US Nuclear Power Plant For Sale - CHEAP

[The unfinished] Bellefonte [nuclear power plant] has never burned an ounce of nuclear fuel or delivered a watt of power. The plant employs a mere 50 people. Dust covers the piping. Turkey vultures have perched on the 480-foot pale-gray cooling towers. 

Now, after more than $5 billion in investments and 40 years of stops and starts, the plant’s owner is putting it up for sale - for a small fraction of the overall cost.

The Tennessee Valley Authority, the nation’s largest federal utility, is set to begin accepting bids for Bellefonte on Monday, with a minimum price tag of $36.4 million, according to the Associated Press.

Plant officials said demand for power in the region never rose to the level they anticipated when they broke ground on the project. As recently as 2011, TVA sought to restart work on one of the reactors, but by 2014, the utility was ready to abandon the project again. Experts said it could cost $8 billion to complete, the Chattanooga Times Free Press reported.

You can read the rest @
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/09/12/for-sale-5-billion-non-working-nuclear-power-plant-as-is/

So, TVA invested $5 billion but will let it go for $36.4 million? That is what the US government is best at - squandering money on huge failed projects, then selling them off for nothing. It reminds me of what the feds did with the supercarrier USS Forrestal, which was sold to a scrap company for one cent.

Jeez !!!

The sad fate of Bellefonte is glaring proof the US has no meaningful energy policy. Everyone wants to scrap all the coal plants, but no one wants to replace them with nuclear plants. No one has really even tried to deal with the huge amount of nuclear waste which has been piling up, or with all the toxic fly ash generated by existing coal plants.

By the way, the lack of regional power demand in Alabama was caused by two factors:

• Originally, the TVA nuclear plants were going to sell electricity to other US government entities, mainly for the enrichment of uranium (for other power plants and for nuclear bombs). That market never materialized.
• Any excess power might have then been sold to industry, but the deindustrialization of the US (masterminded by the people who now support Hillary) ensured that didn't happen.

Bellefonte is a microcosm of the US economy in general - BIG investment, big plans, but little return. What the hell happened to us? (Hint: the answer is spelled g-l-o-b-a-l-i-z-a-t-i-o-n.)

I predict that if Bellefonte sells at all, it will be to a foreign company through a US shell corp set up just for that purpose (that's what happened to the Clinton NPP in Illinois). The only buyers who might be able to afford it outright (i.e., without US government loan guarantees) would be Russia and China, but since we're at war with both I bet they will pass on the deal.