Ohio’s nuclear plants face new uncertainty as HB 6 comes under attack, Crains Cleveland Business,DAN SHINGLER 26 Jul 20, So what happens to Ohio and its nuclear plants now?
It’s becoming apparent that 2019’s House Bill 6, the now-tainted law that provides about $150 million a year in subsidies primarily to Ohio’s two nuclear plants, likely will be repealed.
But will it be replaced? And if so, will the plants, which Ohioans were told would close without the subsidies, be saved?
Those are questions now causing angst from Columbus, where state lawmakers are grappling with the issue, to the Toledo area and Lake County, where the affected Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear plants are respectively located. The companies involved, FirstEnergy Corp. of Akron and its former subsidiary, Energy Harbor, which owns the plants, have yet to say how they might address the matter and have declined interview requests.
Legislators, economic developers and others across the state expressed their disgust with the situation — which already has become one of the largest scandals in Ohio’s history and resulted in the July 21 arrest of House Speaker Larry Householder and four others for what federal officials say was a $60 million bribery scheme to pass the law…….
Cirino said he would like to see HB 6’s subsidies remain in place, but he’s resigned to the bill likely being repealed. A number of lawmakers have already announced legislation to undo HB 6, and Gov. Mike DeWine, who said he supported keeping the law in place when the scandal broke, had reversed course by July 23 and joined calls for it to be repealed. ………
some GOP lawmakers working to repeal HB 6 are expressing support for renewables.
“Renewable energy in the long run will save the consumer a lot of money, in addition to the job development,” said Rep. Laura Lanese, R-Grove City, who is working on legislation to repeal HB 6. She and other lawmakers, from both parties, are calling for Ohio to start over on a new energy policy.
UK China threat: MPs demand answers on Beijing’s role in British nuclear power plant, CHINA’S role in Britain’s Hinkley Point C nuclear facility should be urgently reviewed amid claims its involvement in the plant is much deeper than previously thought, according to MPs. Express UK, By SIMON OSBORNE, Sun, Jul 26, 2020 Former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith claims ministers were misled when they gave the green light for Beijing-controlled China General Nuclear (CGN) to become a stakeholder in the £22.5billion reactor. Sir Iain said Theresa May’s government was assured the energy firm would only be a financial partner when it took a 33.5 percent stake in the Somerset plant with French energy giant EDF in 2016. But insiders claim CGN role goes beyond financial support, with EDF heavily reliant on Chinese technical expertise.
Sir Iain told the Sunday Telegraph: “It was obviously never just going to be a financial partnership.
This information tells you everything you need to know to back the call to have an independent, strategic review into our dependency on China.”
Nick Timothy, Mrs May’s top adviser when the deal was struck four years ago, said he tried to block the Chinese approach.
The National 26th July 2020, SCOTLAND could see the end of nuclear weapons on the Clyde within three
years of a Yes vote under radical new plans be put to the SNP annual
conference. A resolution is to be submitted to the event this October
setting out the time frame for the first time.
But communities downwind from the first atomic test in the New Mexico desert on July 16, 1945, are still holding out for compensation for health effects that they say have been ongoing for generations due to fallout from the historic blast.
So far, their pleas for Congress to extend and expand a federal radiation compensation program have gone unanswered. The program currently covers workers who became sick as a result of the radiation hazards of their jobs and those who lived downwind of the Nevada Test Site.
Those excluded from the program include residents downwind of the Trinity Site in New Mexico, additional downwinders in Nevada, veterans who cleaned up radioactive waste in the Marshall Islands and others.
Tina Cordova, a cancer survivor and co-founder of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, said the excuse always has been that the federal government doesn’t have enough money to take care of those affected.
She said the need is even greater now since the coronavirus is disproportionately affecting those with underlying health conditions and downwinders fall into the category because of their compromised health
“When you talk about enhancing plutonium pit production and defense spending in the trillions, you can’t tell us there’s not enough money to do this,” she told The Associated Press. “You can’t expect us to accept that any longer and that adds insult to injury. It’s as if we count for nothing.”
U.S. Rep. Ben Ray Lujan, the New Mexico Democrat who advocated for the apology, continues to push for amendments to the radiation compensation program. His office recently convened a meeting among downwinders, uranium miners, tribal members, other advocates and staff in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office.
