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Politico
09-07-2025
- Politics
- Politico
The Atomic Age is Perpetually About to Dawn. Republicans and Democrats Aren't the Ones Holding it Back.
Nuclear power is a political winner — but not a money saver. Just ask Tim Echols. Echols' term on the Georgia Public Service Commission is up this year, and unlike most states, his position is an elected one. He says the Vogtle nuclear plant has been a campaign issue — it's hiked customers' bills by about 12 percent since coming fully online last year, $21 billion over budget and seven years behind schedule — but that his opponents haven't been able to weaponize it. He won his Republican primary resoundingly last month. 'All the Democratic opponents are saying that they would build Vogtle,' he said. 'They're just not saying how they would pay for it. Or they're saying they're going to lower bills, but they're going to build nuclear, and those two things don't go together.' Echols' race is a campaign's-eye view on the promises and perils of nuclear power. The hippies are dying out, and with them the memories of Shoreham, San Onofre, V.C. Summer, Three Mile Island and other nuclear plants that didn't pan out, suffered radiation leaks or otherwise closed before their time (although they live on, in many cases, in electric bills). Amid a broader global flirtation with the technology, Democrats across the country, driven by demand projections as well as climate concerns, are now joining Republicans in pushing for a nuclear resurgence — and there hasn't been a partisan backlash. (There are a few reasons for that, as author Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow details in a new book on California's Diablo Canyon power plant: 'One is that attitudes toward nuclear are still quite mixed on the left, and another is that the shift in attitudes isn't necessarily widely appreciated,' she writes. 'It certainly has not (yet) gotten to the point that support for nuclear is branded as a 'woke' position.') 'I'm the first Democratic governor in a generation to say to nuclear, 'I'm embracing this,'' New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said last month in announcing plans to build a new advanced nuclear plant in upstate New York. 'This is not your grandparents' nuclear reactor.' She also pleaded with President Donald Trump to ease permitting. 'The barriers are in Washington,' she said. 'The length of time — 10 years, a decade — of regulatory bureaucracy and red tape that must be gotten through is a reason why it fails and people don't even try.' But it's not the policy that's holding nuclear back: It's the industry. All the incentives and permitting reforms the government can muster won't change the basic economics that have led to just three new nuclear plants getting built in the U.S. this century: It takes too long, is too expensive and is only getting pricier. 'In terms of new nuclear, it's a nonstarter,' said Stanford engineering professor Mark Z. Jacobson, a longtime skeptic of nuclear power. 'They can spend as much money as they want, it's never going to happen.' The nuclear industry has as much going for it right now as it's ever had. U.S. electricity demand is growing for the first time in 20 years as data centers and artificial intelligence companies proliferate. That's intersecting with a wave of policy and public support for nuclear that's been building for the past decade across partisan lines, punctuated most recently by the megabill, which is now law and retains the Biden administration's tax credits for nuclear production and investment and kneecaps the technology's carbon-free competitors like solar and battery storage. Where the Biden administration agreed to triple nuclear generation by 2050 at U.N. climate talks in 2023, Trump is pushing to quadruple it on the back of AI and national security concerns. On the local level, lawmakers have filed more than 200 nuclear bills in state capitols this year, as my colleague Jeffrey Tomich reports. And while there's still a partisan split, with more Republicans supporting nuclear power than Democrats, overall public support for it is at near-record levels, according to a Gallup poll from March. The industry isn't calling it a 'renaissance,' as Energy Secretary Chris Wright has, but they're excited. 