Supporters Wednesday predicted that lawmakers this session will debate a plan allowing a utility company to seek an early site permit from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and have consumers pay the application costs - if the company wins that permit.
Work on such a permit would determine if a second nuclear reactor could be built on the site near Reform of Ameren Missouri's 27-year-old Callaway 1 plant.
And the lawmakers' confidence came even though none of the three bills on the subject have been scheduled for floor debate.
"Time is always a problem," said Rep. Jeanie Riddle, R-Mokane, who sponsors the lone House bill. "We have a number of things that we're working on ... so that the powers-that-be will see (this) as the opportunity for us to move forward for our energy security (and) future economic development."
Freshman Sen. Mike Kehoe, R-Jefferson City, said: "I think there's a lot of conversations going on with senators, to make sure the leadership understands there are 20 co-sponsors on this bill."
Riddle said no one has promised that she will get debate time in the House.
But several weeks ago, Senate President Pro Tem Rob Mayer, R-Dexter, promised that an early site permit bill would be debated this year.
"I've talked with Sen. Kehoe about a provision dealing with the Office of Public Counsel funding," Mayer said Wednesday. "He gave me a proposal, and I'm reviewing that to see if it's a plausible way to go forward."
The OPC was created in the mid-1970s to represent "consumers" in rate cases being heard by the state's Public Service Commission, which regulates Missouri's investor-owned utilities.
How to pay for the Public Counsel's operations has been an ongoing issue for all of its nearly three dozen years existence - and now that funding "is the major hangup" to getting an early site permit bill through the General Assembly, Mayer said.
"I think there's time to get it passed," he said.
Kehoe's bill doesn't include OPC funding, and he supports Gov. Jay Nixon's budget proposal to shift some general revenue funds to pay for a stronger office.
But Sen. Jason Crowell, R-Cape Girardeau, argued three weeks ago that Nixon's plan has all Missouri taxpayers funding the office of an attorney who represents only the ratepayers of investor-owned utilities.
Crowell has introduced a bill that also addresses the early site permit issue, but requires the OPC to be funded by an extra assessment on utility bills.
He also is chairman of the Senate's Veterans' Affairs, Emerging Issues, Pensions and Urban Affairs Committee, where the two bills were the subject of a nearly seven-hour hearing March 9.
"We haven't met since the hearing," he said. "(I don't have) a plan (for another meeting) - I just kind of wing it."
The two groups lobbying lawmakers also differ on OPC funding.
Chris Roepe, executive director of the Fair Electric Rate Action Fund (FERAF) - a group of business and consumer groups - said Wednesday that the governor's plan,
supported by the other group, Missourians for a Balanced Energy Future, "doesn't get the Public Counsel funding to an adequate level to do their job (and) does not do anything into the future."
But Kim Carlos, who does public relations work for the MBEF, said Wednesday: "FERAF's proposal with regard to OPC is to create a new government tax on all utility customers ... to pay for the hiring of more government lawyers and others who will do work currently being done by FERAF's funders (including) big industrial corporations led by Noranda Aluminum and Anheuser Busch."
But it's not a tax, Roepe said, noting that the utilities that support the MBEF already charge consumers for their own attorneys in rate cases, because that's considered a cost of doing business.
MBEF on Tuesday released results from a poll it conducted last week, showing that - even after the nuclear disaster in Japan - 53 percent of Missourians continue to support the use of nuclear power, compared to only 29 percent who oppose it.
Kehoe said it's "obvious" that the Japanese crisis was caused by "an Act of God ... a 9.0 earthquake and a 30-foot wall of water 45 minutes later."
Still, he said, lawmakers understand the need to "learn from this" and improve nuclear plant designs.
"The unfortunate incidents that happened in Japan have not changed where we're going to be in 10 or 15 years for the need of energy," Kehoe said. "Some of our coal plants are aging, and we're still going to need energy in this state and in this country."
Riddle said: "We cannot stop progressing as a nation because of something that was catastrophic in another country."