“The congressman believes that the need for medical and monetary compensation has never been more urgent,” said Monica Garcia, a spokeswoman for the congressman.
The discussions come as the New START treaty between the U.S. and Russia nears expiration in 2021. Russia has offered to extend the nuclear arms control agreement while the Trump administration has pushed for a new pact that would also include China.
While the U.S. House has adopted language that would prohibit spending to conduct or make preparations for any live nuclear weapons tests, a group of senators has included $10 million for such an effort in that chamber’s version of the bill.
The Union of Concerned Scientists, nuclear watchdogs and environmentalists all are pushing for the funding to be eliminated. They sent letters this week in opposition and plan to lobby lawmakers.
“A U.S. resumption of nuclear testing would set off an unpredictable and destabilizing international chain reaction that would undermine U.S. security,” reads one letter.
Kevin Davis with the Union of Concerned Scientists’ global security program said resuming live testing would be unnecessary because the U.S. has been able to do sub-critical experiments and use its super computers along with data from past testing to run simulations on the nation’s nuclear stockpile.
The last full-scale underground test was done Sept. 23, 1992, by scientists with Los Alamos National Laboratory at the Nevada Test Site northwest of Las Vegas. Less than two weeks later, then President George H.W. Bush signed legislation mandating a moratorium on U.S. underground nuclear testing.
Democrat Rep. Ben McAdams of Utah is among those leading the effort to ban spending for testing. He said thousands of residents in his state are still dealing with trauma and illness as a result of previous testing.
Dozens of groups also signed on to a letter sent to congressional leaders in May advocating for the expansion of the radiation compensation program.
“We can’t continue to allow the government to walk away from their responsibility,” Cordova said.
It’s been a bit of a Watergate week for nuclear power, with individuals in two states arrested for criminally defrauding the public to keep nuclear power alive. In Ohio, it was public officials, backed by nuclear company money, who illegally orchestrated a massive subsidy. In South Carolina, it was the arrest of an energy company official who has pled guilty to a $9 billion nuclear fraud. This week, we feature the Ohio story. Next week, it will be South Carolina’s turn.
If you were going to pull someone out of central casting to play a thuggish villain, you would choose Larry Householder. But he wouldn’t need any acting skills.
On July 21, Householder, along with four others, was arrested for his alleged involvement in what amounts to the biggest criminal racketeering conspiracy in Ohio history. Somehow it’s not a surprise that it revolved around pots of money to keep two aging and unaffordable nuclear power plants open.
While Householder may physically embody everyone’s idea of a gangster, it’s not his official profession. He is — and presumably that will soon be a “was” — the Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives.
The scheme is laid bare in an 81-page criminal complaint. It was busted open by a year-long, detailed and covert investigation by the US Attorney’s office and the FBI, and involves the flow of $61 million of dark money directed toward activities that would ensure the passage of legislation in Ohio guaranteeing the bailout of the Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear reactors to the tune of $1.5 billion. The subsidy is being funded via a surcharge on electricity customers.
The bill, known as HB6, also slashed mandates for wind and solar energy and eliminated energy efficiency requirements. It was, as David Roberts described it on Vox just after the bill passed in July 2019, “the worst piece of legislation in the 21st century” and “the most counterproductive and corrupt piece of state energy legislation I can recall in all my time covering this stuff.”
FirstEnergy Solutions, the then owner of the plants, had threatened their closure if the subsidy was not forthcoming.
That ultimatum set in motion a breathtaking sequence of criminal activities beginning in 2018, with the $61 million slush fund first used to bankroll political elections, then to ensure sufficient votes for the July 2019 passage of HB 6, and finally the sometimes violent suppression of citizen efforts to overturn it.
Millions of dollars went into the campaign war chests of 21 political candidates, in order to stack the House with friendly votes for the subsequent nuclear bailout bill. (Only one ended up voting against it.) The money also shored up Householder’s successful bid to regain the House Speakership.
The money also went into the personal pockets of the co-conspirators, although the exact amounts and their purposes are still being investigated. As events unfold we may also learn whether votes in favor of HB6 were “bought” by Householder.
As the story is far from over, more arrests will almost certainly follow. And more news on this will continue to break. By necessity, this can only be a glimpse of the story so far.
