Good morning to all of the readers of NEI's Nuclear Energy Overview, our member-only newsletter. The following summary is especially for those of you who have come here looking for a summary of President Bush's historic visit to Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant, as well as a roundup of reactions from around the Web to the President's speech on expanding the use of nuclear energy. To read our coverage from the June 22 visit, click here. For our followup post on reaction to what the President had to say, click here.
Ohio faces a decision soon about its two nuclear reactors, Davis-Besse and Perry, and on Wednesday, neighbors of one of those plants issued a cry for help. The reactors’ problem is that the price of electricity they sell on the high-voltage grid is depressed, mostly because of a surplus of natural gas. And the reactors do not get any revenue for the other benefits they provide. Some of those benefits are regional – emissions-free electricity, reliability with months of fuel on-site, and diversity in case of problems or price spikes with gas or coal, state and federal payroll taxes, and national economic stimulus as the plants buy fuel, supplies and services. Some of the benefits are highly localized, including employment and property taxes. One locality is already feeling the pinch: Oak Harbor on Lake Erie, home to Davis-Besse. The town has a middle school in a building that is 106 years old, and an elementary school from the 1950s, and on May 2 was scheduled to have a referendu
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