Welcome to the second annual Nuclear Reaction Awards. As the year comes to its close we’d like to recognise those who have help make the nuclear industry the over-subsidised and under-scrutinised joke it is today.
Today’s Award: Hope Over Experience 2009
The realities of nuclear energy came crashing down around the ears of many in the industry this year. In Canada, Ontario’s provincial government found its plans to build two nuclear reactors would cost three times ($25 billion Canadian) what it expected. German utility RWE abandoned its 49% stake in Bulgaria’s Belene nuclear power plant because of ‘funding issues’ (the issue was that there wasn’t any funding). Texas’s nuclear ambitions bit the dust after it was found there wasn’t enough government bailout cash to go around. There were others.
But winner the winner of our award soldiered on in the face of the odds, in the face of adversity, and in the face of reality.
After this year abandoning its fourth attempt since the 1970s to build its first nuclear reactor - an attempt whose tendering process was against competition law and attracted just one bidder whose bid was found to have technical shortcomings, and whose price would have made the reactor the most expensive electricity generating power plant in the world – our winner has vowed to carry on and try again.