The crimes with which Householder and four political advisors and lobbyists have been charged constitute “a shameful betrayal of public trust,” said FBI special agent, Chris Hoffman during a July 21 press conference announcing the arrests and indictment.
It was also, “likely the largest bribery money-laundering scheme ever perpetrated against the people of the state of Ohio,” said US Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio, David DeVillers at the same press conference, whose department led the investigation alongside the FBI.
But whose money was it?
The racketeering scheme that the justice department uncovered found a money trail of $61 million flowing from what they are required to call “Company A” in the indictment, into a 501(c)(4) fund named Generation Now. Generation Now has also been charged with racketeering conspiracy.
“Company A” is FirstEnergy, whose subsidiary, FirstEnergy Solutions (FES) was the then owner of the crumbling and uneconomical Davis-Besse and Perry reactors. (They are now owned by yet another spin-off, Energy Harbor).
Although FirstEnergy has been served with subpoenas, so far no one there has been named in the indictment. And while the company clearly handed out the $61 million, DeVillers said of the web of conspirators that “this enterprise went looking for someone to bribe them”.
Meanwhile, the money trail that led from FirstEnergy to Larry Householder’s pocket and others’ was deftly concealed. As DeVillers described it, the entire scheme was “created completely and utterly to hide where there donor came from and [who it] was.”
Generation Now, as a 501(c)(4), was not obliged to declare the source of its funding. If it had been, said DeVillers at the press conference, the criminal enterprise it operated could never have happened. Despite its name, DeVillers said, “make no mistake, this is Larry Householder’s 501(c)(4).”
And a Republican-led operation. Generation Now’s treasurer is D. Eric Lycan, a Lexington, KY attorney with ties to the Kentucky House Republican Leadership Caucus. In addition to the ad buys Generation Now made for FirstEnergy, it also made them for an entity called Strategic Media Placement, run by GOP operative, Rex Elass. As DeVillers told the media as he pointed to a rather simple flow chart displayed at the press conference, “the real one would have covered this whole wall.”
FBI special agent Hoffman lumped Householder and his cronies in with FBI usual suspects like “gangs, child sex trafficking and Chinese spies,” but said that “public corruption is actually the top criminal priority for the FBI.”
But it should not be the priority for the US Attorney’s office. DeVillers, a Republican and Trump appointee, could not suppress his anger as he told reporters that his district is already struggling with limited resources and “a massive overdose epidemic where you’ve got people dying of overdoses of fentanyl, people stacked up like cord wood at a coroner’s office, we’ve got violent crime sky-rocketing, we’ve got two Franklin County sheriff’s deputies shot this morning.”
And yet, he continued, “we have to take our resources away from those real victim cases and investigate and prosecute some politicians who just won’t do their damn job.”
Chinese spies were in fact part of the Generation Now misinformation campaign, a scare tactic used to derail efforts by a coalition called Ohioans Against Corporate Bailouts (OACB), which launched a petition drive to repeal HB6.
A FirstEnergy/Householder front group ran scaremongering “yellow peril” ads to deter people from signing a petition that would have reversed the nuclear bailout bill, HB6
As petitioners took to the streets, attempting to gather enough signatures to get a repeal of HB6 onto a November ballot, a smear campaign suggested that, among other things, the petition gatherers were in the payroll of Chinese government operatives who were “quietly invading our American electric grid” and that if you signed the HB6 repeal petition, the Chinese government would be capturing “your name, your address, your signature”. National security would be at risk.
Most ludicrously, the Chinese scare ad, put together by Ohioans for Energy Security (in reality a front group funded by Generation Now) suggested China, and by definition the ballot petitioners, were “taking Ohio money,” which is precisely what the Householder racket was doing.
It worked. OACB eventually ran out of time and petition gatherers, with some having been bought off with a portion of the $61 million. In October 2019, OACB withdrew the initiative, which is when HB6 effectively became law. And it still is.
That’s the worst part of the news. Householder and others may pay a fine, or even see jail time, but the people of Ohio remain in danger. Davis-Besse and Perry are two of the most seriously degraded reactors in the country and should have been shut down long ago.
If Davis-Besse suffered a serious meltdown, there could be “1,400 peak early fatalities, 73,000 peak early injuries, 10,000 peak cancer deaths, and $84 billion in property damage,” according to Beyond Nuclear’s Kevin Kamps, citing a 1982 study by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. With populations having soared since then, today’s figures would be far higher, he pointed out.
