Group items tagged

The cost to build a new nuclear power plant in Texas has risen to $10 billion, up from early estimates, but much below price tags of other proposed U.S. nuclear projects, an executive with NRG Energy Inc's nuclear development arm said on Tuesday. The "all in" cost to build two 1,350-megawatt nuclear reactors in South Texas has risen 40 percent from 2006 estimates which did not include financing costs, Steve Winn, chief executive of Nuclear Innovation North America (NINA), told the Reuters Global Energy Summit. While higher, NINA's current estimate is more than $10 billion under estimates from other nuclear developers that operate in states where regulators determine how much money utilities can charge customers for new power plants.

A stadium-size sinkhole that formed in south Texas's oil country this month is renewing questions about the effects of billions of barrels of saltwater injected into the ground each year as a byproduct of oil and gas drilling.