"Burning money" graphic by Gene Case, Avening Angels.As reported by Crain's Chicago Business, Exelon Nuclear stands to gain nearly $1 billion in ratepayer bailouts in just the next two years alone, to prop up the Ginna and Nine Mile Point Units 1 & 2 atomic reactors in upstate New York, under a subsidy scheme ordered by Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-NY), and approved by his Public Service Commission on August 1st. (Exelon is also seeking to buy Entergy's FitzPatrick reactor, also on the Lake Ontario shore, and apply the subsidies there as well.)
As the subsidies will continue until 2029, AGREE and NIRS have estimated a total cost to NY ratepayers of $7.6 billion. If the subsidies are extended to Entergy's Indian Point Units 1 & 2 near New York City, the total bailout could top $10 billion, at NY ratepayer expense.
Exelon lobbyists hope to use the precedent in NY to convince the governor and legislature in IL to grant ratepayer bailouts there, as well, to "rescue" three financially failing reactors at Clinton and Quad Cities.
Nuclear Energy Information Service of Chicago has led the resistance to this bailout in IL for years.
Exelon would even like to extend the precedent to additioal states -- CT, MD, NJ, PA, etc. -- in hopes of taxing ratepayers there too, in order to prop up multiple failing reactors. FirstEnergy would like to do the same, at its failing Davis-Besse atomic reactor in OH.
In 2011, UCS published a comprehensive report ("Nuclear Power: Still Not Viable Without Subsidies," by Doug Koplow) about nuclear power subsidies in the U.S., at public expense. To the massive subsidies paid by taxpayers and ratepayers over the previous half-century, must now be added a $7.5 to 10 billion subsidy in New York State alone. The nuclear power industry's lobbyists would now like to expand that subsidization to other states across the U.S.