Likewise, the Perry plant’s numbers would be well above the 5,500 acute radiation deaths, 180,000 radiation injuries, 14,000 latent cancer fatalities, and $102 billion in property damage, cited in the 1982 study, should that reactor suffer a major accident.
The $1.5 billion subsidy, says Toledo public interest attorney, Terry Lodge, “didn’t go to ensure safe nuclear plant operations for the next five years, but instead was paid to investors as dividends once the FirstEnergy bailout was over.”
However, it looks unlikely that HB6 will be undone, despite the criminal machinations behind its passage. While Howard Learner, executive director of the Chicago-based Environmental Law & Policy Center, told the Toledo Blade that the Ohio bailout “should not remain in effect if obtained through bribery or other means”, it would have to be nullified by the legislature itself, an action for which there seems little political inclination.
One reason for that reluctance could be yet one more sinister discovery. Prior to the vote on HB6, a Trump operative, Bob Paduchik had pressured “at least five members of the Ohio House of Representatives,” to vote ‘yes’ on HR6, according to Politico. “The message is that if we have these plants shut down we can’t get Trump reelected,” one senior legislative source told Politico.
As DeVillers said: “We’re not done with this case.”
How bankrupt US nuclear financing schemes are going to be used to fund nuclear power in the UK to fund nuclear power. https://100percentrenewableuk.org/blogby David Toke 24 July, 20 As different types of corrupt pro-nuclear handouts in the USA unravel the British Government is expected to support bringing in a legalised version of bankrupt US nuclear financing practices to fund Sizewell C nuclear power plant.
The US nuclear power industry is in danger of implosion as corrupt practices used to maintain its old power plant and pay for new plant are the subject of prosecutions. In Ohio the Speaker of the House of Representatives has been arrested on account of charges that he was bribed to ensure that nuclear power and coal plant in Ohio were given bailouts whilst policies supporting renewable energy and energy efficiency were cut back.
Meanwhile in South Carolina the Securities and Exchange Committee has charged executives of the State’s monopoly utility with fraud after the abandonment of two of the only four nuclear reactors whose construction has been started in the USA this century. According to the Wall Street Journal: ‘The defendants claimed the project was on track even though they knew it was significantly delayed and wouldn’t be completed on time by Jan. 1, 2021, to qualify for $1.4 billion of federal tax credits, the securities regulator alleged’. In the process the electricity consumers were charges billions of dollars for the power plant which were not built through a similar cost recovery process that is proposed for the UK.
Over to Florida, and while nobody has been charged with any offences there is great controversy over the way the dominant state utility has charged the electricity consumer for a nuclear power plant that was never built. In this case they never even got as far as breaking ground, but the consumers had to pay out $871 million as well as lots more money for other bungled projects relating to nuclear energy. Florida, like other US states has simultaneously erected huge barriers stopping homeowners (in the so-called ‘Sunshine State’) from putting solar panels on their roofs.
According to the New York Times: ‘Florida is one of eight states that prohibit the sale of solar electricity directly to consumers unless the provider is a utility. There is also a state rule, enforced by the utilities, requiring expensive insurance policies for big solar arrays on houses’.
Meanwhile in Georgia, the third state to use the cost recovery method for financing nuclear plant, the only two nuclear power plant being built in the USA (Vogtle III and IV) are hopelessly delayed with massive cost overruns, again, yes you’ve guessed it, with costs paid by electricity consumers.
Of course all of these real or abandoned nuclear plant were financed under the so-called Regulated Asset Base (RAB) model that is being slated to pay for Sizewell C in the UK. This is hailed as a much cheaper way to pay for nuclear power compared with the way that Hinkley C is financed. Cheaper, for the developer (in this case EDF), certainly, but for the electricity consumer it’s a disaster! The consumer, as the US experience clearly illustrates, starts paying and continues paying for a nuclear power plant long before it is generating any energy, and there is no guarantee even that it will ever generate anything! But the consumer still pays, no matter what the constructions cost overruns turn out to be! And invariably, with nuclear power plant, there are very large cost overruns.
