For much of the past four years, the residents of a pair of villages along Lake Erie have been on edge over the fate of their nuclear plants, which generate enough tax money to pay for nicer schools than their neighbors. Like many U.S. nuclear plants struggling to compete with with natural gas and renewable energy, the owners of the Ohio plants turned to the government for help, persuading the state’s lawmakers to give them a $1 billion bailout. But relief for the villages of Perry and Oak Harbor was short-lived after the financial rescue became entangled in a political bribery scandal that has brought calls to jettison the bailout. The uncertainty surrounding the future of both Ohio plants – Davis-Besse near Toledo and Perry near Cleveland – has created a new wave of anxiety that is stretching into another year after state lawmakers, at the end of December, put off deciding whether to repeal the bailout or come up with a new financial lifeline that would keep the plants open. It´s just the latest twist for the rural towns, which found themselves caught in the middle of the scandal-tainted bailout this summer when federal investigators said the plants´ former owner secretly funneled millions to secure the payout.
Daily Mail 15th Jan 2021 read more »