U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, the Tennessee Republican who chairs the Senate appropriations panel on energy and water, said Tuesday that the $14 billion cost of the new Plant Vogtle nuclear reactors may still be a bargain over the life of the plants.
During a congressional hearing on advanced energy research, Alexander said initial construction costs for the 2,000 megawatts of extra nuclear power being added with the new Westinghouse AP-1000-designed reactors near Waynesboro, Ga., is about seven times higher than the initial building costs for comparably sized natural gas generators.
"But if you take the length of time these (nuclear) plants might last - up to 80 years - and the importance of diversity in a big utility, it does make sense to go with nuclear power," Alexander said during a haring before the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
Southern Co. CEO Steve Kuczyaski said he "fully agrees" with Alexander on the need and competitiveness of nuclear power at Plant Vogtle.
Alexander, a critic of the $9 billion a year spent on federal tax credits for the wind industry, said such subsidies have distorted the market and could be better used to provide federal support for new energy research projects. In Illinois where there is a surplus of power at times, wind subsidies have sometimes made it cheaper for wind producers to give away their power and simply take the federal subsidies, undermining the economics for nuclear power and other energy sources.
"Those of us who support nuclear power believe we can compete (with nuclear plants) on a level playing field," Kucyaski said. "In Illinois, the massive subsidies for wind have changed the market dymamics and it has had an unintended consequence with regards to those reactors."