Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2021-2022

The conclusion of the 2021 World Nuclear Industry Status Report is that nuclear power is in decline. The 409-page report reveals that nuclear’s share of global electricity production is falling, having generated 3.9 percent less electricity in 2020 than the previous year. “Nuclear energy’s share of global gross electricity generation continues its slow but steady decline from a peak of 17.5% in 1996 [to] a share of 10.1% in 2020,” the report found. The report also reminds readers that “small modular reactors,” under development in the US, Canada and elsewhere, may never be commercially viable. The data indicate that renewable energy sources are fast becoming more available and increasingly cheaper than nuclear. Even China has slowed its reactor expansion and only increased its nuclear electricity capacity by 2 gigawatts (GW) in 2020, compared to a total of 133 GW from renewables. The world nuclear report also highlights the increasing levels of reported corruption in the nuclear industry, with an entire chapter devoted to the topic.

—Deutsche Welle, Sep. 28, 2021; The World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2021

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2021-2022

By Adrian Monty

A former Chairman and CEO of SCANA Corp. in South Carolina, Kevin Marsh, was sentenced to two years in prison for fraud in the construction of two nuclear reactors that never produced a single watt of electricity. Marsh and other officials knowingly covered up various failings during construction of the “Westinghouse AP1000” reactors at the VC Summer site, in order to win rate increases and to $2.2 billion in tax credits. “Due to this fraud,” said acting US attorney M. Rhett DeHart, “an $11 billion nuclear ghost town, paid for by SCANA investors and customers, now sits vacant in Jenkinsville, South Carolina.” Both SCANA and Westinghouse were forced into bankruptcy in 2017, and construction at VC Summer was halted, leaving 5,000 workers unemployed. Marsh has paid $5 million in fines in a plea agreement. This case follows a July 2017 Westinghouse fraud scandal in which Senior VP Jeffrey Benjamin was charged with 16 felonies and could face up to 20 years in prison and a $5 million fine. Three other Westinghouse officials pleaded guilty to charges. In 2020, federal prosecutors accused Ohio’s Republican House Speaker Larry Householder and four associates of funneling $60 million in bribes to themselves in exchange for passing a financial bailout of the state’s decrepet old reactors. Power corrupts of course, but nuclear power means corruption on steroids.

— US Attorney’s Office, District of South Carolina, Press Release, Oct. 7, 2021; Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Aug. 31, 2021; AP, Aug. 2, 2020