Energy

Congress Gears Up For Showdown Over Billions In Nuclear Tax Credits

(Shutterstock/jaroslava V)

Daily Caller News Foundation logo
Andrew Follett Energy and Science Reporter
Font Size:

Congress did not include a provision extending tax credits for nuclear power in the $1.1 trillion spending bill intended to keep the government funded through September.

The lack of nuclear energy tax credits threaten the viability of two nuclear reactors being built in Georgia and South Carolina.

“The extension of the tax credit for advanced nuclear energy production is absolutely imperative to nuclear new build at Vogtle and VC Summer – and next-up U.S. nuclear projects, including SMRs, currently in the queue,” David Blee, executive director of the U.S. Nuclear Infrastructure Council (NIC), told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Its urgency is even more so given challenges emanating from the Westinghouse Chapter 11 filing.”

Georgia and South Carolina lawmakers strongly supported extending the tax credit. Supporters claim congressional leadership is delaying the issue until lawmakers take up tax reform later this year.

Westinghouse’s March bankruptcy filing will likely delay the construction of the Vogtle and VC Summer reactors. South Carolina’s two Republican senators, Tom Scott and Lindsey Graham, were shocked when the federal tax credit was left out and have already introduced legislation extending the tax credit to 2025.

The Obama administration gave the developers of the Vogtle reactor in Georgia a $8.3 billion loan guarantee. Nuclear power supporters say taxpayers may be at risk of losing money if the Vogtle project falters.

Industry representatives think Scott’s legislation could save the Vogtle and VC Summer reactors.

“Senator Scott’s legislation achieves this in a simple, straightforward manner by removing the arbitrary requirement to be fully operational by 2020 while also providing flexibility for use of the tax credit,” Blee said. “Given the increasing urgency, the return on investment and the high stakes including nearly 10,000 direct jobs and thousands more in-direct and potential jobs, it is our hope that the Congress will act swiftly on this measure.”

“I’m not going to sit on the sidelines and watch the nuclear industry be destroyed,” Graham told Politico Wednesday. “For three years, we’ve been trying to get these tax credits extended…The reactors that are being built are very much at risk.”

Scott told a local newspaper losing the tax credit would cost his state 5,000 jobs and noted that the tax credit wasn’t expensive compared to the economic gain from the reactors.

“This is not a cost or scoring issue,” Blee said. “But even then, all in the aggregate cost of roughly $6.5 billion is only a drop in the bucket compared to the $100 billion in subsidization of renewables since 2005.”

Solar and wind power got 82 and 17 times more in subsidies than nuclear power per amount of energy generated according to 2013 Department of Energy data collected by Forbes.

Follow Andrew on Twitter

Send tips to andrew@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel