How much water will the proposed plant in Payette County, Idaho use?
We will acquire water rights for one-million gallons of water a day, which is the farming equivalent of watering 140 acre parcel of land year round. However, the plant will not always require that much water, in fact very often it will use as little as 100,000 gallons a day.
AEHI will acquire existing water rights, and will install the infrastructure to pump the water from the Payette River.
How much will it cost to build?
Based on our projections of using the South Korean-made APR 1400 reactor, the plant will cost between $8 billion and $10 billion to build.
What is the timeline for building the plant?
Local approval: 3rd Qtr 2010
NRC application: 3rd Qtr 2011
Begin construction: 2nd Qtr 2014
Operation: 2nd Qtr 2018
What are the economic benefits of building such a plant?
The economic benefits are huge. The construction phase alone would require more than 5,000 workers, averaging around $60,000 a year. During operations we would hire over a thousand people, making an average salary of $80,000 a year.
There will be an additional 2,000 employees needed to fill positions at a variety of existing business, as well as new schools, hospitals, grocery stores, gas stations, etc., which will be needed to support the people working at the plant and their families.
There will be an increase of $5.3 billion to the state's gross domestic product, and $4.8 billion to the county's GDP.
The county's tax base will also increase dramatically. Historically a community the size of Payette County could see it's tax coffers expand by nearly $100 million.
What about the waste?
First and foremost, it is important to remember that with nuclear power there are no carbon emissions, so compared to other production methods like coal, a nuclear power plant is the cleanest source of baseload power available.
However, what there is of a nuclear plant's "waste" is stored on site. Remember, these are spent fuel rods, which are only swapped out about once every six years, so there's releatively little "waste" and what there is can be stored indefinitely in steel containers. Coal, on the other hand, pumps it's waste out in the form of toxic pollutants into the environment to the tune of about 1800 pounds a minute.
That said, many other countries using nuclear today are able to reduce/eliminate their nuclear waste by recycling it. Currently the United States cannot because the recycling process was made illegal during the Carter administration. Based on the current political environment, we believe that ruling will be overturned soon, and we can begin recycling those spent fuel rods, which have a great deal of fuel left in them when they are "thrown away". That process turns nuclear waste into mere garbage.
How can you afford to build this plant?
It is important to remember that no company has the capital on hand to build a plant like this. If it were a public utility building it, the utility would have to apply for a bond, which would increase your power rates.
In our case, we will be using a combination of investor funds and loans. Here's how it will work, which is historically how most plants like this one are paid for.
We will use two different methods, or phases with this project. Phase one will require about $100 million to pay for land, water, engineers, lawyers and applications. That money is currently being raised through investors.
Phase two takes place after AEHI receives local and federal approval; once approved, the property will increase in value to about $1.5 billion. The land then becomes an asset used to borrow $5 billion to $8 billion for construction. No loan payments are expected until the plant is operational, and once running at full capacity, it will create about $3 billion annually in reliable profits for 60 years.
These projections create a very attractive loan for most lenders.
Making this even more attractive, and much less risky, are federal loan guarantees, which are currently being increased by the federal government under President Obama. These guarantees insure loan repayments, and are a very safe investment for the government since no nuclear power plant has ever defaulted on a loan. You can read more about this program on the Nuclear Energy Institute’s website: http://tinyurl.com/financingnuclearpower.
In short, after phase one, AEHI will have a $1.5 billion asset and a nearly $10 billion asset after phase two — in either case, a very profitable proposition.