Ameren suspends Callaway nuclear project

by David Reed

April 23,2009

            AmerenUE has suspended its efforts to build a second nuclear power plant in Callaway County.

            Ameren UE President and CEO Thomas R. Voss made that announcement during a news conference at the company's headquarters in St. Louis on Thursday.

            Legislation crafted to help AmerenUE finance the construction project has stalled in the Senate. A compromise drafted by Sen. Kurt Schaefer of Columbia was in the works. But today, the utility asked legislative sponsors of the Missouri Clean and Renewable Energy Construction Act to withdraw the bills from consideration by the General Assembly. 

            "As we were moving forward to preserve the option for nuclear energy for our state, we stressed that we needed financial and regulatory certainty before we could begin construction," Voss said. "However, the current version of the bill being debated in the Senate strips the legislation of the very provisions we needed most to move forward."

            Opponents of the legislation included executives of large industrial companies who were concerned that their rates would be too high if the legislature allowed AmerenUE to charge ratepayers for construction costs before the nuclear plant started to generate electricity.

            Ameren estimated that the project would have cost $6 billion with the financing help and $9 billion if the ban on Construction Work in Progress continued. The largest construction project in Missouri's history would have employed an estimated 2,500 contractors for six years and 400 permanent employees.