'I just describe it as an overdue recognition of the value of nuclear energy within our broader energy system,' said John Kotek, a senior vice president with the Nuclear Energy Institute. The nuclear revival falls into three main categories: Keeping existing plants open longer, like Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom did in 2022 with Diablo Canyon; reopening shuttered ones, as proposed by Microsoft at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania and at Michigan's Palisades plant; and building new ones, as Hochul and Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin are proposing. Among unaffiliated energy economist types, the consensus is that the first category makes sense; the second, in certain cases; and the third, probably not. 'It takes us 10 years to build a transmission line, and building nuclear power plants is harder than that to a substantial degree,' said Michael Wara, director of Stanford University's Climate and Energy Policy program. 'At some point, we have to say, 'OK, this is cool stuff, but we have not been for whatever reason able to create an industry that can deliver at scale and on time, and that means this is not an industry that can compete with the real markets today.' To wit: The average cost of large-scale solar has fallen 84 percent since 2009, to $58 per megawatt-hour, while nuclear power has risen 47 percent, to $180, according to Lazard's latest analysis of energy sources' levelized costs. That's largely on the back of Vogtle, the 2,200-megawatt plant in Georgia backed by $12 billion in federal loan guarantees. 'Most technologies, the cost comes down as time goes down,' said Jacobson. 'Nuclear's pretty much the only technology whose cost increases with time.' The industry argues the costs and timelines will improve as they build more, especially if companies band together to place orders for multiple units. 'We know that mythology about, 'It's always going to take too long,'' Kotek said. 'If you're only doing one or two, that may be true, but I don't think that's what the future of the industry looks like.' But the problem isn't limited to the U.S. The U.K., France and Finland have all seen major cost and timeline overruns with their most recent plants. China, which is building more nuclear than anyone, has gotten its timelines down the farthest but is still around 7 years, according to the International Energy Agency. Then there's the potential mismatch between the timescales of the tech and nuclear industries. One operates over months or years at most, while the other takes decades. The International Energy Agency projects data centers will double their energy demand by 2030, but new nuclear won't likely be online by then — assuming the demand materializes. 'It's that combination of putting an enormous amount of capital at risk over a duration where you cannot understand the risks that is so problematic,' Wara said. 'I don't think there's any way in a democracy to derisk that.' The Southeast is probably the place in the U.S. that has the most appetite for that risk. In addition to Georgia's Vogtle, Republican South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster is throwing his support behind reviving the two half-built units at V.C. Summer that utilities abandoned in 2017 amid overruns. Echols is calling for a federal backstop to insure utilities against the risk of bankruptcy, as happened with the builder of Vogtle and V.C. Summer, and notes that the Tennessee Valley Authority is working with a Canadian power company to jointly invest in design work for GE Hitachi's small modular reactor, which got approval from Ontario regulators in May in what would be the first commercial plant of its kind in North America. 'They finish up in Tennessee, they come down to Georgia,' he said. 'So you're not trying to create this massive labor pool to work on nuclear plants where they're still learning. That's where we got in trouble with Vogtle, is that we had not done it before. We made mistakes, and those mistakes put the project behind, and it was a $2 million-a-day interest burn, and that just simply sent the project way off financial course.' Nuclear's history of similar problems isn't stopping opponents from fretting about the new projects around the country. With Hochul's announcement of her nuclear plans in New York, 'I feel like the knife is in my back,' said Adrienne Esposito, executive director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment, which she founded in 1985, the year after the Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant was completed on Long Island Sound and four years before the Long Island Lighting Co. agreed not to operate it, due to its failure to get local governments on board with an evacuation plan. But Esposito may not need to worry, given the industry's track record.
