nuclear-news

States rebel against financing Small Modular Nuclear reactors (SMRs)

Experts: Nuclear Power Industry Woes Spreading Across Nation From Florida To Iowa Market Watch  WASHINGTON, May 23, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — As Ratepayer Rebellion Rages in Florida, Small Modular Reactor and “CWIP” Advance Financing Drive Stopped Dead in Iowa; Next Battleground States: Missouri and North Carolina.

Though its trials and travails at the national level get all the attention, the nuclear power industry is finding fewer and fewer friends in statehouses across the nation. In the Southeast, traditionally the stronghold of new nuclear power projects, a growing ratepayer rebellion in Florida seeks to curb advance financing of reactors that experts say will most likely never be constructed.

In Iowa, even Warren Buffett could not help to persuade state lawmakers to permit advancing financing of a small modular reactor (SMR) in that state. The Iowa defeat marked the nuclear power industry’s failure in its first attempt to push its much-ballyhooed SMR technology through a state legislature. Opposition to advance financing of a new reactor is so strong in Missouri that the industry has been forced to go to Washington, D.C., to seek a $452-million taxpayer-funded grant in the absence of state-level and Wall Street support. In North Carolina, diverse groups are coming together to block a push by Duke to
liberalize construction work in progress (CWIP) provisions to dig even deeper into the pockets of ratepayers in that state.

Examples of the growing state-level opposition to advance financing of SMRs and other new nuclear reactors include the following:
IOWA. The Iowa Legislature adjourned last week without passing a bill
that would pave the way for MidAmerican Energy to charge ratepayers in
advance for new nuclear reactor construction. As Friends of the Earth
noted: “The utility could have been allowed to keep the money even if
construction was never completed. MidAmerican lobbied extensively for
the bill but Iowa ratepayer concerns about nuclear power doomed the
proposal…..

MISSOURI. The Missouri General Assembly adjourned last week without
passing a bill that would have attacked a consumer protection law
passed by 65 percent of Missouri voters in 1976. “Three out of the
last four years Ameren Missouri has failed to legislatively repeal or
erode a voter approved consumer protection law making it illegal for
monopoly utilities to charge ratepayers in advance of providing a
service,”…..

FLORIDA. State and local officials made it clear on April 12, 2012
that bipartisan opposition is growing in Florida to the controversial
use of so-called “nuclear cost recovery” to force ratepayers in the
state to pay in advance for costs associated with four Progress Energy
of Florida (PEF) and Florida Power & Light (FPL) nuclear reactors that
are increasingly unlikely to ever be built…. A growing number of
local anti-nuclear cost recovery resolutions, which began with the
Village of Pinecrest (located near the proposed Turkey Point
reactors), are now spreading across the state, including multiple
municipalities in PEF and FPL service territories,..

NORTH CAROLINA. A broad coalition of environmental and consumer groups
have banded together to oppose proposed legislation that would
“liberalize” advanced cost recovery laws as they currently exist in
North Carolina. The legislation would let utilities such as Duke
Energy adjust rates annually without the consumer protections of a
general rate-making case. Duke customers paid out $224 million when
the company canceled its Cherokee nuclear reactor in 1982. Ratepayers
are understandably wary about taking on more risk as Duke debates
whether or not to even build two new reactors at the Lee site near
Gaffney, South Carolina, which, in order to be viable, would require
both a huge uptick in electricity demand as well as a rise in natural
gas prices. May 2012 survey results of 500 likely North Carolina
voters found broad opposition to rate increases to build nuclear
reactors……
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/experts-nuclear-power-industry-woes-spreading-across-nation-from-florida-to-iowa-2012-05-23

May 24, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA