Breaking News: Three Experts Comment On Next Steps After Abandonment Of South Carolina Nuclear Project

WASHINGTON, July 31, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In the immediate wake of the decision by South Carolina utilities to abandon the V.C. Summer twin-nuclear reactor construction project, three experts – a former commissioner Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), a leading nuclear economist, and the head of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE) -- issued the following statements about what should happen now:

Peter Bradford is a former commissioner of the NRC and a former chair of both the New York and Maine utility regulatory commissions.  

Bradford said:

"South Carolina's utilities have wisely decided not to gamble on throwing good billions of dollars after bad.  This decision clears the way for a competition-based process to choose the lowest cost clean energy future for the state.

Despite the wisdom of today's results, customers are going to be asked to pay billions of dollars for the unfinished nuclear plants.  Consequently, there are some energy policy lessons worth learning for South Carolina and the US.

First, the claims of the nuclear industry that it can produce a cost effective and clean electricity future if only the customers take the risks of paying before completion for the next round of new designs are and have been nonsense.  Such legislatively-enacted and regulator-imposed subsidy schemes have led again and again to expensive cancellations, long delays, massive cost overruns and the crowding out of cheaper and more customer friendly alternatives.

Second, credit should be given to the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth and other groups who have for nearly a decade warned that the money spent at Summer (and other nuclear projects) might well be wasted.  Environmental groups are not to blame for these cancellations, for their warnings were repeatedly and completely ignored, but South Carolina electric customers would be billions of dollars better off in the years ahead if the warnings had been heeded.

Finally, South Carolina is joining a dozen other U.S. states with multibillion dollar ruins in the place of promised nuclear plants.  From Seabrook 2 and Shoreham in the Northeast to Midland, Marble Hill and Zimmer in the Midwest, to the Washington Public Power Supply System in the Northwest and back across the country to Clinch River and Bellefonte in Tennessee in Alabama and Levy County in Florida, the list of cancelled billion dollar nuclear plants represents mountains of money that could have contributed to useful energy infrastructure.  When one adds in the many more cancelled plants and cost overruns on which mere hundreds, of millions were wasted, one has a scene of economic waste without parallel in our industrial history.

The nuclear industry slogan for the last ten years has been 'nuclear matters.'  Indeed it does, when it comes to harmful use of electric customer money.  It does not matter than it comes to wise electricity resource planning in the next decade."

Dr. Mark Cooper is a senior fellow for economic analysis at the Institute for Energy and the Environment at the Vermont Law School.  Just last week, Dr. Cooper released a report, "The Failure of the Nuclear Gamble in South Carolina," urging that the utilities abandon the nuclear project.  See: http://webiva-downton.s3.amazonaws.com/877/a5/d/10601/Cooper_Summer_Report_Final_July_18_2017.pdf and http://www.foe.org/news/news-releases/2017-07-report-calls-for-abandoning-bungled-nuclear-project. 

Dr. Cooper said:

"As I demonstrated in my analysis released just last week, the decision of Santee Cooper to abandon construction of the V.C. Summer unit 2 & 3 is the only rational economic course.  It will save ratepayers billions of dollars and force the utility to turn to low cost, low polluting resources like, efficiency and renewables.  SCE&G must now also abandon the project, or risk strangling the household budgets and the local economies of its ratepayers.  

I sincerely hope that cooperative management does not waste its time trying to breathe life into the nuclear corpse and, instead, devotes its time and attention to reparations for ratepayers for a project and technology that was mismanaged from the get-go. As my recent analysis also showed, there is more than ample evidence to support a vigorous effort through the courts to claw back as much as utility management can to decrease the burden on ratepayers."

Dr. Stephen A. Smith is executive director of the nonprofit Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. SACE is among the groups – involved since the start of the V.C. Summer and Vogtle projects more than a decade ago – that have repeatedly warned about the risks of cost overruns and delays and are calling for decision-makers to be held accountable for ignoring warning signs. Find a previous SACE tele news event that outlined group concerns given the bankruptcy filing http://www.cleanenergy.org/2017/03/29/fate-southern-company-scana-new-nuclear-power-projects-unknown-lead-contractor-westinghouse-files-bankruptcy/.

Dr. Smith said:

"We applaud Santee Cooper and SCE&G for making the right decision to protect their customers. This project has been a multi-billion-dollar disaster. We also call on Georgia Power and their utility partners to protect their customers from the similarly risky, mismanaged project in Georgia at Southern Company's Plant Vogtle."

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SOURCE Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, Washington, DC