Study finds taxes leave Millstone at risk of shutdown

The CT Mirror ^

[matt04]

Tax issues and economic vulnerability make Connecticut’s nuclear power plant one of 12 most at risk of shutdown, according to a new academic study.

The report from the Institute for Energy and the Environment at Vermont Law School comes just two months after Connecticut legislators balked at extending a controversial tax on power generators for another two years.

Millstone also is one of 38 nuclear facilities the report says is at risk of early retirement not only due to taxes, but also from competition from lower-cost energy sources, shrinking demand, costly repairs and other rising operating costs.

Nine major nuclear reactors either have closed or abandoned plans to increase their maximum power capacity over the past few months.

“Recent developments have sent what are truly shock waves through the industry and Wall Street,” said Mark Cooper, the institute’s senior fellow for economic analysis and author of the report. “The spate of early retirements and decisions to forego uprates magnify the importance of the fact that the “nuclear renaissance” has failed to produce a new fleet of reactors in the U.S.

“With little chance that the cost of new reactors will become competitive with low-carbon alternatives, … we need to start preparing now for more early retirements” of nuclear plants.

The fear that the two plants at Millstone Point could be pushed into early retirement prompted lawmakers in the spring to dump most of a proposal from Gov. Dannel P. Malloy to extend what was supposed to be a one-year tax on power plants for another 24 months.

[matt04]

Connecticut is open for Business!*

*electricity not available during darkness or low wind periods due to our desire to shut down almost 50% of generation in the state.

[Pontiac]

Millstone also is one of 38 nuclear facilities the report says is at risk of early retirement not only due to taxes, but also from competition from lower-cost energy sources, shrinking demand, costly repairs and other rising operating costs.

This puts to lie the Obama administrations claims that the economy is improving.

If the economy was improving lowering energy cost would raise the demand for electricity. But even with drastically falling prices for electricity demand is falling.

Manufacturing has fallen off so much that base load plants like large nuclear plants are being replaced by gas fired power plants that used to be used exclusively as peaking plants (plants that can be started up and loaded quickly to supply power on days of high demand).

Regulations and high taxes have driven manufacturing out of the United States. We are no longer competitive on the world market for manufactured goods. We have become more of a socialist leper than Europe.

People of the United States prepare to be a Third World Country. Our leaders are taking us down the road to squalor.