This spring, Missouri lawmakers sparred over whether to build – and how to fund construction of – new nuclear power plants. The potential for new multi-billion dollar nuclear projects has reignited a 50-year-old debate.
There are many parallels between the 1970s and today. Then, after years of consistent and manageable growth, electricity demand spiked. Inflation was high and so were interest rates. Oil and gasoline prices accelerated due to global conflicts. Fast-forward to 2026, and these same factors are at play.
Victor McFarland teaches energy history at the University of Missouri and said the American government and industry responded 50 years ago by committing to boosting domestic energy production.
“That was the only period of substantial nuclear power plant construction in the United States,” McFarland said.
Now in 2026, energy demand is again projected to skyrocket — because of more artificial intelligence data centers, electric vehicles and growth in manufacturing — and government and industry are once again looking to nuclear power as an answer.
“I think we're facing some of the same choices right now,” McFarland said. “Do utilities engage in another big program of building out new electric plants to meet this anticipated electric demand?”
Voting on CWIP
To help utilities make investments in new power plants, last year the Missouri legislature passed what’s called construction work in progress, or CWIP. The law allows energy companies to bill customers for the cost of building new power plants before they’re operating and producing energy — which means the companies don’t have to take out high interest loans.
But in the 1970s, Missourians were frustrated over their utility bills going up and took to the ballot to ban CWIP.
“It burns me up that the legislature last year would just cavalierly toss out what we passed in 1976 by a 63% margin,” said Jeanette Mott Oxford, board president of the Consumers Council of Missouri, a consumer advocacy organization.
The 1976 CWIP ballot initiative was prompted by an activist named Alberta Slavin and the then recently formed group, Utility Consumers Council of Missouri — the predecessor to the modern Consumers Council of Missouri.
At the time, David Newburger was a young law professor in St. Louis. With a group of students, he wrote the language that became Proposition 1 on the ballot and eventually Missouri state law.
“We were going through a terrible inflation period and utility rates were rising all over the place, and so we were engaged with these clinic students in intervening on behalf of consumers in utility rate setting,” Newburger said.
Newburger said when it came to writing the words Missourians voted on, the concept was “remarkably simple” and read:
“Proposition No. 1- (Proposed by Initiative Petition) Prohibits charges for electricity based on cost on construction in progress upon any existing or new facility or based on cost associated with owning, operating, maintaining, or financing property of an electrical corporation before operational and used for service. Any such charge being made on the effective date of this law is permitted for 90 days after the effective date of the law.”
On Election Day in 1976, more than 1 million Missourians voted yes to implement a law banning CWIP, while more than 600,000 were in favor of keeping the investment strategy.
In 2025, the Missouri legislature adjusted the statute to allow electric utilities to deploy CWIP for gas-fueled power plants. Whether to use construction work in progress for nuclear plants was a subject of spirited debate in both the House and Senate this year.
Road to the ballot
There are two ways to get a statewide referendum on the ballot in Missouri: each body of the state legislature can pass a joint resolution to send it to voters, or citizens can gather signatures through a petition process overseen by the secretary of state — which is how a group called “Citizens for Reformed Electric Rates” put the matter up for a vote 50 years ago.
Missourians can petition to create a law, which can be adjusted by state lawmakers, or a constitutional amendment, which in theory cannot be changed.
For a proposed constitutional amendment to get on the ballot, petitions must be signed by 8% of legal voters in six of Missouri’s eight congressional districts.
Before chairing the board of the Consumers Council, Oxford, a Democrat, represented St. Louis in the Missouri legislature from 2005 to 2012. Now the group is asking the Missouri legislature to pass a resolution putting CWIP back on the ballot, but as a constitutional amendment this time.
“It became apparent that if you were going to pass anything, you had to do it as a constitutional amendment because the legislature would mess with it if you didn't,” Oxford said.
Two lawmakers, Sen. Tracy McCreery, D-Olivette, and Rep. Mark Boyko, D-Kirkwood, put forward such resolutions this spring that were not successful.
Consumers Council Attorney John Coffman thinks if Missourians got another chance to weigh in on the matter in a 2027 or 2028 election, the results would mimic 1976.
“We're very confident, if we can put it back on the ballot, that the voters will approve it by about the same margin,” Coffman said.
Does CWIP mean more power for growing demand?
Currently, the utility company Ameren operates the only commercial nuclear power plant in Missouri, the Callaway Energy Center, and the company has been clear about its desire to expand.
Rob Dixon is vice president of regulatory and legislative affairs for Ameren Missouri and said Missourians now have more consumer protections than they did in the 70s — including clawback measures if the costs of the projects were “imprudently incurred” or the plant is not complete in a reasonable amount of time, to be determined by state regulators.
“The discussion around CWIP today is quite a bit different than it was 50 years ago, and the law that was passed last year allows for significant improvements in it,” Dixon said.
Michael Sykuta is an energy economist at the University of Missouri and the director of the Center for Rural Energy Security. He said it’s difficult to pinpoint whether having a financing mechanism such as CWIP has a measurable impact on the amount of power a state produces.
“Anecdotally, there certainly is evidence,” he said.
Sykuta said about a decade ago Ameren proposed a second reactor at the Callaway County nuclear power plant. Those plans again kicked off a discussion about CWIP in the legislature.
