"Protests greet FirstEnergy rate request hearings"

Photo compliments of Ohio Sierra Club Nuclear-Free CommitteeJim Provance, Columbus Bureau Chief for the Toledo Blade, has reported on "Protests greet FirstEnergy rate request hearings."

The protest took place at the HQ of PUCO, the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, in the state capital, Columbus. It marked the beginning of weeks of formal hearings, where PUCO will consider FirstEnergy's requested ratepayer bailout, including to prop up its dirty, dangerous, expensive, age-degraded, and uncompetitive Davis-Besse atomic reactor near Toledo on the Lake Erie shoreline.

Speakers included Harvey Wasserman of Solartopia fame, Bob Fitrakis of Columbus Free Press, Neil Waggoner of Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign, and Pat Marida of Ohio Sierra Club Nuclear-Free Committee (who posted photos, including the one to the left). More.

"Gas deal could signal Southern’s drift from new nuclear projects"

As reported by the Atlanta Journal Constitution, a $12 billion deal merging Southern Co. and the AGL natural gas utility could mark the end of the "nuclear renaissance" for Southern.

The article reports:

This deal signals that “the nuclear renaissance is over for Southern,” said Robert “Bobby” Brown, a regulatory lawyer and former member of Georgia’s utility regulator, the Public Service Commission.

The article goes on:

The Atlanta company is building two new nuclear power units at its Vogtle site in Georgia and an advanced-technology coal-fired plant in Mississippi. Both those projects are years behind schedule and have resulted in billions of dollars of cost overruns that will be born by Southern’s shareholders or customers, or both. (emphasis added)

The Obama administration awarded Southern and its partners at Vogtle 3 & 4 a whopping $8.3 billion in federal taxpayer-back loans and loan guarantees. If the project defaults on its loan repayment, federal taxpayers would be left holding the bag.

That's 15 times more money than was lost to the U.S. Treasury by the Solyndra solar loan guarantee default. And Vogtle 3 & 4's risk of default is higher than Solyndra's was determined to be when the solar loan guarantee was awarded.

In addition to taxpayer subsidies, Vogtle 3 & 4 has been financed by "Construction Work in Progress" -- surcharges on ratepayers' electricity bills that are illegal in most states.

Crain's Chicago Business: "Exelon wants a market that's not quite so open"

Crain's Chicago Business concludes its editorial critical of Exelon's request for a $1.5 billion ratepayer bailout from the Illinois State Legislature, in order to prop up several of its uncompetitive atomic reactors:

Funny thing about competitive markets: Sometimes prices go up and sometimes they go down. Yet Exelon's recommended solution to helping its existing plants is greater governmental intervention in the form of mandatory surcharges. If the company wants Springfield to mandate higher rates for its generation facilities, it should become a regulated company—with a set return on investment—and abandon the fiction that it's all about an open market.

Crain's also gets in some good licks regarding Exelon's hypocritical position opposing wind power subsidies (lobbying to eliminate them as unwanted competition for its nuclear division, while its own wind power division took advantage of them -- a position that got it kicked out of the American Wind Energy Association!), as well as its generation of forever deadly radioactive waste (which the public also subsidizes, by the way; energy economist Mark Cooper at Vermont Law School has calculated that the first 200 years of radioactive waste management will cost ratepayers and taxpayers $210-450 billion! That figure alone doubles the cost of nuclear generated electricity, except that the externality has never been accounted for!).

VICTORY: DC PSC rejects Exelon Nuclear's takeover of Pepco!

Logo courtesy of Public Citizen's Energy and Climate ProgramThe Washington, D.C. Public Service Commission has voted unanimously to reject Exelon Nuclear's attempted takeover of the Mid-Atlantic electric utility Pepco. This blocks the acquisition, despite other jurisdictions -- including in Maryland, Delaware, Virginia and New Jersey -- having already approved the proposal.

As reported by AP: "[D.C. Public Service] Commission chairman Betty Ann Kane says the companies did not meet their burden of showing that the proposed merger would benefit the public."

Beyond Nuclear has been proud, honored, and privileged to be a part of the PowerDC coalition -- led by such groups as Public Citzen's Energy and Climate Program (see logo, left) -- sending out action alerts to our DC supporters, attending rallies, press conferences, and public meetings, bearing witness at Exelon Nuclear CEO Chris Crane's testimony before the D.C. PSC, etc. PowerDC deserves congratulations and thanks. It has consistently warned about the dangers of Exelon taking over Pepco, from the gouging of D.C. ratepayers in order to prop up dirty, dangerous, and uncompetitive old atomic reactors in IL, to the sabotaging of D.C.'s strides in renewable energy and energy efficiency. More.

NRC "Way Too Cozy with Vermont's Nuclear Plant"

The Waterbury Record in Vermont has editorialized against Entergy Nuclear's raiding of the Vermont Yankee atomic reactor's decommissioning fund to inappropriately pay for high-level radioactive waste management. The editorial reports that Entergy is attempting to raid $225 million from the $665 million decommissioning fund, to use for high-level radioactive waste management. The editorial cheered the State of Vermont's lawsuit against the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for allowing this to happen, and urges the court of appeals to do the right thing.