About this episode

James Krellenstein discusses the myths surrounding the cost of nuclear power in America and the historical context of its development.

James Krellenstein returns to take apart one of the most persistent myths in energy discourse: the idea that there was a golden age when nuclear power was cheaper than coal. The plants people point to, Oyster Creek, Dresden, Point Beach, Quad Cities, were cheap to the utilities that bought them, but they were not cheap to build. General Electric and Westinghouse sold them as fixed-price turnkey projects at a deliberate loss, eating roughly 1 billion in 1960s dollars, more than 10 billion adjusted for inflation, across about a dozen plants. This loss leader strategy paid off. Between 1962 and 1976 the US nuclear fleet doubled its capacity roughly every 2 years, a stretch of sustained growth that rivals anything in American industrial history and still constitutes the largest nuclear fleet on earth in 2026. The conversation traces how turnkey era prices distorted every nuclear cost comparison that followed, why the utilities themselves pushed to abandon turnkey contracts, and how regulatory change, slowing load growth, and across-the-board cost inflation turned the boom into a wave of cancellations. Krellenstein closes on the fundamental question for the present moment: if we want…

People in this episode

Host: Dr. Chris Keefer

Guest: James Krellenstein

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: General Electric, Westinghouse

Places: Oyster Creek, Dresden, Point Beach, Quad Cities

More episodes of Decouple

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