Orlando Sentinel Slams The ‘Nuclear Tax’ Ratepayers Must Pay Progress Energy

[kristopher]

Orlando Sentinel Slams The ‘Nuclear Tax’ Ratepayers Must Pay Progress Energy
By Joe Romm on May 23, 2012 at 12:20 pm

Joke is on Progress customers stuck paying nuclear tax
Stop me if you’ve heard this one.
You and Progress Energy walk into a bar. Progress says it’s going to order $24 billion worth of drinks, but they won’t arrive until 2024. Oh, and you have to pick up the tab — even if the server drops the tray and the drinks never arrive at all.

So begins a devastating Orlando Sentinel column on Progress Energy’s planned twin nuclear plants.

I wrote about these nukes three years ago – see “What do you get when you buy a nuke? You get a lot of delays and rate increases”:

When we last left Progress Energy in 2008, it had said the twin 1,100-megawatt plants it intends to build would cost $14 billion, which “triples estimates the utility offered little more than a year ago.” And that didn’t even count the 200-mile $3 billion transmission system utility needs, which brings the price up to a staggering $7,700 a kilowatt.
Under Florida law, to pay for these nuclear power plants, Progress Energy can raise the rates of its customers a $100 a year for years and years and years before they even get one kilowatt-hour from these plants. Sweet deal, no?

But as we know, “nuclear power appears to have a negative learning curve.” Heck, three years ago, French nuclear giant Areva “acknowledged that the cost of a new reactor today would be as much as … double the price offered to the Finns.”

So the 2009 Progress Energy price is just a distant memory — as was its original 2016 completion date....

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/05/23/483173/orlando-sentinel-slams-nuclear-tax-ratepayers-must-pay-progress-energy/

[glowing]

1. And there is no choice... I'm stuck with Progress Energy...

The whole "free market" theory drops off the face of the earth when there is only 1 provider you can choose from. Electric, which we all need, should be govt run and operated.. If this were the case, billions wouldn't be spent on subsidies, tax loop holes, and the army of lobbyists the industry hires to keep their coal fired plants operating stinky and nuclear plants operating way past the date of expiration, rather than being able to create a sensible govt initiative to switch to renewable energies.. Which could be achieved in a number of different ways.... People in the south could be soaking up solar energies from their damned roofs... People living in the windy areas of the country, could have wind mills... Whatever.. things that would work to make our country cutting edge, and less stinky.

[kristopher]

4. I'd be willing to wager that within 10 years

Florida residents will be able to go off-grid with plug-and-play rooftop systems that provide panels and storage for a monthly payment similar to your electric bill.

Keep your eyes on Japan.

[Kolesar]

2. There is a Burt Bacharach song in there

Elvis Costello sang it in Austin Powers - 2

[xchrom]

3. Indeed - it's one of the more frustrating aspects

Of electric/energy providers.