[ExI] govt lending to build nuke plants?

[Keith Henson]

On Wed, Nov 12, 2025 at 6:32 PM spike jones via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> I don’t know what to make of this, but it supports Keith’s (I think it was his) contention that the federal government does partially fund power generation projects.

Back in the 1930s and 1940s, the Feds funded the whole cost of the
Hoover Dam and Grand Coulee Dam.  In the last few years, I read
somewhere that power sales had paid off the construction cost of at
least one of them.  With respect to nuclear power plants, the Feds
pick up the cost of disaster insurance because the potential is too
large for any private group of companies.

Of course, recent power line fires have shown that you don't need a
nuclear meltdown to bankrupt a power company.  A large chunk of the
power cost increase is due to a single fire.

" The 2018 Camp Fire in Northern California's Butte County was the
deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history. The
fire began on the morning of November 8, 2018, when hardware on a
poorly maintained Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) transmission
line in the Feather River Canyon failed during strong katabatic winds.
Those winds rapidly drove the Camp Fire through the communities of
Concow, Magalia, Butte Creek Canyon, and Paradise, largely destroying
them. The fire burned for another two weeks, and was contained on
Sunday, November 25 after burning 153,336 acres (62,050 ha). The Camp
Fire caused 85 fatalities, displaced more than 50,000 people, and
destroyed more than 18,000 structures, causing an estimated $16.5
billion in damage.

"&E filed for bankruptcy in January 2019, citing expected wildfire
liabilities of $30 billion. On December 6, 2019, the utility made a
settlement offer of $13.5 billion for the wildfire victims; the offer
covered several devastating fires caused by the utility, including the
Camp Fire. On June 16, 2020, the utility pleaded guilty to 84 counts
of involuntary manslaughter. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Fire_(2018)

Not that anyone spent a day in jail.

PG&E was well known for spending as little money as possible on
maintenance.  This kept the cost of power down and profits up, so the
executives could collect large bonuses.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Bruno_pipeline_explosion

"On January 13, 2012, an independent audit from the State of
California issued a report stating that PG&E had illegally diverted
over $100 million from a fund used for safety operations, and instead
used it for executive compensation and bonuses."

The line that failed was 100 years old.

"The Camp Fire was caused by the failure of a single metal hook
attached to a PG&E transmission tower on the company's Caribou-Palermo
transmission line, which carried power from hydroelectric facilities
in the Sierra Nevada to the Bay Area.[32] The tower, a little under
100 feet (30 m) tall,[33] was built on a steep incline on a ridge
above Highway 70 and the North Fork Feather River near the community
of Pulga.[34]

"The tower had two arms, each with a hook hanging from a hole in a
long piece of metal.[35] The hook held up a string of electrical
insulators.[36] The transmission power lines were suspended from these
insulators, away from the steel tower itself so as to prevent
electricity arcing between them.[35] One of the hooks on the tower
(about three inches (7.6 cm) wide[32] and one inch (2.5 cm) in
diameter) had been worn down by rubbing against the metal plate that
it hung from, to the point where only a few millimeters of metal
remained.[35]

At 6:15 a.m. PST on November 8, a PG&E control center in Vacaville
recorded an outage on the company's transmission line in the Feather
River Canyon.[37]: 7 The hook—which was about 7/8ths worn through—had
snapped under the weight of the power line and insulator string that
it supported, which weighed more than 142 pounds (64 kg).[37]: 22 No
longer held up, the energized power line struck the transmission
tower. This created an electric arc between the power line and the
tower, which reached temperatures estimated at 5,000 to 10,000 °F
(2,800 to 5,500 °C) and melted metal components of the conductor and
the tower. The molten metal fell into the brush beneath the tower,
setting it alight.[37]: 9 "

A lot of the high cost of power in California can be traced to
executives who diverted maintenance funds to their own pockets.  The
Wikipedia articles are well worth reading.

Keith
> I wholeheartedly agree with building nukes, but if we have government involved in it, that means the government can withdraw funding, as it did with the wind project in New Jersey, delaying completion.
>
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> https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/trump-admin-lend-hundreds-billions-build-nuclear-power-plants
>
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> spike
>
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