The United States Department of Energy (DOE) has offered loan guarantees worth $8.33 billion to build two new nuclear reactors at the Vogtle power plant near Atlanta, Georgia. If construction goes ahead, they will be the first nuclear power plants built in the United States since an accident at a Pennsylvania nuclear plant in 1979. Georgia Power has ninety days to accept the DOE conditional offer. Construction of the two plants would provide about 3,500 construction jobs and an estimated 800 permanent staff jobs on completion. The total price is projected to be $14 billion, with Georgia Power's share set at $6.1 billion. The plants would begin operation in 2016 and 2017.

The move by the Obama administration is a reversal of the president's election campaign position, which was anti-nuclear. It is seen, however, as a move to win support among Republicans, who are strongly pro-nuclear, for the president's cap-and-trade legislation. The bill was passed by the House but has not yet been debated in the Senate.

Two key issues driving the debate about nuclear power as a viable option for the US are the problem of disposal of waste and the problem of cost. Critics point out that there is no safe place to put the radioactive waste piling up across the country and adding more waste will only exacerbate the problem. Furthermore, critics say, nuclear facilities cannot be made safe, and they present natural targets for terrorists.

On the question of finance, nuclear opponents point out that the industry has depended on government subsidies for more than fifty years, and continues to do so, taking money away from emerging technologies that could see the US achieve its stated goal of energy independence. Private investors have long shied away from nuclear projects, considering them too risky, and the risk of default on government-backed loans is deemed to be "very high," according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Cost overruns are notoriously common and notoriously huge in the nuclear industry. The $9 billion cost of the original facility at Vogtle in the 1970s was nine times more than projected, and that projected cost of $1 billion was for all four reactors. Only two of the four were built. A little basic arithmetic shows how high the final cost would be if similar overruns occurred now.

Some politicians see the nuclear question in terms of national pride and point out that the United States has fallen behind other countries. At present there are 104 reactors in 65 power stations across the country, producing 20 percent of the nation's electric power. France, by comparison, produces 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power.

President Obama put the problem as one of competitiveness, pointing out that China and India, the two leading emerging economies in the world, are both investing heavily in nuclear power. "Make no mistake," the president said when announcing the loan guarantee, "if we fail to invest in these technologies today, we'll be importing them tomorrow." 

The real question is, can the US catch up? The existing plants are aging and coming due for decommissioning as fast as new plants could be built to replace them.    

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