5 Facts That Sink Nuclear Power: Progress Energy, Inc. (PGN), First Solar, Inc. (FSLR)

In Florida, the same Levy County project I mentioned above wants to charge customers a half-cent per kW-hr fee starting this year for a plant that wouldn’t be completed until 2024 at best. That’s nearly a 5% increase in everyone’s electricity bill for something companies should be paying for in the first place.

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE:BRK.A) subsidiary MidAmerican Energy has even tried to use CWIP for its nuclear plants. Like Buffett needs the financing help.

Nuclear isn’t cost effective even with government support, especially considering companies need ratepayers to foot the bill ahead of time.

Bill Gates won’t save nuclear
TerraPower has given some nuclear buffs reason to hope for its future, but this is like betting on winning the lottery. The company hopes to begin building a demonstration plant in 2016 and start it up in 2020. That’s seven years before TerraPower proves its concept, assuming all goes well.

Let me give a hint here; these new technology launches never go as planned. TerraPower is trying to build an entirely new kind of reactor that will come will unknown challenges. If we see something running in a decade I would be shocked.

Which brings me back to the cost argument. With the cost of clean technology costs falling wouldn’t it be better to focus on something we’ll really need in a decade; something like energy storage.

Not in my backyard
The next reason nuclear power isn’t worth betting on is that no one wants it built or stored in their backyard. Residents of Nevada have been fighting the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository for more than a decade, not wanting nuclear waste in their backyards. The same thing is going on in Utah where the Skull Valley site has come up against major opposition. Where do we put all of this spent fuel from this “clean” energy source?

People aren’t exactly happy about a nuclear plant in their backyards either. Residents strongly opposed the relicensing of the Pilgrim nuclear plant in Massachusetts owned by Entergy Corporation (NYSE:ETR). Germany will shut down all nuclear plants in the country by 2022 and Japan has certainly changed its tune in relation to nuclear power.

The public sentiment simply isn’t in the industry’s favor.