Taxpayers have been supporting the nuclear power industry for more than seven decades. There are embedded subsidies up and down the nuclear supply chain, from before raw material like uranium leaves the ground to when it eventually ends up in nuclear waste storage. These subsidies include foregone revenues on uranium mining on federal lands, funding for research, development and demonstration programs, loan guarantees for new plant constructions, liability cap for radioactive accidents, production tax credit for new nuclear power plants, just to name a few.

But now, the administration wants to shovel out even more money to the already subsidized nuclear industry. The President’s budget includes a proposal to “allocate[] credit for electricity generation from existing nuclear power facilities”, which would cost taxpayers $9.75 billion over the next decade.

There’s already a production tax credit for any new nuclear power plants that come online (none have since the credit was created in 2005). The proposal in the budget is to create and hand out up to $1 billion in new credits every year to nuclear power plants already in service around the country that are struggling to compete in energy markets. Under the plan, nuclear power plants would bid for the credit every two years by stating how much they think they need to keep their doors open. How bids would be evaluated is fuzzy, but it seems that those in the most financial distress would be prioritized in the name of keeping plants open. It’s not too big to fail, it’s too broke to fail. The credits would amount to a wholesale bailout of the nuclear industry.

The proposal is boldly wasteful, but not new. Back in December 2020, a senate bill proposing a financial credit for nuclear plants at risk of shutting down passed through committee. More recently, the Senate Finance Committee just held a markup on the Clean Energy for America Act. Amendments submitted for consideration included a production tax credit for all existing nuclear plants. Although the amendment did not come up for a vote during the markup, the idea seems likely to resurface with fresh momentum from President Biden’s budget. For the sake of taxpayers, and the principles of a market economy, subsidizing failure with a new tax credit should never get off the ground.