Four senators propose bill to modify nuke bill that has cost customers $1 billion

[bananas]

Source: Miami Herald

Barraged by a storm of bad press over the crippled Crystal River nuclear power plant, four Tampa-based state senators announced Thursday they will file legislation next week to require utility companies to surrender the profit they've collected from a nuclear cost recovery law if they abandon plans to build the nuclear plants.

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Rep. Dwight Dudley, D-St. Petersburg, who got elected on a platform to repeal the act, said believes there is another reason the Senate plan stops short of repealing what he calls the “utility tax.”

“They are getting massive amounts of money,’’ he said.

By his count, the utility companies gave $1.5 million to legislative campaigns through the Republican Party of Florida in the last election and $500,000 to the Florida Democratic Party.

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Read more: http://miamiherald.typepad.com/nakedpolitics/2013/02/four-senators-propose-bill-to-modify-nuke-bill-that-has-cost-customers-1-billion.html

[bananas]

1. "It has no accountability. It's an open-ended checkbook."

http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/energy/state-senators-to-utilities-build-nuclear-power-or-risk-loss-of-funding/1276080

State senators to utilities: Build nuclear power or risk loss of funding

By Ivan Penn and Mary Ellen Klas, Times/Herald Tallahassee Bureau
Thursday, February 21, 2013 4:13pm

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Duke Energy customers already are on the hook for $1.5 billion for a proposed plant in Levy County that the utility has delayed for almost a decade and still has not committed to build. The utility gets to pocket about $150 million of that money.

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Lawmakers in 2006 passed the legislation as a way to hasten construction of new nuclear plants. The goal was to diversify the state's energy mix to prevent an over reliance on natural gas, which could fluctuate wildly in price.

The law included no penalties should the utilities mess up. No benchmarks. No caps on spending. No caps on how much a utility could pocket if a project failed. And no deadlines.

"There were no provisions to look out for the consumers," said Sen. John Legg, R-Lutz, one of the Senate bill's sponsors. "It has no accountability. It's an open-ended checkbook."

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3. let this be a lesson - the O admin. has proposed $60 billion in taxpayer-guaranteed loans to build

new nukes. I think the admin. has now cut that back to somewhere in the $30 billion range but it's still absurd that WE should be on the hook for THEIR nukes. Another too big to fail operation is looming if this goes through.

[KoKo]

2. Good Read..and not only in FLA..but other states need to "carve back"

funds spent on political Action...plus the money taxpayers paid that need to be refunded. K&R!

[wordpix]

4. more people should run to repeal this giveaway to FL nukes

I'm tired of the legalized bribery that is our election system