Market Failure: Market-Based Electricity is Killing Nuclear Power

Nuclear power is too important to be left to the market. This book explains why a market-based electricity industry is killing existing nuclear power plants and stopping new nuclear power plants.

The biggest threat faced by nuclear power is from a market approach to the electricity industry. Electricity industry reforms have led to the early closure of existing nuclear power plants and stopped new nuclear power development.

In the US, 6,778 MWe of operating nuclear power plant capacity was closed early between 2013 and 2020, an additional 9,162 MWe of operating nuclear power plant capacity is scheduled to close early by the end of 2025, and more US merchant nuclear plants face financial issues that may lead them to close early.

In the market approach to electricity, short-term electricity market prices set the value of commodity electricity, electricity prices define power plant value, and private companies develop and own power plants based on financial returns. This market approach leads to less nuclear power, with the loss of the considerable public benefits that nuclear power provides.

Economists call this market failure.

This book includes information on the nuclear power and electricity industries, market failure in the nuclear power industry, and some ideas about resolving this market failure.