07-03-2025
Proposed Indiana nuclear plants are bait-and-switch scams
In a disturbing move, the Indiana General Assembly recently advanced several experimental nuclear power bills. As IndyStar's Karl Schneider has explained, House Bill 1007, Senate Bill 423 and Senate Bill 424 would let Indiana's for-profit electric companies undertake plans for small modular nuclear plants — while sticking ratepayers with billions in development costs, even if the plants never get built.
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These nuclear plants are a bait-and-switch. We're told we need them because new data centers are opening in Indiana. True, data centers are energy hogs. But the nukes won't be ready until the mid-2030s at the earliest.
What will the data centers run on in the meantime? Hey, we'll just burn more coal and gas!
Why not build more wind and solar instead? They're cheaper and they'd be ready far sooner. Paired with battery storage, they'd be a reliable resource for data center needs without the deadly pollution.
Nuclear plants notoriously run behind schedule and over budget — until they get canned. Take the NuScale small-nuclear project in Idaho. The power supplier involved had to end NuScale's contract once development costs ballooned past $9.3 billion. The plant never even broke ground.
These bills amount to a pricey, polluting scam.
Peg Hausman lives in Bloomington.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Proposed Indiana nuclear plants are bait-and-switch scams | Letters
