nuclear-news

Should New York’s electricity customers be bailing out the uneconomic nuclear industry?

Should electric customers pay for NYS nuclear plants? WBFO88.7, By DAVE LUCAS , 15 Nov 16, The battle is heating up over a statewide electric rate increase to subsidize upstate nuclear power plants that pits Governor Andrew Cuomo against a coalition of “good-government groups.”

Members and leaders of the statewide campaign to “Stop the Cuomo Tax” and end the bailout of nuclear power in New York have made their intentions clear: they are calling on the governor to release alleged “secretive agreements with nuclear companies.”

Blair Horner with the New York Public Interest Research Group said the governor is proposing to keep three upstate nuclear power plants near Rochester and Oswego open for the next dozen years, using $7.6 billion of ratepayer money to make it happen.

The issue is part of the Public Service Commission’s broader Clean Energy Standard. The final installment on putting that deal together occurs in a vote before the Public Service Commission scheduled for Thursday.

“There is certainly an irony in the fact that the governor is hell-bent on closing the Indian Point nuclear power plant outside of the city of New York and yet providing billions and billions of dollars in subsidies for aging upstate ones,” said Horner. “The plants that he’s bailing out are ones that were ready for the scrap heap. They’d already outlasted their anticipated lifespan as power plants.”

He continued that this could be the single biggest transfer of wealth from ratepayers to companies in New York state history.

“The decision on this was conducted largely outside of public view. The public had, at best, only dim awareness that this was happening,” Horner said. “The governor’s ramming through a basically secretive decision that’s going to cost New Yorkers billions and billions of dollars and, for the 800,000 poorest New Yorkers, they’re gonna take a big, big hit.”

Horner said most of those 800,000 are in arrears and 20,000 have already had their service cut off.

“The governor’s proposed bailout of these nuke power plants will just jack up the price even harder for these struggling New Yorkers and it’s not even that it’s a great investment,” Horner said. “This is just to keep old Vietnam War-era nuke power plants running.”

Horner said there has been no public debate if this is a good idea……. http://news.wbfo.org/post/should-electric-customers-pay-nys-nuclear-plants

November 16, 2016 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, politics, USA