After officials of Pueblo, Colorado invited Oregon-based NuScale to give a presentation on how its small modular reactors could replace the Comanche Generating Station, the largest coal power plant in the state, many Puebloans criticized the county in local newspapers. The city has now refocused on its commitment to looking at all potential replacement technologies to transition to 100 percent renewable energy by 2035.

The independent Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) finds that the NuScale project will cost far more than the company claims, take much longer to build, and pose serious financial risks for the members of the Utah Associated Municipal Power System (UAMPS) and other municipalities and utilities that sign up for the project’s power.

Electricity from a new nuclear plant today is estimated to cost four times more than power from new wind and solar facilities. Countries look to public money to fund these new small modular nuclear projects because private financiers are unwilling to risk investing in production lines and reactors that could prove uneconomic. 

While renewables costs have dropped 90% over the last decade, nuclear costs have risen 33% say Brigham Young University researchers and other authors in a recent report. With increased cost and development delays, new “next-generation” nuclear plants won’t be completed for 10 to 20 years, the report notes, and even then nuclear costs are expected to be at least double what renewables are today. 

A new report from Taxpayers for Commonsense explains how the UAMPS/NuScale project contributes to a long history of taxpayer money down the drain for nuclear projects, finding that “ever-increasing subsidies cannot solve the nuclear energy industry’s costly flaws.”

As wind and solar become so much cheaper and faster to power lives and economies, myths are propagated against them designed to bolster options like nuclear. In fact, the authors point out, nuclear plants are regularly and often out of action and nuclear plant interruptions have become seven times more frequent in the past decade as a result of climate and weather-related factors.