Texas, Enron and the Ghost of California

Nuclear power can arguably be claimed as having had "the most subsidies in history", or be recognized as the least subsidized sector of the energy industry. It just depends on how one elects to tally subsidies.

The claim for "the most subsidies in history" -- rests on two questionable pillars. One is counting all of the government R&D funding for the national labs related to nuclear power as subsidies. The other is assigning an estimated value of the indemnification provisions of the Price-Anderson Act to nuclear plant operators and counting that estimate as subsidy. It has to be a subjective estimate, since the provisions of the act have never actually cost taxpayers a cent. 

Nuclear power has never received any subsidy for energy delivered, or for plant operation and maintenance. In most states, it is denied credits extended to wind and solar for being a zero-carbon energy resource. Legislative attempts to extend carbon credits have generally been met by protests of "unfair subsidies for nuclear power". Nuclear is also forced to operate within a market system that undervalues resilience and reliability.

It can reasonably be argued that renewable energy interests have aligned themselves with fossil fuel interests in opposition to carbon taxes, because taxing carbon emissions would weaken or eliminate the subsidy advantage that wind and solar currently enjoy over nuclear.

Make no mistake, the wind and solar industries have just as much of a market interest in suppressing nuclear power as the coal industry did in the last century. The human tendency to see the world in terms of "us vs. them", "good guys vs. bad guys" is an unfortunate legacy of our tribal evolutionary past. We have tremendous abilities to rationalize whatever is in our interests, and to find ways of seeing the world that justify actions we take on behalf of that self-interest. As a society, we uphold monetary gain and material wealth as prime metrics of social status. So long as that continues, "follow the money" will remain the best guide to understanding the positions of political actors.

If we ever manage to collectively value quality of life and the good of the planet over material wealth, we'll find the world looking very different to us.