Yahoo
18-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
1 Public Service Commission primary headed to a runoff
The Brief Former Atlanta City Council member Keisha Waites is headed to a runoff against Peter Hubbard. The runoff election is July 15. The winner of the primary will face incumbent Republican Fitz Johnson, who was appointed to the commission in 2021 by Gov. Brian Kemp. In the District 2 Republican primary, incumbent Tim Echols won the primary. He will face Democrat Alicia Johnson in November. ATLANTA - One of the 2025 Public Service Commission primaries is headed to a runoff. What we know The District 3 Democratic race has been narrowed down to two candidates after none of the three received 50% of the vote Tuesday. Former Atlanta City Council member Keisha Waites is headed to a runoff against Peter Hubbard. Waites earned 47% of the vote, while Hubbard received 32%. Robert Jones is out of the running after receiving 20% of the vote. The runoff election is July 15. The winner of the primary will face incumbent Republican Fitz Johnson, who ran unopposed in the primary. Johnson was appointed to the commission in 2021 by Gov. Brian Kemp and has never faced voters. He was originally scheduled to run in 2022 for the last two years of his predecessor's term . Instead, the District 3 winner can run again next year for a six-year term, after lawmakers rewrote the terms. In the District 2 Republican primary, incumbent Tim Echols won the primary. Echols has been on the Public Service Commission since 2011. Echols will face Democrat Alicia Johnson, who ran unopposed in the primary, come November. Dig deeper Georgia usually doesn't have statewide elections in odd-numbered years, but these were pushed back after elections were delayed by a lawsuit that unsuccessfully challenged the statewide voting scheme as discriminatory to Black people. No Georgia Public Service Commission elections have been held since 2022 because of the lawsuit. Related: Georgia Public Service Commission election: What you need to know Why you should care The Georgia Public Service Commission is the body elected statewide that regulates utilities such as gas and electricity. It has power over what Georgia Power, the state's largest electric provider, can charge customers for electricity. The Source Information for this article came from the Secretary of State's election website and FOX 5 reporting.
Yahoo
18-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Republican Echols wins Georgia Public Service Commission primary as Democrats head for a runoff
Republican Tim Echols won renomination in one of the Georgia Public Service Commission primary elections on Tuesday, while Democrats Keisha Waites and Peter Hubbard appeared headed to a July 15 runoff. Voters Tuesday were deciding party nominees for two posts on the commission, which oversees utilities including Georgia Power Co. Separate Republican and Democratic primaries were taking place. In each race, candidates must live in a certain district, but run statewide. Turnout was low, with fewer than 200,000 people statewide casting ballots. In the District 2 Republican primary, the incumbent Echols outpaced challenger Lee Muns of Harlem by a 3 to 1 margin. Echols, a Hoschton resident, has been on the Public Service Commission since 2011. He will face Democrat Alicia Johnson of Savannah in November. She was unopposed Tuesday. [DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks] In mostly complete returns in the District 3 Democratic primary, Waites, a former state legislator and Atlanta City Council member, won the most votes but fell short of a majority. That means she will face the second-place finisher, Hubbard, in a runoff. He's a green energy activist from Atlanta. Former utility regulator and utility executive Robert Jones of Brookhaven finished third and will miss the runoff. The winner of the Democratic runoff will face incumbent Fitz Johnson of Atlanta, who was unopposed Tuesday. Daniel Blackman of Atlanta appeared on ballots in the District 3 Democratic primary, but votes for him were not counted after a judge ruled he hadn't moved into the district in time to meet the November 2024 deadline Debate in the primary centered on bills charged by Georgia Power, a subsidiary of Atlanta-based Southern Co. Georgia Power customers have seen bills rise six times in recent years because of higher natural gas costs, construction projects including two new nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle near Augusta, and other factors. A typical Georgia Power residential customer now pays more than $175 a month, including taxes. Echols defends his record. 'I am grateful to Republicans who value our low rates and grid reliability, allowing us to stay the No. 1 state to do business,' Echols said in a statement Tuesday. 'Our Public Service Commission is laser-focused on protecting Georgia families. Waites has said bills are 'going in the wrong direction' and touted her previous experience in office, saying she would be a viable Democratic candidate in November. 