First, there continues to be concern about the safety of a nuclear plant and the disposal of nuclear waste.  In the wake of the tsunami in Japan, and resulting damage to a nuclear power plant, these concerns have been magnified recently.  No two nuclear plants in the United States are identical, and there is concern of whether the technology has advanced to the point where a new nuclear plant is acceptably safe.  On the other hand, Iowa is not near a fault line like Japan or California, so the risks of damage from an earthquake are pretty small here.  There may always be some degree of risk in any nuclear plant, and the alternatives all have their own difficulties.  Coal-fired power plants are not clean sources of energy and further the problem of global climate change.  Natural gas is cleaner than coal, though it still contributes significant amounts of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, is subject to large swings in price based on global demand and must be pumped to Iowa from elsewhere.  Wind and solar are great additions to our energy portfolio, though the technology does not seem to have advanced to figure out how to adequately store this type of energy.  When compared to the alternatives, nuclear advocates can make a case that nuclear energy is the least objectionable option.

Next, the substance of the bill would allow a utility company like MidAmerican to raise rates up front to cover the costs of studying and building a power plant.  This would be a major change and groups like the AARP are strongly opposed to the increases in utility rates this bill would cause.  Advocates of the bill argue that we are facing a “pay me now or pay me later” reality.  Iowa needs more base load energy capacity and over the long term consumers may be asked to pay more anyway.

The aspect of this bill that causes me to be most skeptical is the idea of shifting the risk.  It is very possible that a utility company could get five years into a new power plant project, having spent tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, and determine it just will not work.  In that situation, when it is time for a company to cut its losses, the question is whose losses are we cutting?  Traditionally, the company and its shareholders would bear that risk and incur that loss.  This bill would shift the risk on to ratepayers and I have a very hard time supporting that idea.  In essence, this appears to be another instance where private industry is asking government to socialize the risk but privatize the reward.

We do need a wide variety of clean, sustainable sources of energy.  We do need to do a better job of conservation and making intelligent decisions on our energy use as consumers.  However, unless this bill is significantly altered, it is just very difficult for me to support placing the risk in the development of a new nuclear power plant on consumers in the form of higher utility bills.