Added to this of course the bias in favour of new nuclear as opposed to new renewable energy schemes is also assured. The contracts nuclear power are being given assure them that they will get paid the premium price for energy generated even if wholesale electricity prices are negative whereas windfarms and solar farms will get nothing in such circumstances. See our report on this. Of course there’s nothing illegal in this because mountains of impenetrable contractual and accountancy paperwork make it so. It is just written by the the people who have the energy establishment’s interests at heart.
Ohio House Republicans introduce legislation to repeal controversial bailout of nuclear power plants, Cleveland 19 News, Jim Nelson | July 23, 2020 COLUMBUS, Ohio (WOIO) – A pair of republican members of the Ohio House of Representatives are introducing a bill to repeal House Bill 6, the controversial bailout of the state’s nuclear power plants now at the center of a bombshell corruption scandal.
“Not only because it was bad policy from the start, but because we need to reassure Ohioans that their representatives, be they democrat or republican, are truly working in their interest,” said Rep. Laura Lanese (R-Grove City).
She, along with Rep. Mark Romanchuk (R-Ontario), will co-sponsor the bill.
Federal investigators say the passage of the controversial legislation was helped by a phony social welfare organization, orchestrated by House Speaker Larry Householder.
They say $61 million was funneled through the organization to Householder and his associates, who in turn helped elect 21 members of the Ohio House of Representatives.
Nearly all of them voted in favor of the bailout.
“House Bill 6 was bad policy from the start,” Lanese said. “From the beginning to the middle through the end, this legislation has been tainted.”
Neither Lanese nor Romanchuk supported the bill.
Romanchuk was not at the Thursday news conference held in Columbus, where Lanese stressed the importance of coming up with a new energy solution.
“Many of my house colleagues are not against nuclear energy. We are part of the ‘all of the above’ policy. This is not about kicking out nuclear energy or destroying jobs,” she said. “I would like to see [that] we include a lot of the clean energy portfolio pieces that were part of the last general assembly’s legislation. Those were taken out in this piece.”
“We did have a lot of support for energy efficiency and renewable energy,” she pointed out……..
While Householder is the only elected official implicated in the criminal complaint, released on Tuesday by the U.S. Attorneys Office, there is speculation that others could be more deeply involved. …….
Montel News 23rd July 2020, The new generation EPR reactor EDF is building at Flamanville in France
“is a mess,” France’s new energy minister Barbara Pompili said on Thursday. “I think it’s clear. The Flamanville EPR is a mess. This has been said in a number of reports which cannot be suspected of being anti-nuclear, notably the Court of Auditors report,” she told France Inter radio. “The initial costs (of the EPR) have multiplied by four,” she said, pointing to “problems of competence” that “had to be resolved.”
Former and current Utah Congressmen: Say no to nuclear testing, KSL News Radio, BY CURT GRESSETH JULY 23, 2020 SALT LAKE CITY — The US Senate is ready to restart nuclear weapons testing, but both a current and a former Utah congressman say the testing is still not safe.
The House recently passed the National Defense Authorization Act along with an amendment by Utah Democratic Rep. Ben McAdams that would block funding to restart nuclear weapons testing in the United States.
McAdams’ amendment was adopted along a mostly party-line vote of 227-179.
The Senate version of the NDAA includes $10 million to resume nuclear testing for the first time since 1992.
Nuclear testing
“Explosive nuclear testing causes irreparable harm to human health and to our environment, and jeopardizes the U.S. leadership role on nuclear nonproliferation,” McAdams said Monday in the House.
McAdams joined Lee Lonsberry on Live Mic to discuss his amendment on blocking funding for nuclear testing.
“Utah has been devastated from nuclear weapons testing for decades. The federal government lied to us. They told us it was safe, that there would be no harm that would come from this testing. Then so many people across our state developed cancer and other issues related to that testing, so we were lied to for years by our federal government,” McAdams said. ……..
Former Utah Rep. Jim Matheson
Former Utah Rep. Jim Matheson, also a Democrat, lost his father, former Utah Gov. Scott Matheson, to cancer blamed on living downwind from the Nevada Test Site where atomic tests were conducted in the 1950 and 1960s.
“This is an issue that obviously affected my family in a significant way — my extended family, let alone my own father, who was a Downwinder,” Matheson said.
While serving in Congress, Matheson said his efforts on nuclear weapons testing were focused on whether it was safe to conduct weapons tests. He said he introduced legislation that said the testing couldn’t move forward without the equivalent of an environmental impact statement to assess all the risks and prove that it’s safe to test.
