Today’s announcement that as a part of a settlement with NRG Energy, CPS Energy will withdraw its application for a federal loan guarantee for the South Texas (Nuclear) Project (STP) expansion and end further investment in the project demonstrates nuclear plants are too costly and too risky to build.
CPS Energy and the San Antonio City Council have signaled their desire to stop throwing good money after bad at STP, a message we hope will tell the U.S. Department of Energy that this plant is a poor candidate for federal loan guarantees. This debacle should show the federal government that nuclear loan guarantees are a fundamentally flawed and wasteful use of taxpayer money.
At $18.2 billion, the cost of STP has already tripled in just a year. When STP 1 and 2 were built, they ended up being six times over-budget and eight years behind schedule, and STP 3 and 4 look like they are on track to beat out that poor performance record.
CPS executives had sold the project to the public and the City Council as a $10 billion deal, with another $3 billion in financing costs.
But a scandal erupted when it became known in October that CPS executives had kept under wraps a cost estimate from contractor Toshiba that was as much as $4 billion higher.
“The settlement is done, but now we have a major challenge ahead of us — to find a low-cost energy alternative to nuclear,” he said. “Remember, nuclear was supposed to help offset the more expensive renewables. Nuclear was the bridge to a renewable future.”
Not so much.
