects the current practice of purchasing energy assets using high equity stakes, 100 percent in some cases, used by companies likely to undertake a new nuclear construction project. Thus, we assume that the government loan guarantee would cover half the construction cost of a new plant, or $1.25 billion in 2011.
CBO considers the risk of default on such a loan guarantee to be very high—well above 50 percent. The key factor accounting for this risk is that we expect that the plant would be uneconomic to operate because of its high construction costs, relative to other electricity generation sources. In addition, this project would have significant technical risk because it would be the first of a new generation of nuclear plants, as well as project delay and interruption risk due to licensing and regulatory proceedings."
paisleychick's friends for the motivation that helped to find it.New Nuclear Generating Capacity: Potential Credit implications for U.S. Investor Owned Utilities - Moody's Corporate Financing - May 08
"The technology is very costly, potentially reaching over $7,000 per kilowatt (kw) of capacity – by some estimates almost twice as much as new, scrubbed coal-fired power plants and three times as much as new, combined cycle natural gas power plants."
As far as archived documents go, I also recently found the Congressional Budget Office's cost analysis of nuclear power from 2003 which has an interesting note in it. Since those days the percentage covered by the government has moved up to 80% for the energy bill of 2005 and I understand that the industry is trying for 100% guarantees now.
Congressional Budget Office Cost Estimate - S.14 Energy Policy Act of 2003 - 07 May 08
"Based on current industry practices, CBO expects that any new nuclear construction project would be financed with 50 percent equity and 50 percent debt. The high equity participation reflects the current practice of purchasing energy assets using high equity stakes, 100 percent in some cases, used by companies likely to undertake a new nuclear construction project. Thus, we assume that the government loan guarantee would cover half the construction cost of a new plant, or $1.25 billion in 2011.
CBO considers the risk of default on such a loan guarantee to be very high—well above 50 percent. The key factor accounting for this risk is that we expect that the plant would be uneconomic to operate because of its high construction costs, relative to other electricity generation sources. In addition, this project would have significant technical risk because it would be the first of a new generation of nuclear plants, as well as project delay and interruption risk due to licensing and regulatory proceedings."
