By Colt Stewart
Thirty-eight years ago, the California Legislature passed the Nuclear Moratorium Act. Governor Jerry Brown signed it into law. The law, still on the books today, says that until the federal government certifies a “permanent” method of disposing of radioactive waste, no new nuclear reactors will be built in California. Those of us who worked on and defended this legislation knew the day would come when the ratepayers of California would have to pay the piper for decommissioning those reactors already under construction and we did not want to see the ratepayers stuck with the ultimate costs of decommissioning even more.
The Public Utilities Commission (PUC) knew it. The elected officials knew it. The ratepayer watchdog groups knew it. The utility companies knew it. The environmental groups knew it. The lawyers, engineers, and other staffers knew it.
Through “all events tariffs,” the utilities financed the development and construction of their complex, dangerous, large-scale power generating stations in essence financially risk-free. Their argument was always, “We wish to assure the public a reliable source of low-cost electricity.” Sounds reasonable, right? But they never factored in the decommissioning costs or the cost of permanently disposing of the long-term (like up to 1 million years) nuclear waste. In a shortsighted attempt to keep electric rates low, utility executives, PUC commissioners, ratepayer protection groups, engineers, and lawyers all put off attempting to identify those costs until such time — in the future — when they would become due.
Well that time is now.
The great hoax of nuclear power — an endless supply of cheap electricity — is now before us. There are still two gigantic unpaid bills coming due: for decommissioning the existing reactors that have outlived their useful lives, and for the long-term containment and abandonment of the radioactive waste which has overrun all the interim short-term storage solutions. These bills must be paid, whether by the ratepayers, the shareholders, the consumers, the insurance companies, the manufacturers, or all of the above.
— Colt Stewart of Palm Desert is a former Senior Energy Consultant to the California Assembly. He wrote this piece for The Desert Sun.
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