“The folks who were trying to move ahead with testing didn’t like that idea at all,” Matheson said. “It wasn’t safe when it was above ground and it wasn’t safe when it was below ground. It’s still not safe today.”
Cause for alarm
“Technology has not advanced to the point where you can be satisfied with the assertions of these testers, essentially that tests of this nature are safe,” Lee said.
“Absolutely not,” Matheson replied. “They have no justification for even saying that.”
If proponents wish to proceed, the former congressman called for a transparent, public process to assess all the risks of nuclear weapons testing.
“The facts will speak for themselves,” he said.
He said the $10 million appropriation in the Senate NDAA bill to start preparing sites for testing “should be a cause for alarm for all of us.”
“My gosh, we had the government lie to us here in Utah way back when. They told us it was safe. They knew it wasn’t,” he said.
Matheson said the government only did the testing when the wind blew the fallout in the least populated direction, which was southern Utah. He added that declassified documents referred to people living in southern Utah as a low-use segment of the nation’s population.
“Let’s not tuck $10 million into a defense bill in the Senate and say let’s get the site ready without any process to determine if it’s safe or not, without any public effort to reevaluate the risk associated with this. This doesn’t sound right to me. This doesn’t pass the smell test,” Matheson said.
Mersea Island Environmental Alliance 22nd July 2020, Mersea Island Environmental Alliance have been investigating discrepancies between the National Policy Statement for Bradwell in Essex and what is ‘proposed’ by CGN/EDF in their Consultation document. CGN/EDF Consultation
proposal is for two reactors and in that document, they state that:
“Parts of the Project which are not likely to be influenced by the
consultation include:
“The principle of building a new nuclear power
station on land adjacent to the existing Bradwell power station (as a
matter of Government policy)…and…Technical details including the
proposed deployment of two reactors”.
The National Policy Statement for Bradwell however is for just one reactor. Mersea Island Environmental
Alliance working with The Environmental Law Foundation sought legal
opinion. This is the Barrister’s opinion having reviewed the Consultation
document: “Arguably this is highly misleading as the National Policy
Statement does not set out government policy support for a two-reactor
station, which was not assessed as part of the NPS. Consultees (the public
included) may not be aware that they are entitled to make representations
on this.
This is potentially unlawful since a single reactor station is an
alternative option, and consultees should be made aware that they are
entitled to comment on this: see R. (Moseley) v LB Haringey [2014] UKSC 56.
Section 104(3) of the Planning Act 2008 states: “The Secretary of State
must decide the application in accordance with any relevant national policy
statement, except to the extent that one or more of subsections (4) to (8)
applies.”
The relevant NPS is EN-6 (although the Government is in the
process of preparing a new NPS for nuclear power). This states at paragraph
4.1.1 that Bradwell is a site “that the Government has determined are
potentially suitable for the deployment of new nuclear power stations in
England and Wales before the end of 2025”
The public have been forced to
engage in a mockery of a consultation held at the peak of the Pandemic. To
make matters worse Government are clearly aware of the CGN/EDF remit. The
public have been deliberately mislead! The site selection process for one
reactor and the NPS are being ignored both by the developer and Government.
The public are illegally excluded from comment on the two-reactor proposal.
The latter exclusion courtesy of CGN/EDF who are just the contractor! The
intriguing side to this is how despite the initial enthusiasm from my media
contacts over the developing story it hits the buffers of the editorial
desks and goes no further.
By Hugh Jackson, July 23, 2020 Nuclear waste is probably the last thing on the minds of Nevadans these days, what with … everything.
But Nevada politicians, industries, and people have expended untold jillions of FTE hours fighting Yucca Mountain over more than three decades.
So Nevadans may be interested to know that the industry trying to ram that waste down our throats is at the heart of this week’s FBI arrest of the Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives on a racketeering charge.
Recap (cribbed from the Current’s sibling, the Ohio Capital Journal): A now-bankrupt utility called FirstEnergy Solutions paid $61 million into a “dark money” PAC controlled by Ohio state Rep. Larry Householder, who then showered the money on fellow Republican legislators, who then selected Householder as House Speaker, and next thing you know Ohio lawmakers passed (and Ohio’s governor signed) a $1.2 billion bailout for FirstEnergy’s economically failing nuclear power plants.
