A veteran of the original No Nukes movement calls Plant Vogtle
and CWIP like he sees it.
Harvey Wasserman wrote Friday for EcoWatch,
Nuclear Power’s Green Mountain Grassroots Demise,
The accelerating revolution in renewables has allowed solar, wind
and other green sources to outstrip atomic reactors in cost, time to
build, ecological impact and safety. As billions pour into
Solartopian sources, private investment in atomic energy has all but
disappeared—except where there are massive taxpayer subsidies.
Even that’s not enough. In 2011, President Obama handed $8.33
billion in federal loan guarantees to the builders of two reactors
at Georgia’s Vogtle. But Peach State ratepayers are already being
soaked for billions more in pre-payments, and the cost of the
project is soaring. A parallel financial disaster looms at the
Robinson site in neighboring South Carolina. Though the industry
assumes these four reactors will eventually be finished, economic
realities may say otherwise.
Cost estimates for new nukes have been soaring even before
construction begins. Even with federal money, the builders still
demand that state ratepayers foot the bill as the process proceeds,
meaning consumers are on the hook for multiple billions even if the
reactors never open. Pitched battles over this Construction Work in
Progress scam have already been won by consumers in Missouri and are
being fought in Iowa and elsewhere. As the years of building drag
on, costs will escalate while renewables continue to become cheaper.
Sooner or later, construction is likely to stop, as it did at
numerous projects in the 1970s and 1980s which were never finished.
We can end CWIP in Georgia.
It will benefit Georgia Power and the EMCs as well as all the rest of us
when we stop wasting tax and customer dollars on boondoggles like Plant Vogtle
or biomass or private prisons and get on with clean, profitable, job-creating
renewable energy in Georgia: wind off the coast and sun inland.
-jsq
