Nuke plant promoters target the South

Because utilities in the South operate under a traditional rate regulatory structure that encourages investment in new plants and limits competition, companies seeking to develop nuclear power facilities in order to take advantage of federal tax incentives are drawn to the region -- even though it already has a surplus of idle generation.

That's the finding of a new analysis by the Reuters news agency. Titled "Nuclear industry eyes oversupplied U.S. South," the story notes that of the 21 reactor sites identified in NRC filings, 15 are in the South: four in Texas, three in South Carolina, two each in North Carolina and Florida, and one each in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi. But at the same time, the Southeast has more than enough existing gas-fired generation to meet power needs for at least another decade.

The push for new nukes comes as Southerners are still paying for the expensive plants built during the nuclear boom of the 1980s, Reuters notes:

Frank Spencer, a former Mississippi assistant attorney general, has not forgotten the years-long legal battle over Entergy Corp's Grand Gulf station that pitted elected officials in Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi against the utility and state and federal regulators. The fight over who would pay went to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Spencer battled unsuccessfully to keep Mississippi residents from paying more than their share of Grand Gulf's price tag which ballooned to more than $3.4 billion from $900 million.

"It was a huge burden, with the increase in rates," said Spencer, now a minister who runs a soup kitchen and shelter in Jackson. "It was the most costly plant at the time and Mississippi had to pay for one-third of it."

Today, a typical Entergy Mississippi customer still pays $12 a month for overruns at the 23-year-old nuclear plant, according to state regulatory filings.

And it's not just ratepayers who will be bearing the financial burden: A number of states including Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana and Florida are considering handing out their own taxpayer-funded incentives to politically powerful nuclear companies.