Tag Archives: solartopia

How to ban CWIP in Georgia

A one-paragraph law can do it; that’s all it took in New Hampshire
to ban

Construction Work in Progress (CWIP)


after

Three Mile Island.
OK, plus a state Supreme Court ruling, but that would be easier in Georgia
since the New Hampshire Supreme Court already set a precedent of upholding
the NH law.
After Fukushima,

Georgia could ban CWIP and end the new Plant Vogtle construction.
The we could

get on with building solar.

Here’s the text of the NH law, taken from

the NH Supreme Court ruling:

“378:30-a Public Utility Rate Base; Exclusions. Public utility rates or
charges shall not in any manner be based on the cost of construction
work in progress. At no time shall any rates or charges be based upon
any costs associated with construction work if said construction work is
not completed. All costs of construction work in progress, including,
but not limited to, any costs associated with constructing, owning,
maintaining or financing construction work in progress, shall not be
included in a utility’s rate base nor be allowed as an expense for rate
making purposes until, and not before, said construction project is
actually providing service to consumers.”

Simple enough.
The

Georgia legislature could do it.
Knowing the NH CWIP ban caused PSNH

to go bankrupt on costs for the Seabrook nuclear plant,
Georgia Power might back off on Plant Vogtle rather than have such a law passed.

-jsq

What we can learn from no nukes and solartopia of 30 years ago

Why were only 12% of the projected 1000 nuclear plants built in the U.S. by
the year 2000?
Because of the no nukes movement started in Seabrook, New Hampshire
in 1977.
And because New Hampshire banned CWIP.
Here in Georgia in 2012 we can cut to the chase and do what they
did that worked.

Harvey Wasserman wrote for The Free Press 13 May 2007,

How creative mass non-violence beat a nuke and launched the global green power movement,

Thirty years ago this month, in the small seacoast town of Seabrook,
New Hampshire, a force of mass non-violent green advocacy collided


with the nuke establishment.

A definitive victory over corporate power was won. And the global
grassroots “No Nukes” movement emerged as one of the most important
and effective in human history.

It still writes the bottom line on atomic energy and global warming.
All today’s green energy battles can be dated to May, 13, 1977, when
550 Clamshell Alliance protestors walked victoriously free after
thirteen days of media-saturated imprisonment. Not a single US
reactor ordered since that day has been completed.

How effective?

Richard Nixon had pledged to build 1000 nukes in the US by the year
2000. But the industry peaked at less than 120. Today, just over a
hundred operate. No US reactor ordered since 1974 has been
completed. The Seabrook demonstrations—which extended to
civil disobedience actions on Wall Street—were key to keeping
nearly 880 US reactors unbuilt.

The only new nukes ordered since then are the ones Georgia Power
wants to build at Plant Vogtle on the Savannah River, for which

Georgia Power customers are already getting billed Construction
Work in Progress (CWIP).

Thirty years later, some things haven’t changed:

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