Before the public was consulted, and hearings held, a consensus was formed among the city's aristocracy. These included our public utility, our mayor and city council, the media including the editor and reporters of our only real daily paper, the usual Chamber of Commerce types, and those that see nuclear energy as clean and not contributing to global warming. Most of all, electricity generated by nuclear reactors was touted as the cheapest alternative.
Once this decision was made, the hard sell was on. Predictions of population growth were used to heighten the urgency of acting: buy now. Unless we did this deal quickly, the lights would go off, and our jobs would become tumbleweed. The second part of the hard sell was the "come-on" price. A neat number, a cool ten billion, plus the obligatory three billion additional for financing, was floated. Despite its having been around this track before, the pro-nuclear group assured the public that these numbers were written in stone.
Suffice to say, that in the whole wide world, the only people who believed that the first "price" would actually be the real price, and that a nuclear project would be completed on time and on budget, were the "Happy Talk Chorus" (HTC) cheerleading this deal in San Antonio.
Perhaps, because no firewalls were ever erected between the public utility and the private developer in the initial deal, and in a general atmosphere where "public" is increasingly a dirty word; the initial plan developed by CPS was not received with incredulity: San Antonio was going into the energy business. We were going to buy
a full fifty percent interest, even though this would be way more electricity than even the most alarmist cheerleaders had claimed we would need. When questioned about a plan that had San Antonio buying more energy than she needed, the boosters blithely assured the public that excess capacity could easily be disposed of on the energy market. Little was said about the wisdom of a public utility going into the energy business; and less about the fact that it seemed that, once again, most of our eggs were going into a single basket. Perhaps discussion of these points was limited because another overriding problem made them moot. San Antonio simply did not have 6.5 billion dollars to buy a half share of the then 13 billion dollar project.
As the months passed, and the anti-nuclear crowd argued for alternative energy, those that had decided, in advance, for expanding the South Texas Project, began to retreat from the full level of partnership first proposed. The share we could afford to buy got progressively smaller. First it went to 40%, then 20%, and finally 10%. At all times, based on a continuing faith in the "come on" price of 13 billion, each ten percent was valued at 1.3 billion.
At the same time, rumors began to appear, out of town, that the real cost of building nuclear reactors in Texas was known to Mr. Winn and his bosses at NRG. Nonetheless,
The Happy Talk Chorus in San Antonio pushed ahead with the final plan of buying in at the fantasy price of 1.3 billion per ten percent.
The assets San Antonio controlled included the land and water rights at the proposed site. No water, no nuclear. NRG, and its instrument, NINA, couldn't build an outhouse unless they got those rights from San Antonio. In addition, as if holding all the aces was not enough, CPS agreed to supplement its tender with cash. This cash was steadily handed over to NINA, in advance, even though the percentage of ownership that CPS would assume was still up in the air.
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