Tag Archives: No Nukes

Missouri has defeated CWIP: so can Georgia

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.

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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.

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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: Continue reading →