Harum-Alvarez's Statement:
Thanks to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for holding this meeting, and offering me the opportunity to speak. It's an honor to speak at this podium after Lloyd Miller, who with others spoke so eloquently on the potential environmental impacts of the new reactors at Turkey Point.
I'm a businessman and an international consultant on business processes, and I'd like to speak about this expansion as an economic proposition. First of all, I'd like to answer the speakers who have brought up the argument of "Job Creation" as a reason to support the expansion.
We've heard that the two new reactors will create a few thousand temporary jobs, followed by 800 permanent positions—all for an investment of $15 to $30 billion. That investment comes not from FPL, but from us, the rate payers, in our electric bills. (Hit read more)
Creating 800 permanent jobs by extracting $15 to $30 billion from South Florida families and businesses is an investment so bad it even makes a new baseball stadium look good in comparison. It's absurd to think that such a massive expense can be justified via the jobs it creates, especially since there are plenty of other ways to address our energy needs which cost less and ALSO create more jobs.
My family built a beautiful house in Kendall whose energy bill last month was $97. It was $35 in February. That's about 75% less than comparably equipped homes in the area, homes with a pool, a home office, a kitchen used every day and an active family of five. FPL was very helpful to us when we were building the house, and we couldn't understand why. I finally asked one of the FPL staff why they were so eager to help customers like us who were working so hard to pay FPL less money.
"Albert, you don't understand," the FPL employee answered. "If everyone built their homes like yours, we'd never need to build another power plant."
That was a memorable quote—especially today—and especially considering two facts:
1. Our home did not cost appreciably more than other custom homes with much higher electric bills. This is not a "Hollywood Green" house with an unlimited budget designed to assuage seemingly unlimited guilt about destroying the planet. Our roof is not covered with expensive solar PV arrays. We only have a small set of PV panels running our pool pump.
2. The same techniques we used—traditional Florida design, thermally massive walls and geothermal heating and cooling—have now been used to retrofit houses in South Florida, with appreciable savings: less than 75%, but in some cases more than 30%, and enough to cover the cost of the investment.
I would ask that the NRC do a cost-benefit analysis comparing the costs of the Turkey Point expansion, in both dollars and environmental damage, to an investment in our own homes and businesses. I believe that we could:
1. Spend a small fraction of the cost of Turkey Point
2. Gain more than enough efficiency to make the expansion unnecessary
3. Make our houses more resilient against hurricanes, through stronger windows, roofs and walls, and therefore save on our windstorm insurance
4. Create MANY more than 800 permanent jobs
5. Avoid massive environmental impacts to our aquifers, Biscayne Bay and the Greater Everglades
6. Instead of our money funding an asset that FPL would own, we would end up owning the investment, in the form of our newly efficient, newly storm-ready homes and businesses.
