Nuke customers get soaked
Report: Consumers will ‘eat’ billions from capital risks
[link to www.chronicleonline.com]

[snip]

Duke Energy’s defunct nuclear plant north of Crystal River serves as an example of what happens when customers bear the capital risks that should be carried by investors or lenders, according to a report released Thursday. Those customers get soaked when investors and lenders would have been paid dividends and interest.

“Pursuant to Florida’s law compelling customer investment, Crystal River (power plant) customers advanced tens of millions of dollars to buy equipment and pay for construction,” Bradford said. “But the utility bungled the job so badly that the plant is now closed for good.”


Bradford and Mark Cooper, senior fellow for economic analysis with the Institute for Energy and the Environment, Vermont Law School, and author of “Policy Challenges of Nuclear Reactor Construction, Cost Escalation and Crowding Out Alternatives” (2009), spoke during a Thursday teleconference about reactor projects in Florida, South Carolina and Georgia, where state legislation has enacted advanced-cost-recovery financing in construction to shift the risk to customers, now amounting to $6 billion they will have to “eat.”