New Nuclear Plants Too Risky to Build and Too Costly to Operate

AUSTIN – Environmental groups today decried NRG Energy Inc.’s plans to build two new reactors at its South Texas nuclear plant site. The costs for the reactors are expected to reach $5 billion and will expose Texans to the risks and radioactive wastes of nuclear power.

Nuclear power is extremely costly and relies on taxpayer subsidies, creates radioactive waste with no long-term disposal solution, and poses security and public health risks.

“Thirty years ago, we were promised that nuclear energy would produce energy ‘too cheap to meter,’ but the costs are still mounting,” said Tom “Smitty” Smith, director of Public Citizen’s Texas office. “Nuclear plants are too costly to build, too risky to operate and the wastes are still too hot to handle.”

The existing Texas reactors built at the site more than twenty years ago cost more than six times the projected estimates and had so many critical flaws that construction was halted and parts of the plant were rebuilt to address serious safety concerns.

Nuclear power continues to be dependent on taxpayer handouts for survival. From 1947 to 1999, the nuclear industry was given more than $115 billion in direct taxpayer subsidies. The management of nuclear waste and the requirements for reactor decommissioning require billions more in additional funds. In comparison, federal government subsidies for wind and solar power totaled only $5.7 billion over the same period – 25 times less than nuclear subsides.

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