Exelon is not only the largest nuclear utility in the U.S., it is the biggest electric utility in the country. As reported by Midwest Energy News, multiple federal investigations, including by the Securities and Exchange Commission as well as a U.S. Attorney's Office and grand jury, have been launched into Exelon Nuclear's lobbying activities involving Illinois state legislators and Chicago officials.In the past several years, Exelon lobbyists have secured large-scale bailouts for its dangerously age-degraded atomic reactors in New York ($7.6 billion over 12 years; an Exelon lobbyist brazenly bragged, at a dirty energy industry conference, about the 750% return on investment!), Illinois ($2.35 billion over 10 years), and New Jersey. Its "nuclear hostage taking" tactic, as longtime Exelon watchdog Dave Kraft of Nuclear Energy Information Service (NEIS) of Chicago calls it, is to "threaten" to close reactors by date certain, unless massively bailed out.
The threat is to the workers' jobs at the nuclear power plants, but also to local tax revenues, once reactors close for good. NEIS, Beyond Nuclear, and our allies say "yes please!" to the reactor closures (thereby averting core meltdowns, stopping high-level radioactive waste generation and worsening contamination levels), but have simultaneously long called for just transitions, for both the workforce, as well as the host communities. In September, Exelon did close Three Mile Island Unit 1 in Pennsylvania for lack of a bailout; it is using that to try to leverage bailouts at its several other decrepit atomic reactors across the Keystone State. Exelon is also seeking bailouts for reactors in Maryland, and elsewhere. MORE.