Aerial image of Plant Vogtle Nuclear Generating Station - photo credit to High Flyer. The photo shows the operating Units 1 and 2, as well as the construction site for proposed new Units 3 and 4.Southern Alliance for Clean Energy reports in a press release entitled "New Documents Confirm Utility Giant Southern Company Gets Sweetheart Deal from Energy Department for Multi-Billion Nuclear Loan Guarantees for Vogtle Reactors":
"As revealed today in an Energy & Environment News story by Hannah Northey, the credit subsidy fee for utility giant Southern Company and its utility partner, Oglethorpe Power, for billions of dollars in taxpayer-backed federal loan guarantees, is nothing, $0. This shocking information was disclosed two months after the Department of Energy (DOE) finalized terms of $6.5 billion worth of loan guarantees that were offered as part of an $8.3 billion package to build two new nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle in Georgia. A third partner in the project, MEAG, has yet to have their $1.8 billion loan guarantee finalized."
Please register your disapproval of this nuclear sweetheart deal, at taxpayer expense and risk, to President Obama, your two U.S. Senators, and your U.S. Representative! You can be patched through to your Members of Congress via the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121.
In the form of the risks stemming from the high-level radioactive wastes that would be generated, those "moral hazards" would extend forevermore into the future.
As if the Obama administration's $8.3 billion boost -- at taxpayer expense and risk -- to Vogtle 3 & 4 weren't bad enough, George W. Bush's DOE committed the U.S. taxpayer to ultimate liability for Vogtle 3 & 4's high-level radioactive wastes in his last day's in office, signing contracts with the nuclear utility just a day or two after Barack Obama won the presidential election, but before he took the oath of office.