'I have a long track record and history of fighting and standing up for working families and seniors,' she told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in a Monday candidate forum. TRENDING STORIES: As 4-year anniversary nears, questions remain over brutal stabbing in Piedmont Park Man dead following shooting at NW Atlanta apartment complex Windy, stormy weather blows inflatable waterslides onto downtown connector Hubbard said he believed his platform would triumph in the Democratic contest on July 15, saying he would 'fight for a Georgia powered by clean, low-cost renewable energy. I have a detailed plan to create that future and lower power bills.' The five-member commission, currently all Republicans, also oversees some natural gas rates for Atlanta Gas Light and Liberty Gas. Georgia usually doesn't have statewide elections in odd-numbered years, but these were pushed back after elections were delayed by a lawsuit that unsuccessfully challenged the statewide voting scheme as discriminatory to Black people. No Georgia Public Service Commission elections have been held since 2022 because of the lawsuit. Johnson was appointed to the commission in 2021 by Gov. Brian Kemp and has never faced voters. He was supposed to run for the last two years of his predecessor's term in 2022. Instead, the District 3 winner can run again next year for a six-year term, after lawmakers rewrote the terms. Echols was supposed to run for a six-year term in 2022. Instead, the District 2 winner will serve for five years, with the next election in 2030. [SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter]
Yahoo
18-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Election Day in Georgia: See results for Public Service Commission primary races
Incumbent Public Service Commissioner Tim Echols convincingly won his primary election Tuesday night, setting himself up to run against Democrat Alicia Johnson for another term. The Republican energy service regulator who presides over District 2 defeated Lee Muns, GOP challenger. With only two counties left to report Tuesday night, Echols held more than 76% of the vote. Johnson, who will be Echols' challenger in November, ran unopposed. While Echols won decisively, a three-candidate Democratic field in District 3 failed to yield a clear winner. Keisha Sean Waites, Peter Hubbard and Robert Jones all ran with the goal of securing the nomination and facing off against incumbent Republican Fitz Johnson in November. Waites led the field with more than 47% of the vote Tuesday night with 157 of 159 counties reporting, but with no candidate grabbing 50% of the ballots cast, the race appeared set for a runoff. Hubbard, who was second in the vote with 32%, also would make it into the runoff if results held. Daniel Blackman, a former EPA Region 4 administrator and previous PSC candidate, was also running in this district but was disqualified after a judge ruled he did not provide enough evidence that he lived in District 3 for at least 12 months, as required by commission rules. The Georgia Public Service Commission is a five-member panel of energy regulators which reviews proposals from electric companies such as Georgia Power. These proposals outline how much the company plans to charge customers for electricity and where the company will get its energy — whether from solar, natural gas, coal, batteries, hydropower, or other sources. Find results from the two contested PSC races below.
Yahoo
17-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
It's Georgia Election Day: Here's what's on the ballot around GA
Tuesday, June 17, is Election Day across Central Georgia. While it's not a presidential or midterm election, several local contests are on the ballot and could have a big impact. From Public Service Commission to Mayor to Tax Commissioner, Central Georgia has four elections Tuesday. Here is everything to know. Public Service Commission (PSC) Election Voters across Georgia will help decide who sits on the Public Service Commission (PSC)—the state body that helps regulate utility companies like Georgia Power and influences how much Georgians pay for services. There are two PSC seats up for grabs: District 2 Candidates: Tim Echols (Republican) Lee Muns (Republican) Alicia M. Johnson (Democrat) District 3 Candidates: Fitz Johnson (Republican) Daniel Blackman (Democrat) Peter Hubbard (Democrat) Robert Jones (Democrat) Keisha Sean Waites (Democrat) Centerville Mayor election: Centerville voters will choose someone to finish out the remaining term of former mayor John Harley, who resigned at the end of 2024 after more than a decade in candidates are: J. Michael Evans: Current acting mayor and city council chairman Justin Wright: Longtime city council member New Chairman in Washington County After Horace Daniel stepped down as council chairman, Washington County residents are now choosing his replacement. Two Democratic candidates are in the race: Mel Daniel: Son of the former chairman, with a background in local affairs Doug Watkins: Current District 1 commissioner with seven years of experience Wheeler County Tax Commissioner election Voters in Wheeler County will decide among four candidates for the tax commissioner position: Bradley Davis (Republican) Whitney Griffin (Republican) Curtis Hay (Republican) Marvin Howard (Democrat) To find your polling location, view a sample ballot, or check your voter registration details, visit the Georgia Secretary of State's My Voter Page online. Please note that if you usually vote at Porterfield Baptist Church in Bibb County, be aware that your polling location has moved to Mikado Baptist Church on Houston Road due to a water pipe issue. Vanessa Countryman is the Trending Topics Reporter for the Deep South Connect Team Georgia. Email her at Vcountryman@ This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Election Day in Central Georgia: Local races on the ballot
