Nuclear "SpinCo" (truthout)

[jpak]

http://www.truthout.org/nuclear-spinco57793

The nuclear industry, like Wall Street, knows how to make money with other people's money: move liabilities off balance sheet, use lots of borrowed money and leverage, don't worry about loading too much debt onto the company as long as insiders can walk away with plenty of money and look to the fool taxpayer to cover the losses.

Such was the script that private equity used to get rich by flipping companies like Simmons Mattress while driving them into the ground and laying off thousands of workers. It's also the script that Entergy Corp. is using today to spin off aging, leaking nuclear power plants.

Anyone who wants to know how to flip a nuclear plant might want to take a page from Entergy's playbook. Entergy owns and operates a fleet of nuclear power plants that sell electricity on the wholesale market at prices set by supply and demand. It also does business through subsidiaries that operate as regulated utilities, which sell electricity to households at retail rates set by regulators.

It turns out that Entergy, the second biggest nuclear player in the US, is not too sure that nuclear power can compete in the free market. It plans to spin off five of its wholesale nuclear power plants - all leaking radioactivity - into a new shell company front-loaded with billions in debt. The new company was originally named SpinCo, but it now has a nice new name, Enexus.

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[kristopher]

1. Highly recommended reading...