Nevadans may like to take a perverse pride in their state as a very interesting, anything-goes sort of place where a uniquely craven politics is unusually rife with shady shenans and sweetheart deals.
To which Ohio is entitled to say, hold my beer.
I mean, sure, Ohio’s population is about four times bigger than Nevada’s. But $61 million? That’s pretty impressive.
The $1.2 billion public subsidy for a private company, on the other hand, is not particularly outlandish by Nevada standards. Nevada shelled out as much in “incentives” for Tesla, and ladled $750 million to the Raiders.
At least when Nevada elected officials recklessly steered public resources away from public services and to the private sector, it got a battery factory and Mid-Air Engine Failure Field. All Ohio got was a pair of old nuclear power plants that Ohio already had.
Leaving aside for the moment Ohio’s policy decision, ludicrous in design and corrupt in execution, to force electricity customers to rescue a power company, you may be wondering, Why would an electric utility need $1.2 billion to keep some old reactors reacting in the first place?
Glad you asked!
When nuclear power was new on the scene, which is to say about the same time charming mid-mod houses were being built east of the Strip & south of Desert Inn, it came with the promise nuclear energy would be “too cheap to meter.”
A half-dozen decades and countless cost overruns, skyrocketing maintenance expenses and public bailouts later, the financial sector won’t touch nuclear power with a 13-foot spent fuel rod assembly.
The Bush-Cheney administration was hot for nuclear power. Early in Bush’s first term, Cheney stacked a panel with nuclear industry representatives to prepare a plan to build more plants, part of of what people sometimes back then called “a nuclear renaissance.” At the time I was working for Public Citizen, writing about nuclear power (we were against it) and I will never forget one surprisingly candid phrase from the report: “economic viability for a nuclear power plant is difficult to demonstrate.”
Even then, the price per kilowatt was more expensive than coal, let alone gas. It still is, of course. And nearly 20 years later, nuclear can be almost three times as expensive as solar or wind.
Finance is only one industry that wants nothing to do with nuclear power. There’s another: Insurance.
That’s why there is U.S. law called the Price-Anderson Act. If/when a nuclear power plant has, you know, an “incident” that causes economic as well as ecological devastation, taxpayers will foot the bill, even in cases of private sector negligence or misconduct.
As businesses today clamor for protection against covid-related liability, perhaps they’ll point to the no-fault insurance model Congress pioneered in the Price-Anderson Act. If protection from liability is a good idea for nuclear power plants, why wouldn’t it be a good idea for casinos and retailers who put their employees in impossible and risky situations by failing to protect them from the rona?
About the same time Bush and Cheney were firing up their nuclear revival scheme, Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn was disapproving the Bush administration’s official designation of Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste dump.
“Nevada is not anti-nuclear and does not oppose nuclear power,” Guinn wrote.
To which you might ask, Why not?
The answer I always got had nothing to do with the desirability, expense or calamitous risk of nuclear power, but the politics of nuclear waste: If Nevada, including and especially its congressional delegation, were against nuclear power, it would make it all the more difficult to win support of congressional colleagues in other states in the effort to keep waste out of Nevada.
It’s a legitimate concern, one on display as recently as last year, when Trump’s plan to fund the dump were supported not only by all the Republicans in the U.S. House (except Mark Amodei), but a whole lot of Democrats, too. But in the end Nancy Pelosi backed Nevada, and Trump’s Yucca wishes fizzled.
Gregory Jazcko was a nuclear policy staffer for Harry Reid, a position where he probably had to draw distinctions between opposing Yucca Mountain, but not nuclear power, on an almost daily basis. In fact, Jazcko would later become chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which has never been a habitat for people who oppose nuclear power.
But after leaving that job, Jazcko wrote a book describing nuclear power as “a failed technology” that “is more hazardous than it’s worth,” and “will lead to catastrophe.”
Thankfully earlier this year, Trump proclaimed to Nevada via twitter that the tiny Trump palm had gone to the orange Trump forehead so he no longer wanted to dump nuke waste in Nevada. And if he wins a second term, well, everyone knows how trustworthy and consistent the president is.
In other words, during a second term, maybe Trump will put a revived Yucca project under the direction of former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder.
