“New power plants will be built, and we would prefer they’re built in Kansas instead of another state.” — State Rep. Carl Holmes, R-Liberal, chairman of the House Energy and Utilities Committee, touting a proposal to exempt new and expanding nuclear plants from property taxes for at least 10 years.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
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19 Comments
This isn’t a big deal as I see it. Property taxes are a local issue – and most communities would give any big industry, whether it be WalMart, or a plastic extrusion manufacturer an exemption. Why should an energy plant be any different?
It’s traditional NOT to charge property taxes to plants that develop energy since that cost would be passed on to the consumer.
This is a win/win for communities – and for the end consumer of the energy – you and I.
While I can see the need for some abatements I am not sure about 10 years. I would also like to see at least enough payments to local governments to cover any costs they might have – roads, utilities, police/fire etc.
Beyond that – we definitely should be moving on this, both for nuclear and for wind.
You’ll have to forgive my ignorance, but what are the risks (other than the obvious security risks, and the risks of them blowing up) of having nuclear energy plants?
They are probably safer than other such plants. So, I doubt that they carry a whole lot in the way of risk.
Ben: I agree that they’re safe. I really don’t know how efficient they are, but that’s for the scientists. Everything I read contradicts the last thing I read. GS has a point that utilities have a “cost plus” deal, that insures they can’t lose money. So, whether or not they get the tax abatement is not relevant. Either they get the abatement, and the cost of those services increase our taxes; or, they don’t get it, but are allowed to pass it along to the consumers. Basically, it’s six of one and a half dozen of the other, as I see it.
Probably, not giving them any abatement whatsoever is, ironically, the fairest. Thereby, the infrastructure costs you speak of are shared by the folks who are getting the benefits, not state-wide. I would probably be rightfully pissed if I lived in Greenwood County, for example, and my taxes went up to pay for associated costs of a plant in, say, Sherman County, serving NW Kansas, NE Colorado and SW Nebraska.
They only generate toxic waste that lasts for thousands of years. I can’t see giving them a tax break for that!
We are largely in agreement. The point of at least a aprtial abatement on the other hand is that the valuation can be so high as to be a huge windfall for a local governing/taxing body. Before school taxes were made more state-wide the district that contained Wolf Creek benefitted tremendously by its presence. That is why I favor some kind of partial abatement – definitely cover local costs plus some but not fill the local coffers to overflowing.
Nuclear power is the most expensive power to provide therefore it relies heavily on subsidies. Exempting the property tax for 10 years is merely another one of those subsidies which much place more of a burden on the taxpayers. Then we get to subsidize where to store the waste. Oh goody. You know, wind and solar doesn’t produce any waste to produce electricity. Can’t have that though.
The waste issue is real and must be dealt with. My approach is to fuel new plants with recycled weapons material so that we would be turning waste to fuel to begin with. Then reprocess as much as possible to continue the cycle.
Plants should be paying a federal fee to cover the costs of waste management.
Ah now we’re getting somewhere.
I agree, if we can, lets use other resources before we consider nuclear.
High capital costs of building new nuclear plants are a big problem — proponents usually cite the low “operating” costs.
Higher efficiency would cut more GHG emissions, and do it faster, than building new nuclear plants.
‘What about nuclear power?’ page 258 (PDF pg 282)http://www.oilendgame.comRegardless, nuclear power has no prospects in market-driven energy systems, for a simple reason: new nuclear plants cost too much to build.In round numbers, electricity from new light-water reactors will cost twice as much as from new windfarms, five to ten times as much as distributed gas-fired cogeneration or trigeneration in buildings and factories (net of the credit for their recovered heat), and THREE to THIRTY TIMES as much as end-use EFFICIENCY that can save most of the electricity now used.
Any one of these three abundant and widely available competitors alone could knock nuclear power out of the market, and there are three, with more on the way (ultimately including cheap fuel cells).”
There ARE safety issues,http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/nuclear_safety/overview_db.html“In March 2002, workers at the Davis-Besse nuclear plant in Ohio discovered a football-sized hole in the nuclear reactor vessel head. The damage occurred over a period of nearly six years and had been overlooked during inspections in 1998 and 2000…it’s unlikely that Davis-Besse could have survived one more overlook without the hole opening up to cause a loss-of-coolant accident worse than that experienced at Three Mile Island.”
Doug–
Good point.
How’d Wolf Creek work out last time?
Wichita paid for the cost over-runs for twenty years and paid way more per kilowatt than Topeka did even though the same company provided both cities electricity . . .
capn – biggest problems we have had with our electricity rates is that Westar (a) overestimated demand and thus had too much supply for a fairly long time and (b) squandered hundreds of millions on Protection One. That latter one was Wittig’s big brainchild.
So true, Ben, which raises the entire spectrum of how rates are set in a regulated industry. Too much to say about that, too little time; however, it is a very interesting area of inquiry, for those who want to go for it.
nuclear is the cheapestmay cost more to build but in the long run it is cheaper
Hey, now there is a new tourism or economic development slogan for western kansas. ’cause ya know, they are NOT going to want to build any energy plants, wind, nuke or coal that would sully eastern kansas or use up THEIR water.
“Western Kansas, the toxic power generation capital of then nation”.
Followed by:
“Oh, and by the way, we also grow a lot of your food..”
Of course, I am sure everyone gets the irony that “our” water is “their” water before it gets to them.
Decide: Nukes or coal. Its wishful thinking to imagine that anything besides nuclear power can compete with coal on a large scale in dollars per kilowatt/hour. Nuclear waste is a political rather than a technical problem when you look at the raw numbers, 170 tons per year from a nuclear power plant versus 10000 tons per day from a coal plant. Nuclear power is the only power generation regime that internalizes all of its waste costs; That cant be said of coal, natural gas, or even supposed green power such as wind or solar.
And the notion that nuclear averages more than wind in cost is simply a lie.
Dezakin,
Nuclear waste is a “future generations” problem.
As I explained upthread, higher end-use energy efficiency is much CHEAPER, and faster than nuclear.http://blogs.kansas.com/weblog/2007/01/words_to_power_.html#comment-28408654
The NRC’s safety record is also very troubling.