This week in “Safe, affordable nuclear power”

by David Safier

Florida's Crystal River Nuclear Power Plant is being shut down permanently. It's been closed since 2009 when it was discovered its concrete containment building was cracked, then the repair attempt opened new cracks.

The site will still be around another 60 years — 3 generations — before it's completely decontaminated and dismantled.

Rate payers will get money back, given by one of Duke Energy's hands, then that money and more will be taken away by the other. An insurance settlement to the company will mean $835 million in customer refunds because they've had to pay for higher cost power while the plant was offline. But then Duke will try to get $1.65 billion back from the same customers to recoup its investment (because, I guess, the company shouldn't have to pay for its risky investment in nuclear power). Net loss to customers: $815 million.

There are so many cautionary tales in this short news item, I don't know where to begin, so I'll leave it to the readers to draw their own conclusions.