Many people in this county who are joining community choice energy options in order to use and support advancing clean energy sources will be very upset when they learn our Assembly member, Jordan Cunningham, has introduced AB 2898 to amend California’s Renewables Portfolio Standard Program allowing nuclear power to be named as a carbon free and renewable resource.
However, nuclear is neither carbon free nor renewable. There is a finite supply of uranium 235, which nuclear plants use to power their reactors. The ore is mined, processed, and enriched. The resulting material is manufactured into pellets and rods to contain them. All this industry and transport causes a lot of greenhouse gas emissions. Additionally, during the operation of nuclear plants, CO2 is emitted with water vapor, steam, and heat.
Another “renewable standard” states there is to be no waste. We certainly will have waste—thousands of tons of highly radioactive waste with nowhere to store it. The Central Coast deserves representatives who will be looking out for our health and dollars. One who will look beyond the dinosaur of nuclear power with its dangers, waste, and cost to embrace a future of truly clean sustainable power.
Environmental groups want controversial Ohio nuclear bailout bill reexamined; HB6 now at the center of FBI investigation, Cleveland.com, By Emily Bamforth, cleveland.com 22 Jul 20, CLEVELAND, Ohio — Ohio House Bill 6 bailed out two FirstEnergy power plants and gave subsidies to coal plants, while dismantling mandates designed to move Ohio’s clean energy landscape forward.
The corruption scandal is now prompting groups that already opposed HB6 because of its implications for the economy or environment to call for a re-examination of the bill, or its total repeal. Both the Sierra Club and American Wind Energy Association issued statements on the case Tuesday evening.
“The legislative push to bail out legacy generation and roll back Ohio’s renewable energy commitments was always against the will of Ohioans, who overwhelmingly support renewable energy,” American Wind Energy Association Eastern State Affairs Director Andrew Gohn said in a statement. “It now appears that the passage of this bill was not just against the will of the people, but also may have involved serious and possibly criminal impropriety.”
Supporters of the bill claimed the bailout would save jobs in nuclear energy and reconfigure surcharges to Ohio customers to save money. But those fighting against it, including environmental groups, balked at the changes which effectively “gutted” energy-efficiency and renewable-energy mandates for utilities.
The bill changed Ohio’s renewable-energy goal from a maximum of 12.5 percent by 2027 to 8.5 percent by 2026. Under Ohio requirements introduced in 2008, utilities must reduce customers’ power usage by 22 percent by 2027.
Under House Bill 6, these standards would end after utilities companies reached a 17.5 percent drop in customer power use.
The bill also included subsidies for coal power plants.
Neil Waggoner, the Sierra Club Ohio’s Beyond Coal Campaign representative, said this year the group has seen utilities companies petitioning the state’s public utilities commission to end energy efficiency programs, because companies are already hitting the lowered standard.
Ohio House Speaker Arrested In Case Related To Nuclear Power Plant Bailout Law, Statehouse News Bureau, ByKAREN KASLER•JUL 21, 2020 House Speaker Larry Householder (R-Glenford) has been arrested in connection to a $60 million public corruption racketeering conspiracy case. Federal agents were at his farm in Perry County Tuesday morning.
Sources have confirmed that former Ohio GOP Chairman Matt Borges was also arrested, along with Householder’s adviser Jeff Longstreth. Veteran lobbyist Neil Clark was also arrested, according to sources.
The law sends $150 million a year to the Davis-Besse and Perry power plants, which were owned by FirstEnergy Solutions. That company, which had been a subsidiary of FirstEnergy Corporation when it was first created but was no longer related to FirstEnergy Corporation, emerged from bankruptcy protection earlier this year and is now known as Energy Harbor.
FirstEnergy Solutions had said it would decommission its power plants starting this year if it didn’t get some financial relief from the state…… The law took effect in October after a group that opposed it missed the deadline to collect signatures. In January, that group dropped their courtroom battle to stop the law from taking effect. There was dark money on both sides, and donors were never revealed.
The law sends $150 million a year to the Davis-Besse and Perry power plants, which were owned by FirstEnergy Solutions. That company, which had been a subsidiary of FirstEnergy Corporation when it was first created but was no longer related to FirstEnergy Corporation, emerged from bankruptcy protection earlier this year and is now known as Energy Harbor
