REPORT: Bailing out nuclear plants doesn’t make sense
A new report by a right-leaning think tank says there’s no economic justification to bail out U.S. nuclear power plants slated to shut down in the coming years.
The R Street Institute report blames the nuclear industry’s woes on market changes driven by natural gas, government green energy policies, and costly regulations. The report acknowledges nuclear power provides various reliability benefits while generating electricity without producing carbon-dioxide (CO2), but argued further government intervention to save nuclear power plants is counter-productive and unnecessary.
“To whatever extent market design fails to account for certain reliability attributes, that failure concerns reliability service procurement alone, not an inherent need to procure a certain type of fuel or technology,” Devin Hartman, the author of the R Street study, said in a press statement. “Any such failure should be corrected via market-design reforms, not out-of-market compensation. Furthermore, there is no evidence of an imminent threat to bulk reliability to justify interim subsidies.”
