If we were thinking that a private businessman buying Bellefonte Nuclear Plant might mean the unfinished, mothballed and gutted power plant would stop sucking electricity ratepayers and taxpayers dry, we'd best guess again.
The buyer, financier and former Chattanooga developer Franklin Haney, plans a revival of Alabama's biggest construction project. The plant, according to five congressmen, already has cost TVA $9 billion since 1975 when work began. Now those five congressmen - four from Alabama and our own Tennessee Rep. Chuck Fleischmann - want us taxpayers and ratepayers to help again. This time, they want us to subsidize Haney's privatization of nuclear power with as much as $6 billion in government-backed loans and $2 billion in production tax credits.
Yes, you read that right. Haney wants to use OPM. That's Other People's Money, mostly ours, to the tune of at least $2.5 billion and maybe as much as $9.5 billion if you count the loan guarantees we'll be on the hook for, to finish a plant that was started 43 years ago and has never generated a single watt of electricity.
To complete the work, Haney, a multi-millionaire who has a membership at Mar-A-Lago and hosted former Trump fixer Michael Cohen on his yacht shortly before Cohen's law office was raided by the FBI, also has enlisted the help of the four Alabama congressmen and Fleischmann to seek that $6 billion loan from the U.S. Department of Energy through the DOE Advanced Nuclear Loan Guarantee program.
Our congressmen made the ask for President Donald Trump's support for the loan on May 14, 2018, and noted that Haney's company, Nuclear Development LLC, is investing in "excess of $1 billion of its own money" into the $11 billion total cost to complete construction.
A Wall Street Journal story in May reported that the Haney/Cohen meeting was to discuss the possibility of recruiting foreign investors from Qatar and the Qatari sovereign-wealth fund. Those additional investors apparently would make up for the shortfall between Haney's $1 billion and our tax dollars at work.
But that's not all. Assuming the plant eventually cranks up and begins producing electricity, Haney wins again. He'll be the one getting the $2.5 billion tax credits, meaning he won't pay taxes on his profit for a while.
Oh, and by the way, Haney is buying the plant we - as both taxpayers and ratepayers - spent $9 billion on for a song: $111 million dollars, along with the plant's 1,300-acre plot in North Alabama between Highway 72 and the Tennessee River in Jackson County.
Haney can't lose. If the plant we liked enough to build twice (TVA even gutted it once, selling parts for scrap) ever produces power, he profits. If it doesn't, his loans are backed by us, and he has 1,300 gorgeous rural North Alabama riverfront acres on which to build countless Council Fire-like subdivisions for retirees.
What we get out of this is unclear. Yes, there could be 4,000 or so construction jobs, and up to 1,000 jobs if the plant is completed. Yes, Jackson County would get an economic shot in the arm. Haney claims his estimated completion cost would allow him to deliver power as much as $500 million a year cheaper for electricity users. But wait. To whom will he sell it?
TVA sold the plant and property because it has no need of additional power. If TVA has no need, and doesn't buy it, how does Haney sell it and deliver it somewhere else? The power grid belongs to TVA, after all. At least for now. The Trump administration has insanely suggested selling the grid, too.
Al.com's Kyle Whitmire writes that Haney is a very rich man who lets his money work for him, "and his money is hard at work" in Alabama, in Washington, D.C., and maybe even the Middle East:
"Once a door-to-door Bible salesman, Haney became a self-made billionaire through working as the government's landlord. He acquires and develops property, which he leases to local, state and federal agencies. And he makes connections first with political donations."
A bipartisan donor, Haney gave to both Clintons and to Barack Obama. After Trump's victory in 2016, Haney donated $1 million to Trump's inaugural fund. Bloomberg reported last summer that Haney bragged about dining with Trump about a dozen times during the president's first six months in office.
Those donations may continue to shape Haney's nuclear dream: The grid maybe?
Or, perhaps, if Haney gets nibbles from would-be Qatari investors, he may need more foreign policy intervention: Under the Atomic Energy Act, the NRC may not issue licenses for projects owned or controlled by a foreign entity.
But since when has the Trump administration let little things like regulation or foreign influence stand in the way?
Whether Bellefonte ever is completed or not, it looks like we'll be paying for it for a long, long time.