nuclear-news

Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE) ‘s legal battle for transparency on nuclear costs

Nuclear Secrecy with $8 Billion on the Line, Clean Energy, Leslie Anderson Maloy, 6 Feb 2012, As Final Arguments Are Filed, Southern Co., Obama Administration Fight FOIA Request to Figure Out Danger to Taxpayers in the Event of Default in Deal More Than 12 Times the Size of Solyndra

Atlanta, Ga. (February 6, 2012) – With the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) believed to be within days of announcing the final federal approval of the controversial Vogtle nuclear project, the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE) has asked a court to stop more than two years of stonewalling by Southern Co. and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), which are resisting any meaningful public disclosure to taxpayers of the risks to which they are exposed in the massive commitment of $8.33 billion in conditional federal loan guarantees to Southern Company and their utility partners for two proposed new nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle in Georgia.

Of particular concern in the SACE Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
proceeding is the fact that the amount of taxpayer-backed obligations
for the proposed Vogtle reactors is more than a dozen times greater
than the failed Solyndra loan guarantee.
To date, DOE has produced heavily censored documents that have
provided little or no information in an effort to frustrate any
analysis that would be useful to taxpayers. Based on the limited
information produced to date, it appears that the power companies had
to put almost no “skin in the game,” only promising to pay a token
credit subsidy fee of what could be as little as 0.5 or 1.5 percent of
the total loan principal.

Private lenders have declined to finance new reactors because of the
enormously high cost of new nuclear power and the substantial risk
that any such investment will fail. In 2003, the Congressional Budget
Office (CBO) estimated that the chance of a loan for new nuclear
reactor construction resulting in default would be “very high – well
over 50 percent.” The Obama administration’s proposed loan guarantee
for Vogtle transfers the risk onto American taxpayers, who would pay
up to $8.33 billion if Southern Company and its partners run into the
same kind of trouble that is routine in the nuclear power
industry—cost overruns, delays and project cancellations. And Vogtle
does have a history that should trouble taxpayers worried about
assuming responsibility for the massive loan guarantee: the original
two reactors at the Georgia site took almost 15 years to build, came
in 1,200 percent over budget and resulted in the largest rate hike at
the time in Georgia. …….

SACE has posted the thousands of pages of documents on a website that
is open for the concerned public to access. Accompanying the documents
are highlighted examples of the egregiously and they believe,
illegally, redacted materials. View the Vogtle FOIA documents SACE
received, document summaries, a timeline of their FOIA activities, and
SACE court filings at
http://blog.cleanenergy.org/2012/02/02/vogtle-loan-guarantee-update/.

The continued foot dragging and improper handling by DOE of the SACE
FOIA request provide the latest proof of the validity of the
criticisms set out in the July 12, 2010 U.S. Government Accountability
Office report, “Further Actions Are Needed to Improve DOE’s Ability to
Evaluate and Implement the Loan Guarantee Program.” (See
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-627.) The GAO found that the
program is inadequately planned and executed, lacks objective
performance goals, and provides preferential treatment to nuclear loan
guarantee applications over other types of applications.
http://www.cleanenergy.org/index.php?/Press-Update.html?form_id=8&item_id=267

February 7, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Legal, USA