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JEFFERSON CITY — The new buzzword in the debate over a $6 billion Missouri nuclear plant is "certainty."

AmerenUE says it wants to give certainty to its investors as it tries to change Missouri law to help it build a second reactor in Callaway County.

Sen. Kurt Schaefer, R-Columbia, wants certainty, too. But Schaefer is more concerned about making sure ratepayers don’t get stuck paying hundreds of millions of dollars in higher rates for a plant that doesn’t get built.

Now, Schaefer and the St. Louis-based utility are talking about compromises that might give hope to a bill that would allow AmerenUE to charge consumers higher rates to help pay for the plant before it actually opens for business.

The plan seemed dead on arrival after its first hearing in the Senate when Schaefer — whose district stands to benefit more than most from the high-paying jobs — was among the most vocal critics of what he called a poorly written bill.

Missouri law currently bans what is called "construction work in progress," or CWIP, which would allow utility companies to raise rates on consumers while a new plant is being built, rather than having to wait until the plant is producing electricity.

AmerenUE wants to reverse that law, but rather than submit a bill that would do that, it is behind bills in both the Senate and the House that would substantially change the state’s utility regulation process and take power from consumers and the Public Service Commission.

Schaefer said that after meeting with AmerenUE CEO Tom Voss, his biggest concern was that Voss told him that even with a change in law, there was only about a 25 percent chance the nuclear plant in Callaway would ever get built.

"There is a 100 percent chance of a rate increase," Schaefer said, "Yet at the same time, Ameren will say there is only a 25 percent chance they’ll build the plant if they get their bill."

With that in mind, Schaefer and other senators have been working with AmerenUE officials to put protections in the law so that if the plant is not built — or if AmerenUE gets the highly valuable permit to build the plant but decides to sell it — the investment made by ratepayers is returned to them need a personal loan with bad credit.

"We’re trying to find common ground," said Schaefer, who added that he believed AmerenUE officials were amenable to making changes.

AmerenUE Vice President Richard Mark said Tuesday that he had been working with a variety of lawmakers, including Schaefer; Sen. Frank Barnitz, D-Lake Spring; and the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Delbert Scott, R-Lowry City, to improve the bill.

Mark said that the environment had been cooperative and that he hoped a new bill with changes to protect consumers would be submitted next week.

In the House, bill sponsor Ed Emery, R-Lamar, said he, too, was making changes to appeal to the consumer groups who had testified against the bill. One of the loudest criticisms is that the bill would force the Public Service Commission to decide on the "prudency" of a new nuclear plant in three months.

Office of Public Counsel Lewis Mills had testified that such a window was too short for the complicated regulatory process to work. Emery said AmerenUE officials had agreed to change the language to six months.

That might not be long enough, said Robert Clayton, chairman of the Public Service Commission, in a Senate hearing on Tuesday.

Clayton said he understood why AmerenUE was seeking more control over the regulatory process — to satisfy the investors who would put up the billions of dollars needed to finance the nuclear plant. But Clayton said that before the Legislature could determine whether those changes were necessary, it first needed to hear from Wall Street investors about specifically what Ameren needed to do to get financing for the nuclear plant.

"That’s what makes it so difficult to say with absolute certainty whether this bill is needed," Clayton said.

The CWIP bills have both been heard by committees; no votes have yet been taken on them.

(The bills are SB228 and HB 554)

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