So Governor Murphy is supporting nuclear plants with the $300 million annual subsidies.
More about nuclear funding:
The Biden administration is making a big push for nuclear power once again to be a key part of America’s sustainable energy future, which could lead to the first expansion of reactor construction in more than three decades.
The White House
requested $1.8 billion for nuclear energy in its fiscal 2022 budget, a 50% increase from last year's levels, with Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm telling reporters at the recent UN Climate Conference that
"we are very bullish on these advanced nuclear reactors" and pointing to the emerging technology of small, modular reactors. The House-passed version of the Build Back Better bill also includes
between $20 billion and $25 billion in subsidies to keep older reactors running. And the Biden administration says that the country's 94 nuclear reactors will be
"absolutely essential" for the U.S. to achieve its goal of a net-zero carbon economy by 2050. Even the environmental group Greenpeace is
no longer actively campaigning against nuclear power over its safety issues.
In an interview at the U.N. Climate Change Conference, Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm told Yahoo News on Friday that the Biden administration is “very bullish” on building new nuclear reactors in the United States.
We are very bullish on these advanced nuclear reactors,” she said. “We have, in fact, invested a lot of money in the research and development of those. We are very supportive of that.”
But Granholm noted that wind and solar are not yet capable of generating “baseload” capacity, meaning power that can be reliably ramped up to meet demand even when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining.
Half of the United States’ clean power now — when I say ‘clean’ I’m talking about net-zero carbon emissions — is through the nuclear fleet,” she observed. “If you look at the overall power, it’s about 20 percent. Globally, 29 percent of the clean power is nuclear.”
Granholm implied that there is no longer a significant risk of nuclear meltdowns like the infamous past incidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima.
“These advanced nuclear reactors, and the existing fleet, are safe,” she said. “We have the gold standard of regulation in the United States.
“And they’re baseload power,” she continued. “The holy grail is to identify clean, baseload power. ... Nuclear is dispatchable, clean baseload power, so we want to be able to bring more on.”
Another objection from critics to building new nuclear power reactors is that doing so is more expensive than competing forms of energy, and that subsidies for it would be better spent on renewables. Granholm addressed that objection head-on, without even being asked about it. She argued that the emerging technology of small, modular reactors will be more affordable than the hulking behemoths of yore.