Efficiency investments are the most cost effective and Ameren’s own studies showed that with modest efficiency investments there would be no need for any new power plants for the next two decades.  Ameren has even stated that, with their previously planned efficiency investments, they could shut down an existing dirty coal plant and have sufficient generating capacity. Details on this HERE.

This would be significantly cheaper for customers, but less profitable to Ameren. As a regulated public monopoly, however, Ameren should be required to operate in the public interest, not the interest of their stockholders.

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

While we are very pleased that Ameren has been denied an nuclear foot-in-the-door, at least for now, we have a lot of work to do to educate the public and our elected officials as to what constitutes a safe, sustainable and affordable energy strategy. We invite your participation in this effort. Please contact us if you’d like to help.

For more details from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on the way a supposed compromise between the industrial customers and the utilities died please CLICK HERE.

Also check out the coverage given in the St. Louis Business Journal, which can be read if you CLICK HERE.

Both these reports largely give the pro-nuke voices a pass by avoiding any critical questioning of their claims. For example, the Business Journal just reports, but never questions the Energy Alliance claim that min-CWIP would “create jobs, boost our economy and competitiveness, and keep rates affordable…”

In general, the media fails to question the notion that mini-CWIP is needed to keep “new nuclear power as an option.” As we’ve repeatedly pointed out, Ameren can pursue an early site permit with or without mini-CWIP. The $45 million the ESP would cost is within their abilities and they’ve actually already spent more than half of it. What they can’t do is get financing to build a new plant without full CWIP, which, of course wasn’t what they were asking for; at least not this year.

Another big failure in media coverage is the lack of questioning of the pro-nukers continual conflation of the supposed benefits of building a new nuke–years down the pike, if ever–and the passage of mini-CWIP, which would primarily reimburse Ameren for money already spent, which does nothing for jobs, boosting the economy, etc.

So, we need to educate the public, our elected officials AND the MEDIA.

Dear Editor,

Although we have seen the defeat of a bill to partially repeal construction work in progress and head our state down the road to more dangerous, expensive nuclear power, there are powerful voices and lots of money still trying to get a bill through our legislature before the session ends. One of Columbia’s representatives, Chris Kelly, is so intent on this that he wants a special session called just to pass such legislation.

I agree with one thing Mr. Kelly has said recently: We need to continue the discussion about the energy future we want for Missouri. But ramming a piece of pro-nuclear legislation through the legislature at this time is a very poor way to maintain a discussion that ought to include the people of Missouri, not just the big money players.    READ MORE

The existing No-CWIP law is an essential consumer protection. Ameren and other utilities should not be able to transfer financial risk to their ratepayers, or begin charging them for a plant now that won’t be in operation for another decade, if ever.

Callaway 1 with an artist's rendition of Callaway 2.

PLEASE TAKE ACTION NOW: Here are the web addresses where you can find phone numbers and email address for your legislators:

http://www.house.mo.gov/member.aspx

http://www.senate.mo.gov/11info/senalpha.htm

If you are not certain the name of your state rep or state senator, you can go to http://www.senate.mo.gov/ and plug your zip code into the legislator lookup box. If you don’t know your full nine-digit zip code, you can get this at http://zip4.usps.com/zip4/welcome.jsp

WHERE WE STAND TODAY: Although one CWIP repeal bill was thrown out in the Senate recently, there remain others hovering in both chambers that could still be rammed through or attached to other legislation at the last minute.  Our legislators need to know this is totally unacceptable. Currently, the bills we’re concerned with are House Bill 124 and either Senate Bill 321 or Senate Bill 406. Please reference these when calling, but be sure to indicate that any bill that allows any CWIP funding is unacceptable.

Some suggested points you can make are:

*  Ameren Vice-President Steve Kidwell has stated publicly that if Ameren would pursue the kind of efficiency improvements they know are possible, then they wouldn’t need any new plants for 20 years, plus they could close down the coal-fired Meramec plant.

*  Fukushima is an on-going catastrophe of so-far unknown dimensions.  This is no time to be forging ahead with plans to build more reactors when we need to be assessing the safety of those that already exist, and coming up with sensible plans to  store the thousands of tons of existing nuclear waste sitting in cooling pools.

*  Nuclear energy is dirty, costly and dangerous, and I prefer investing in a clean energy future using a broad range of clean, renewable sources as well as investing in maximum efficiency.

*  I don’t support a kind of energy future that puts all of the risk on ratepayers and taxpayers, while giving all the profits to Ameren.

Be polite and, if you would, report the replies you get back to MSE.

PLEASE CALL TODAY OR TOMORROW, IF AT ALL POSSIBLE!

For more info please  CLICK HERE