Congress Must Investigate Corruption in Nuclear Energy Industry

Real Clear Energy, By Craig Shirley, April 10, 2024

In their zeal to achieve a carbon-free environment, Democrats have done a big turnaround to promote nuclear energy as a safe, clean energy source. Some states are moving as fast they can to reactivate idle reactors. In 2022, Congress passed the Inflation Relief Act (IRA) to grant $30 billion for nuclear subsidies.

Scandals involving bribery over nuclear energy have toppled high-level state officials and corporate executives in Ohio, Illinois and other places.

In 2020, federal prosecutors brought charges against officials on Commonwealth Edison (ComEd), an Illinois company, for offering jobs and favors to friends of the Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives in exchange for a bill to bailout the company’s nuclear division.

At nearly the same time, Ohio-based FirstEnergy executives were charged with paying $60 million in bribes to state legislators. Former Ohio Speaker of the House Larry Householder is currently serving a 47 year prison sentence.

Floodlight, a non-profit environmental news service, wrote a piece that appeared in the liberal magazine Mother Jones that perfectly encapsulates the corruption in the nuclear industry:

“Utility fraud and corruption—in Florida, Illinois, Mississippi, Ohio, and South Carolina—have cost electricity customers at least $6.6 billion, according to Floodlight’s analysis. Ratepayers have bankrolled nuclear plants that never got built, transmission systems that were over-engineered to beef up profits, and aging coal facilities that couldn’t compete with cheaper plants powered by methane, which the industry calls natural gas.”

Before these scandals erupted, and before Congress passed the Inflation Recovery Act, the nuclear industry had become so unpopular, it was a tempting target for political corruption.

According to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists:

“Changes in the economics of electricity markets are threatening the profitability of nuclear power plants, a shifting reality driving a demand for these financial bailouts. As the New Jersey-based energy company Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG) explained in October 2020, across the nation “nuclear plants continue to struggle economically to survive. Since 2018, three nuclear plants have closed in the eastern US, all for economic reasons, and the impact has had a ripple effect.”

Over the past several years, the Justice Department and the courts have done their jobs in prosecuting and sentencing bad actors in the nuclear industry. It is time for Congress to investigate the root causes of the corruption. Executives and experts alike must be brought before congressional committees to explain why the nuclear industry has been allowed to fall into corruption at the expense of the taxpayer and the consumer……………………………………….
https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2024/04/10/congress_must_investigate_corruption_in_nuclear_energy_industry_1024272.html