Last month, the Biden administration began implementing its plan to spend $6 billion bailing out financially troubled U.S. nuclear power plants. “We’re using every tool available to get this country powered by clean energy by 2035, and that includes prioritizing our existing nuclear fleet,” Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said in a statement. The measure, a relatively tiny part of Biden’s $1 trillion infrastructure package, didn’t get much attention when that bill passed Congress last year. But now that the Department of Energy has launched the program, opponents are speaking up. The environmental group Beyond Nuclear calls the move a “misguided but predictable decision.” Taxpayers for Common Sense decries providing “more bailout money for an already failing industry.”
The critics have a point. As a rule, direct federal subsidies to specific industries are inefficient, prone to abuse, and unfair to competing businesses (not to mention a burden to taxpayers). Those concerns apply to the Department of Energy’s new Civilian Nuclear Credit (CNC) program as well. Still, considering the grim alternatives, the CNC program might turn out to be one of the rare bright spots in the Biden administration’s energy policy. How could enacting a clumsy, taxpayer-funded bailout be considered a sensible move? Only because the rest of U.S. energy policy is such a mess.
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