Obama said to seek $54 billion in nuclear-power loans

President Barack Obama, acting on a pledge to support nuclear power, will propose tripling U.S. loan guarantees for new reactors to more than $54 billion, an administration official said. The additional loan guarantees in Obama's budget, which will be released Feb. 1, are part of an effort to bolster nuclear-power production after the president called for doing so in his State of the Union address Jan. 27. In a conference call with reporters, Energy Secretary Steven Chu today announced a panel to find a solution to storing the waste generated by nuclear plants. "To create more of these clean-energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives," Obama said in his speech. "That means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear-power plants in this country." For the 2011 budget, the department will add $36 billion to the $18.5 billion already approved for nuclear-power plant loan guarantees, according to the official, who asked not to be identified because the budget hasn't been released. Congress started the program in 2005 to encourage new plant construction, but the department has yet to issue a loan guarantee.