DTE Energy CEO, Tony Earley, speaking at the Detroit Economic Club. Earley was CEO of a LILCO, a power company found guilty of racketeering. He is the current chairman of the board of the Nuclear Energy Institute. (Source: Detroit Economic Club)

DTE Energy CEO, Tony Earley, speaking at the Detroit Economic Club. Earley was CEO of a LILCO, a power company found guilty of racketeering. He is the current chairman of the board of the Nuclear Energy Institute. (Source: Detroit Economic Club)

Looking over photos of John McCain’s recent visit to DTE’s Fermi 2 nuke plant, journalist Greg Palast, who like me is concerned about the phenomenal cost of nuke plant development, noticed an interesting bit of context and a familiar face.

DTE CEO Tony Earley was fielding questions from McCain about the facility.

Earley was familiar to Palast for his involvement with another, infamous nuclear plant — the Shoreham facility in New York.

Earley was CEO of the Long Island Lighting Co. during the time when it developed the Shoreham plant — the first completed nuclear plant to never produce electricity for ratepayers. It was shut down after a sustained protest campaign by people who saw it as environmentally dangerous, particularly in the wake of the accident at Three Mile Island.

A quick search of Lexis revealed that in 1988 a federal jury found Long Island Lighting (LILCO) guilty of racketeering for lying to state regulators about the Shoreham plant to get a rate increase.

The people of New York were forced to cover the costs of the mess with a series of utility rate hikes.

Nuclear power is central to McCain’s energy plan, and he’s recently called for the development of 45 new plants by 2030. DTE (NYSE:DTE) is vying to be among the developers of new plants with a new reactor at the Fermi generating complex.

Critics argue that nuclear power is an economic nightmare, and Palast writes that each of the last 49 plants built cost more than $2 billion. A February 1989 AP story reported that the Shoreham facility cost $5.4 billion to build, 70 times more than predicted.

This background is something to keep in mind as DTE pushes to build another subsidized nuke plant at the Fermi complex and the state of Michigan considers an energy bill package that would allow it to function as a monopoly.