| If my appearance on Vermont Edition on Monday made one thing clear, it’s that the Scott Administration is very serious about the possible siting of a new nuclear plant in Vermont – and about weakening the Renewable Energy Standard, which currently requires all Vermont electric utilities to be 100% renewable no later than 2035. |
| As I said on Vermont Public, the nuclear industry has a decades-long history of overpromising and underdelivering, at great expense to American ratepayers. The most recent examples of nuclear plants being built in the US are in Georgia and South Carolina. In Georgia, the project ran $21,000,000,000 over budget. Twenty-one. Billion Dollars. Over budget. And in South Carolina? Utilities spent $9 billion and the plant was never completed. The result is millions of American families that have paid thousands of dollars more for electricity than they should have. We’re being told that newer, “advanced” nuclear plants will be worlds better than current technology. But the reality is that most of these new reactors are being designed and built by the exact same companies that brought us nuclear 1.0. Maybe even more concerning, a host of new, venture capital-backed startups are trying to cash in on the newfound interest in nuclear. >> Email your representatives and senators and urge them to vote against any move to make it easier to build new nuclear plants in Vermont, or to weaken Vermont’s renewable energy requirements. |
| I don’t know about you, but a nuclear plant built by a company that went bankrupt and was then bought by a private equity firm (like Westinghouse, the company behind those Georgia and South Carolina reactors) – or one from a Silicon Valley startup – is not my idea of a risk that Vermont ratepayers should have to take. At least not before being thoroughly vetted and voted on by Vermont’s legislature. That’s what’s required by current law – a provision the Scott Administration is attempting to repeal. These aren’t idle concerns either. Late last year, the Trump Administration signed an $80 billion agreement with the private equity firm that bought Westinghouse to build new nuclear plants across the US. Vermont has a robust process in place to vet any attempt to build a new nuclear plant in our state, including a required legislative review. Please urge your legislators not to weaken that process, or our commitment to renewables. If you haven’t had a chance to listen to Monday’s Vermont Edition on nuclear power yet, it was a good conversation – you can find the recording here. |