As reported in the Missouri News Horizon, Governor Jay Nixon is planning on calling the General Assembly back for a special session, possibly very soon, and one of the bills that may be considered is Ameren Mini-CWIP proposal, that would allow the utility to charge customers in advance for the costs of obtaining an Early Site Permit for a new reactor at Ameren’s Callaway County site. To read more about the unfolding politics please CLICK HERE.
This would be a very good time to let Governor Nixon know that there is significant opposition to this being included in a special session. You can do this at any time by clicking here for Governor Nixon’s Website &/or by calling (573) 751-3222 during business hours.
Please join us in taking action now. Below, please find a sample note that MSE Chair Mark Haim posted on Governor Nixon’s site. Your note need not be this long, but please post something. Thank you.
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Dear Governor Nixon,
I sincerely hope you will think long and hard before including the so-called “mini-CWIP” bill in the charge for a special session of the General
Ameren's Callaway 1 Nuclear Plant near Fulton, Missouri
Assembly.
The legislation, even in its supposed “compromise” form is seriously flawed. If passed, it would establish the precedent of transferring risk from investors to ratepayers for a new nuclear plant. New nuclear projects have been consistently rejected as too risky to touch by the investment community, and thus are only being pursued if the risks are transferred to the taxpayers, through loan guarantees, or the ratepayers, through CWIP.
If this bill is passed, it would allow Ameren to do something they are thoroughly capable of doing on their own, spend $45 million to pursue an early site permit for a new Callaway nuclear unit, and then recover this from ratepayers. In fact, they have already spent $25 million of this money. The Early Site Permit costs far less than 1% of what it would ultimately cost to build a new nuclear unit (likely in the range of $10 billion).
The real value to Ameren is that this bill would provide a foot-in-the-door, so that, when they were ready to actually build a new plant, they could come back to the legislature with a bill similar to their 2009 proposed full repeal of the ban on CWIP. They could then say something to the effect of “you authorized us to spend $45 million of the ratepayers money, and now, to move this forward, and not have that money wasted, we need CWIP to build the plant.”
This is clearly an anti-consumer bill and must not be passed. Particularly in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, when the whole world is reconsidering the acceptability of nuclear energy, it would be very foolish to allow ratepayer funds to be sunk into a very expensive, very risky, dead-end technology.
I strongly urge you to keep any CWIP legislation off the table.
Thank you for considering my perspective. I look forward to hearing back from you.
Sincerely,
Mark Haim
Posted July 9th, 2011 at 10:56 pm by Mark