There’s a guy on another forum that works with nuclear. He constantly mentions Frances nuclear program is the way to go

Nuclear is the only way to go.

Maybe Generac will introduce a backyard micro back up nuke generator.
Nukes for all, except Iran and NK.

You can talk around it all you want but the fact of the matter is this.... Alabama Power is owned by Southern Company. Southern Company is in this business of making money. They make a LOT of money off the entire state of Alabama.

And like all big business they leave their environmental waste behind and want to act like they did you a favor by keeping your lights on in this case.. Because it's our fault we wanted our lights so the mess is our problem? It is just a means to an end?

What a damn joke. That's offensive given the stranglehold they have on all of us.

I worked in coal mining for years and had to deal with environmental issues daily including a coke plant in N Birmingham. I'm well versed in big business and the environmental damage they can leave behind. The problem with AL Power is they run this State and if they are forced to do anything it will just show in our bill at some point. So they just let the problem fester. That's the way that works. I am not against coal but....

Coal is cheap and the money is good. Bottom line.

Coal mining is a dirty business the actual coal mining is probably the cleanest part.

A couple of points in your post.

1. Southern Company is in the business of making money.
2. Southern company created the mess and it's not our problem.
3. Southern company has a stranglehold on all of us.

On the surface your statements are all true, however there is more to the story than that. I will attempt address your issues one by one.

1. Yes Southern Company like any company is in business to make money, however the company is limited to how much profit they can make by the Public Service Commission. So they end up reinvesting billions and billions of dollars back into infrastructure making the system more reliable, more redundant, and building ample reserve power making capability so that in the Southeast we don't have the issues that recently occurred in Texas. The Public Service Commission tells Southern Company what they can charge for power and we don't get a penny more. The Public Service Commission is elected by the people that purchase the power.

2. In fact ALL power utilities have created and are currently dealing with the residual ash issues. What you have to keep in mind is that at the time power from coal and putting the leftover ash in ash ponds was the best technology we ALL had back in the day, that's why all power utilities used the same system of ash disposal. People want cheap reliable power just like they want cheap goods. All the power utilities were working back in the day to provide what the customers wanted and still want. Do we blame the people for the decline in US manufacturing and the rise of China because we all wanted cheap goods or do we blame the companies in the US that couldn't make stuff cheaper than China?

3. There is always this debate on Publicly regulated utilities vs Deregulation. I have grown up and spent my entire life in Alabama, so publicly regulated utilities are all I have ever known, and I have never had a problem with it. I have always thought my power costs have been reasonable, especially when you compare the costs to other services like insurance, cable TV, Internet, cell phone service, etc... None of which have the extreme capital costs, fuel costs and infrastructure costs that the power companies have to build and maintain just to get the power to your meter. When speaking of deregulation, the main downfall to that seems to be the examples we see in places like California and Texas, where rolling blackouts and sudden cost spikes are considered normal. The reason for this is that those companies have no incentive to invest in redundancy or reserve power. They make no profit off of a power plant that just sits in reserve waiting for extreme heat or extreme cold, or an extreme weather event, and when something like what happened in Texas recently occurs, who gets screwed? People like you and I.

That's nice. Coal is cheap and the profits are high. Southern Company made $3 Billion dollars last year. They should be adequately reserving for remediation work.

3 Billion dollars, while it sounds like a lot, is not very much when you have been and will continue to completely demolish coal plants. Completely demolishing coal plants, closing ash ponds, relocating ash and building solar farms in their place is a very expensive proposition. Anyone who thinks, "Southern Company is getting rich off the little man..." simply doesn't have a grasp on how much infrastructure spending goes into providing power for masses of people and industry. There's a reason so many of the Texas utilities are filing for bankruptcy. Does Southern Company make money? Sure they do, but in my opinion they provide a much greater value for that money, than do other so called service providers. A way better value.

Apparently you have an ax to grind and that's fine. We are not going to agree on this, and that's OK too. I work in the industry and I know how hard everyone works and I know the value that we all provide, so that's all that matters to me. People can be thankful that we are not going to have sustained power outages, rolling blackouts, and $3000 monthly electric bills in the Southeast.

The members of the PSC are bought and paid for by Southern Co.

Gulf Power sent a very proud sounding email the other day about how they closed the last coal powered plant and replaced with natural gas and how it was actually going to save all of their customers a bunch of money. Of course they are putting a Hurricane repair surcharge on the bill starting at the same time that will offset. When you finally get done reading the details, they claim that every customer will save on average .73 cents a month!!! Now that is savings worth sending an exciting chest bumping email about!

Southern Company made $4.7 Billion in 2019.

Profit.

2020 was certainly a down year for them they lost probably $1.6 Billion dollars Year-Over-Year at just $3.1 Billion. Billion with a "B". The good news is everyone is working hard and they seem to be just getting by.....barely, I know.

We should be ashamed to ask them to clean up their mess... it's our fault anyway since we want our power and don't want our bills raised. The thought of a Monopoly providing a public service and making less than a few BIllion $$$..... man.

Y'all figure the suits are prepared to take a pay cut if it dips under $3 Billion... so they can keep my bill down?

Those numbers are artificially inflated due to the sale of Gulf Power. I expect them to sell Mississippi Power at any time. The Kemper County fiasco has cost them $7.5B in losses. They are not making as much money as you think. And for the record I don't work for nor have affiliations with Southern Company or any affiliates.

This coal ash pond should have been cleaned up by now. That’s the problem.

SC tried HARD to get Miss’ippi to eat that multi billion overrun on that fiasco, too!!!
I agree they provide a good product at a decent price point, but they aren’t your friendly neighborhood mom-n-pop operation barely scraping by....by no means!

There is no Gulf Power anymore. They were sold to Nextera years ago.

And yet it’s still gonna be called GulfPower til 2022. Doesn’t change what he said.

For what it's worth, Southern Company is working diligently on cleaning up all the ash ponds and have been since the TVA disaster. Southern Company is very risk averse and the last thing they want is an accident of any kind. They have already cleaned up a lot of them, but there's a lot more to clean up. I know from being in the industry that they are working on it as hard as they can to get them all cleaned up as soon as they can.

If you go to the Alabama Power website their rate per KWH is 10 cents. (Which is among the lowest in the country.) The average in the US is 13 cents. Some deregulated states are as high as 20 cents.

The folks that work for or at power plants know how hard the utilities have been working for years and years and how much money they are spending to clean and keep clean the air and the water and yet still provide cheap, reliable power to everyone.

I understand that there are and all of them are important from one environmental issue or another. I also know a good bit about risk assessments as well. If this ash pond gets into the Bay it will make the BP oil spill look like someone just poured a quart of oil in the Gulf.

As hunters and fishermen we are all conservationists and care about our environment no doubt. Even though the democrats don’t think we are. It’s time for it to be cleaned up no matter the cost for the Southern Company.

I think you and I agree. And I can assure you, regardless of what other's may say, Southern Company is committed to getting it cleaned up, just like they have all the other ash ponds they have already cleaned up.