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Joe Romm has a post at Grist about some poll results about subsidies for nuclear power - Wall Street Journal poll: Most popular spending cut is subsidies for new nuclear plants.

It is no big surprise that Americans don’t want cuts in Social Security, Medicare, or K-12 education. But the new WSJ/NBC poll does have some surprises:

The survey found that the most popular potential spending cuts were subsidies to build new nuclear plants, with 57 percent support….

Of course, nuclear is absurdly over-subsidized (see “Nuclear Pork—Enough is Enough“). In fact, a new report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, Nuclear Power: Still Not Viable without Subsidies (the source of the chart below), finds:

Government subsidies to the nuclear power industry over the past fifty years have been so large in proportion to the value of the energy produced that in some cases it would have cost taxpayers less to simply buy kilowatts on the open market and give them away ….

New nuclear power plants look to be even more uneconomical:

* Nuclear Bombshell: $26 billion cost—$10,800 per kilowatt!—killed Ontario nuclear bid
* Exelon’s Rowe: Low gas prices and no carbon price push back nuclear renaissance a “decade, maybe two”
* The staggering cost of new nuclear power
* GOP wants 100 new nukes by 2030 while Areva has acknowledged that the cost of a new reactor today would be as much as $8 billion

The Korea Herald reports that a swathe of nuclear power plants have been cancelled or delayed in South Korea as part of the anti-nuclear backlash following the Fukushima disaster (and the Inchon tidal power project has been delayed for 3 years as well) - Plans for more power plants delayed or scrapped.

The construction of 10 nuclear power plants and one tidal power plant scheduled to be completed between 2013 and 2027 has been either put off or canceled, plant operators said, fanning concerns about power shortages.

The 11 plants, if completed, altogether could have produced about 12.7 million kilowatts of electricity, which accounts for about 6.4 percent of the nation’s power supply.

“We have postponed or canceled some plant construction deals because the government has become more careful about giving out approval after the Fukushima nuclear disaster,” said an official of the Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Co.

Nuclear plant Sinuljin-1 and Sinuljin-2, originally set to be completed in June 2016 and June 2017 respectively, had their completion date postponed by at least 10 months, after failing to obtain the government approval on time.

The completion date of Sinuljin-3, Sinuljin-4, Sinkori-5 and Sinkori-6 were postponed by one year for failing to obtain the state approval, and Sinkori-7 and Sinkori-8 construction projects were canceled as the company faced difficulties in securing land for the construction site.

The KHNP decided to put off Incheon tidal power plant by about three years to June, 2020, the officials said.