“And because they didn't get the CWIP authority, they didn't build it,” Sykuta said. “So here we are 10 years later, about when that facility might have been coming online, and we are in a tremendous energy deficit.”
With an expensive, long-term investment such as nuclear power, Sykuta said customers can pay upfront or pay more later.
“The issue of paying later is, there's an interest expense that accumulates over that time and when you're talking about hundreds of millions or billion-dollar investments, that's a lot of interest,” he said.
Sykuta said without the aid of CWIP, chances of new nuclear power in Missouri decrease and increasing electricity demand will have to be met with other sources.
In 1976, the then president of Union Electric Charles J. Dougherty agreed that banning CWIP could stifle new nuclear development, according to reporting from St. Louis County Watchman Advocate.
“Passage of the Proposition certified recently by the Secretary of State for the November 2 general election would make it very difficult and more expensive to build new electric power plants in Missouri,” Dougherty said.
Dougherty said using construction work in progress is the most practical and economical method of financing new plants.
“In the long run, this will keep rate levels down, and will help assure Missourians of a sufficient supply of electric energy,” he said.
‘Involuntary Investors’
Construction on the Callaway nuclear power plant kicked off in 1975. Union Electric asked for CWIP authority for the plant that would operate from Fulton. Soon thereafter, the Missouri Public Service Commission approved the financing mechanism for the $1.5 billion project.
According to reporting from the St. Louis County Watchman Advocate, within the next year state utility regulators granted two other utilities the ability to charge customers in advance for capital investments.
While higher prices are rarely popular, McFarland said broader public sentiment about nuclear power itself was complicated.
“The fiercest opponents of nuclear power in the 1970s tended to be environmentalists and consumer advocates and antiwar activists who associated nuclear power with the military industrial complex and nuclear weapons,” McFarland said.
While Proposition 1 was being debated in Missouri, officials with Union Electric, the company that built the nuclear power plant in Callaway County, said opposition to CWIP was a facade for attacking nuclear power broadly.
Three years after Missourians passed Proposition 1 in 1976, one of the reactors at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island nuclear power plant had a partial meltdown, putting the surrounding community in contact with radiation.
The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission states the incident brought about “sweeping changes” to nuclear power regulation and operations and enhanced U.S. reactor safety. But the meltdown had a lasting impact on public perception.
“That made many Americans more skeptical of nuclear power,” McFarland said.
And some say it made nuclear power more expensive. Avery Frank published a report on nuclear energy policy for the Show-Me Institute, a conservative think tank, noting how beneficial new nuclear power could be for Missouri’s economy and workforce.
But Frank said strict federal regulation adopted after 1979, and public fear, are what has held new nuclear development back and made it more expensive.
“Costs were three times higher after Three Mile Island and the time to build a power plant was about two times longer,” Frank said. “At the same time you've had it become really expensive, the public hasn't been in favor of it until recently.”
Although the Show Me Institute is supportive of CWIP, Frank said some adjustments could be made.
“I think we should treat it more like a bond system,” he said. “If ratepayers are taking the risk upfront to help Evergy or Ameren pay for a new power plant, they should be compensated once it's completed.”
Utility Consumers Council of Missouri cofounder Alberta Slavin said 50 years ago that CWIP forced Missourians to become “involuntary investors.” In a proceeding before the Missouri Public Service Commission in 1976, Slavin also suggested issuing bonds instead, testifying:
“... the increase Union Electric is attempting to get in this particular case is geared to improve their earnings picture so that they are attractive to investors and they can go out and borrow to begin to undertake the massive expenditures in their planned ten-year construction program. And I’ve asked that the rate payer, if they’re going to finance the plant, be issued the same stocks and bonds that the investor be awarded.” — St. Louis Countian
Reporting from the St. Louis Countian newspaper notes that after Proposition 1 passed, Union Electric and other utilities operating in Missouri had to remove CWIP costs from customers’ bills and the company’s gross annual revenue went down.
Long-term planning for future energy need
Many of the nuclear facilities built decades ago are still operating and providing power to the grid. There are efforts to reopen nuclear power plants that have closed to help meet rapidly growing energy demand.
Large investor-owned utilities continually forecast electricity demand well into the future and, with oversight by state regulators, build power plants to meet that demand.
Ameren Missouri’s 20-year plan shows the company is making investments in wind, solar, gas, battery storage and nuclear power. The company plans to increase energy generation capacity by 50% in the next four years, largely in response to anticipated data center usage.
“We're making long-term decisions about infrastructure that's needed to serve customers today but also well into the future,” Dixon said.
Mizzou historian McFarland said that after a period of volatility in the early 1970s, energy demand leveled out, inflation and interest rates eventually shrank and oil and gas prices stabilized.
Because it can take a decade or more to build a nuclear power plant, a lot about the economy, policy, public sentiment and energy demand can change during that time.
“Callaway was originally planned as a two-unit project, but Callaway II was discontinued in 1981 due to slowing demand and rising borrowing costs at that time,” said Travis Hart, Ameren Missouri’s senior director of nuclear operations. “Proposition 1 changed the financing and cost-recovery environment in Missouri, which made it much more difficult to develop additional nuclear generation in the state.”
Amid the energy crisis of the 1970s, Missourians voted against paying upfront for nuclear power plants. Now, advocates want to know what voters would say given similar circumstances 50 years later.
