“The House bill [H.R. 6544] would also extend the Price-Anderson federal accident insurance subsidy, first enacted in 1957 and renewed seven times since then. The program expires at the end of 2025. It isn’t clear why this federal subsidy for nuclear in still needed when the industry insists its new, advanced reactor designs are ‘inherently’ walk-away safe.”

The U.S. nuclear industry in recent days has hit three cherries on the federal money-and-policy slot machine. The open question is whether the largess (some might call it pork) will have the intended results: revitalizing a moribund industry by hitching its wagon to the feverish fear of climate change and long-run animosity toward nuclear rivals China and Russia.

First, the money–the most tangible of the goodies Congress and the White House have doled out.…

“[Philip] Mango told FERC staff he planned to ‘[d]o this for just a couple of years, make a bunch of money to put kids through school and do all those things, and no one’s hurt’ …. Ketchup Caddy [was] a corporate entity that Mango had created to sell an in-car ketchup holder he invented….” (Utility Drive, below)

Why do the worst often get on top where political entrepreneurship replaces market entrepreneurship? Why does regulation invite gaming where (at best) entrepreneurship is superfluous?

Consider the 1970s oil trading boom, where price-controlled oil was bid up to market levels without any value-added. Robert Sutton, a former trunk salesman, became a regulatory millionaire on that one.

Remember Enron’s gaming of the California hyper-regulated electricity market in 2000/2001? Three authors wrote in Business History Review:

Enron’s traders used their knowledge of the newly designed markets to artificially increase or decrease wholesale prices in their favor, which often involved submitting false supply-and-demand information, withholding available electricity, or scheduling energy they did not have.

“I don’t agree with many (any?) of [Alex Epstein’s] points in his response, and it is conspicuously lacking in arguments about climate itself.”  Tyler Cowen

“It’s sad that a guy as smart as Tyler not only 1) irresponsibly commented on a book he was not willing to read carefully, but also 2) refused to admit any wrongdoing whatsoever.” Alex Epstein

It was distributed on social media by the director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s loan programs office, Jigar Shah, described as “The man in charge of how the US spends $400bn to shift away from fossil fuels.” Shah forwarded Tyler Cowen’s post (at Marginal Revolution) critiquing Alex Epstein’s book, Fossil Future: Why Human Flourishing Requires Using More Oil, Gas, and Coal–Not Less.

A ‘classical liberal’ handing an intellectual gift to a DOE grifter?…

Ed. Note: The news about nuclear is not good, which has been true for the last 70 years. Kennedy Maize at the Quad Report has the latest.

Holtec Decommissioning Scandal (800 MW Palisades)

New Jersey-based Holtec International on January 30th  agreed to pay its home state a $5 million fine in order to avoid criminal prosecution for falsifying documents related to a 2018 state-awarded tax break program.

The development in New Jersey could scuttle widespread rumors, most likely spread by Holtec, that the U.S. Department of Energy is about to loan the company $1.5 billion for its project to recommission the shuttered 800-MW Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan. Bloomberg first reported the rumor, commenting that the DOE loan would be “the latest sign of strengthening federal government support for the atomic industry.”…