Financial Fukushima? South Carolina lawmaker uses evocative term "nuclear disaster" to describe abandonment of VC Summer nuclear project in his state

Thank you to Mary Olson of NIRS for calling attention to this article, which led Scott Stapf of the Hastings Group to tweet:

Financial Fukushima? South Carolina lawmaker uses evocative term "nuclear disaster" to describe abandonment of VC Summer nuclear project in state.

Here is a link to the article in the Post and Courier, entitled "S.C. House Votes to Replace Utility Regulators, Senate Wants Review of Nuclear Fiasco Decided by December."

And as Mary also pointed out:

"Summer is a financial meltdown, and in a state like SC, a long-term EJ issue too."

As South Carolina Public Service Commissioners are fired for their role in this financial Fukushima, it begs the question: What about David Wright? He has been nominated by President Donald J. Trump to become a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner. His nomination passed the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee by a straight party line vote, with 11 Republicans voting to confirm, and 10 Democrats voting against confirmation. Wright, as long serving SC PSC head, presided over many years worth of bad decisions re: Summer Units 2 and 3 new build, including burdening ratepayers with Construction Work in Progress (CWIP), or nuclear tax, surcharges on their electric bills. Those surcharges increased over the years to reach a whopping 20% of ratepayers' electric bills.

What is the Baseload Reform Act, and how did SCANA benefit from it?

As reported by The State.

Is Vogtle 3 & 4 Decision a Hail Mary for Summer 2 & 3?!

The Nerve, S.C. Policy Council - Georgia's nukes: 'We'll go on'--Is it a ray of light for V.C. Summer? - Robert Meyerowitz

No matter how you slice it, ratepayers bear the risks...

Trigaux: Blind to runaway costs, nuclear power industry abandons another nuke plant

Business column in the Tampa Bay Times, by Robert Trigaux.

Trigaux concludes his column about the cancellation of Summer 2 & 3 in SC, as well as the cancellation of Levy County in FL:

None of these projects would have seen the light of day if state laws had not been enacted to shift the financial risk of grotesquely expensive nuclear plants from power company shareholders and dumped it all on hapless ratepayers. Utility customers typically have no other choice for their electricity. Florida's law, signed in 2006 by then Gov. Jeb Bush, was a loser from day one. Shame on Tallahassee for still having it on the books 11 years later.

FOE: South Carolina Bungled Nuclear Reactor Construction Project Canceled

Next Step: Who will be Held Accountable and When will Ratepayers Receive Refunds?

See the full press release by Friends of the Earth, featuring a statement by FOE's senior advisor, Tom Clements.

Here is an excerpt from Clements' statement:

To reduce the on-going blow to SCE&G ratepayers already paying 18% of the bill just to pay for project financing, it’s time for money to be refunded as it was collected from them under the false pretense that advance payment for the nuclear project was sound. In proceedings before the South Carolina Public Service Commission, we pledge to be a steward of the public interest and to determine who must be held accountable for this boondoggle and to fight for monetary reparations to customers.

Advance payment has also been referred to as "Construction Work in Progress," or CWIP.

Update on August 1, 2017 by admin

The Washington Post has reported on this story, in an article entitled "S.C. utilities halt work on new nuclear reactors, dimming the prospects for a nuclear energy revival."

The article reports:

Special provisions in South Carolina and Georgia allow utilities to charge ratepayers for a portion of power projects before they come online, a controversial way for private utilities to raise capital. South Carolina ratepayers already have kicked in $1.4 billion through surcharges on their monthly bills.

“We simply cannot ask our customers to pay for a project that has become uneconomical,” Lonnie Carter, the president and chief executive of Santee Cooper, said in a statement. “And even though suspending construction is the best option for them, we are disappointed that our contractor has failed to meet its obligations and put Santee Cooper and our customers in this situation.”

Those "special provisions" are also known as Construction Work in Progress (CWIP), advanced cost recovery, or a nuclear tax surcharge on residential and small business electricity bills. They are illegal in most states. But they were made legal in such states as Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina. At the now-cancelled Levy County, FL, and Summer, SC proposed new nuclear power plants, such CWIP surcharges have cost electric consumers many billions of dollars, without a single kilowatt-hour of electricity in return!

However, nuclear power industry executives, lobbyists, and shareholders did pocket that money, at ratepayer expense, laughing all the way to the bank. Of course, some of that ratepayer money undoubtedly has flowed to elected officials, at the state and even federal levels of government, in the form of campaign contributions (not to mention lobbying expenditures). Even if that ratepayer-politician monetary transfer was not direct, it was certainly indirect. Such public subsidies have freed up other corporate funding streams, that then took the form of such best-democracy-money-can-buy (in the words of Greg Palast, investigative reporter and long-time nuclear power industry watch-dog) campaign contributions, etc. 

The next shoe to drop could well be the atomic new build at Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia, geographically not far from the now abandoned Summer 2 and 3 construction site in South Carolina, ironically. At Vogtle 3 and 4, not only is ratepayer funding at risk, but so too is U.S. taxpayer funding, to the tune of $8.3 billion, in the form of federal nuclear loan guarantees.