Free markets at work

The New York Times on President W's new energy plan to let the government (read taxpayers) underwrite the risk of building those risky nuclear plants:

President Bush presented a plan on Wednesday to offer federal risk insurance to companies that build nuclear power plants and to encourage the construction of oil refineries on closed military bases in the United States.

Building more nuclear power plants has long been a part of Mr. Bush's energy policy, but offering federal risk insurance to companies or investors willing to try to get approval for them is new. In his speech, Mr. Bush said that his goal was to reduce uncertainty in the building and regulatory process, and to protect companies from construction delays beyond their control.

Mr. Bush noted that the United States had not ordered a new nuclear power plant since the 1970's, and that since then 35 plants were stopped at various stages of construction because of bureaucratic delays.

"No wonder the industry is hesitant to start building again," he said.

Those "bureaucratic delays" are usually over little things like safety issues. The NYT story.

Meanwhile, tucked away as a short "briefing" item in today's Times is this: "A federal judge has ordered the Energy Dept. to explain why it believes that it will ever be able to open the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. . . The Energy Dept. was supposed to begin taking the waste about five years ago, but that has not occurred because of delays in opening the Yucca repository . . . In her ruling, [the judge] said there was no evidence Yucca Mountain would ever be licensed."

Another of those pesky bureaucratic delays.