Odds against new US nuclear plants-finance lawyer

[jpak]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/28/usa-nuclear-financing-idUSN2818128120110328

Public fears about nuclear
safety stacked up on untenable economics make it unlikely that
any new nuclear reactors will be built in the United States in
the next several years, a lawyer who specializes in energy
project financing said on Monday.

Even if public opinion were to "snap back" after the
emergency at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant -- the world's
worst atomic crisis in 25 years -- nuclear plants cost too much
to build, even with government loan guarantees, said Irving
Rotter, a partner with New York law firm Sidley Austin.

"The likelihood that the United States will have a nuclear
reactor within the next several years is exceedingly remote --
it was as exceedingly remote before the incident in Japan,"
Rotter told a nuclear policy conference held by the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace.

Long before the Japanese plant was battered by an
earthquake and tsunami earlier this month, natural gas was a
far cheaper fuel source for electricity in the United States.


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