Ron Pernick
CleanEdge.com

In early February, President Obama did something that his predecessor George W. Bush was unable to do: he pushed the restart button on the U.S. nuclear power industry. Obama announced the first loan guarantee to the nuclear industry in nearly three decades – a conditional guarantee of $8.2 billion for two proposed nuclear power plants in Georgia. In this single move, he may have jump-started the nuclear power industry in the U.S.

Or not.

The loans come with some strings attached – and Southern Company, the company behind the Georgia plants, may not accept those terms. Loans aside, the U.S. nuclear industry has a long history of cost overruns, production delays, and the inability to solve its most vexing problem: the issue of nuclear waste and containment. Until these issues are resolved, all the government money in the world may not be able to overcome public opposition and financial common sense.

So the question I’d like to ask the president is: why nuclear – and why now? If it’s a question of reducing carbon emissions, creating jobs, and ensuring U.S. energy and economic security, there are far better options. The DOE has reported on how the U.S. could get 20 percent of its electricity from the wind by 2030. Clean Edge, along with Green America, has outlined a pathway for America to get 10 percent of its electricity from solar by 2025. And a number of studies have shown that renewables and energy efficiency are far more effective at reducing carbon emissions than nuclear power.

Indeed, if you pair solar and wind up with other baseload-power-providing renewables such as geothermal and biomass; efficiency measures (green buildings, retrofits, and the like); limited natural gas in high-growth areas; and a smart grid –– then there’s no need to expand nuclear or coal. Just last month, for example, the Northwest Power and Conservation Council unveiled its 6th Power Plan for the Pacific Northwest. This well-respected and influential group, which shapes the power direction of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana, outlined how the entire region could meet its increased energy demand primarily through conservation and efficiency measures.

The current proposed crop of nuclear power just doesn’t make financial sense, either. That’s why Wall Street has taken a big pass on nuclear power for more than three decades. Without the government insuring nuclear power plants (no private insurer will touch them) –– and the feds backing them with taxpayer guarantees –– they just wouldn’t get built. Sure, solar and wind require subsidies as well – but not wholly-run government insurance and financing programs.

Obama’s 2011 budget, for example, increases the Department of Energy loan guarantee authority for nuclear projects by $36 billion, to a total of $54.5 billion. Renewables’ potential share pales in comparison. The budget provides around one tenth of that amount for solar, wind, and other renewables – with just $3 to $5 billion of loan guarantees for energy efficiency and renewable energy projects. To the budget’s credit, it also includes a 30 percent tax credit for qualified investments in new, expanded, or re-equipped advanced energy manufacturing projects, allocating $5 billion to provide this tax credit to energy manufacturing projects. But if all of the nuclear money is allocated, admittedly a big if, it would leave solar, wind, and energy efficiency far behind.

Nuclear power now costs around $6-$8 billion per installed gigawatt to construct — and 3-7 years to complete a power plant. Wind power, on the other hand, can be deployed far more rapidly (usually in a year or so) for far less money (around $1.5-$2 billion per gigawatt installed). And even solar is now getting competitive, with prices dropping nearly 50 percent in 2009 and with some systems being installed in the $3 billion per gigawatt price range.

Add in vexing nuclear containment and security issues (nuclear energy technology is basically a precursor to nuclear bombs), uranium mining pollution, and the fact that after decades of operation the nuclear power industry has still not figured out what to do with its radioactive waste –– it makes one wonder why the U.S. would want to reenter this game.

In a recent Facebook post, Energy Secretary Steven Chu makes the case that we need more nuclear power because solar and wind, as variable resources, can only provide up to 20-30 percent of our electricity supply without major advances in energy storage. But with all due respect to Dr. Chu, even if solar and wind tap out at 30 percent without advances in storage – that’s still a significant number (equal to more than what we currently get from nuclear power). And if we are going to spend tens of billions of dollars on nuclear power simply because of its baseload qualities – why not take that money and invest it in the next generation of energy storage (large scale and distributed) and smart grid deployment instead? I’d happily place a bet on which investment would make the U.S. more secure and competitive.

Looking at all the evidence above, it’s pretty clear that there’s nothing clean about the current crop of nuclear technology. So, let’s not muddy the waters. Until we see a new generation of nuclear power –– one that is modular, scalable, and finally addresses radioactive waste and containment issues –– let’s be honest about its considerable shortcomings. I understand that nuclear power will continue to play a role in the U.S. for some time to come – we live in a diverse energy world – but trying to revive nuclear power under the banner of "clean" is simple and utter madness.

———

Ron Pernick is cofounder and managing director of Clean Edge, Inc. and coauthor of The Clean Tech Revolution.

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Texas is already under assault from toxic mercury from coal burning power plants which spewed over 11,000 pounds into our air in 2007. Our children are at risk for permanent brain damage from mercury exposure and we rank worst in the nation for coal plant emissions.

Now the US Department of Energy (DOE) wants to dump on Texas and make us the national dumping ground for stored toxic mercury. It’s good to get the mercury out of circulation, but it could be stored at various sites, as opposed to all in one place. There are many viable sites that have military security and some already store mercury.

DOE wants to send up to 11,000 tons of toxic elemental mercury to the Waste Control Specialists (WCS) dump site near the Texas/New Mexico border in Andrews County Texas, DOE’s preferred site out of eight under consideration.

The WCS site is licensed to take hazardous waste. They already have highly radioactive "K-65" weapons waste from Fernald. They’re licensed to take over 59 million cubic feet of radioactive waste.

The March 20, 2010 Andrews County meeting began with a presentation by DOE’s David Levenstein. DOE relied on documents provided to them by Waste Control Specialists, as opposed to their own independent studies. They stated that there is no water under the site where the mercury would be stored. This completely flies in the face of documentation by former TCEQ employees who are concerned that groundwater is only 14 feet below the nearby trenches where radioactive waste would be stored. Mercury vapors could cause serious health impacts, including deaths. There is a risk of groundwater contamination. The Ogallala Aquifer underlies eight states in the wheat and soy growing region of the US.

Microbeads of mercury can condense on the storage canisters. 3 liter size flasks (76 pounds) would be used for the mercury in addition to 1000 pound containers.

The building would be made of sheet metal, which would probably not hold up well in a tornado. There have been 21 tornadoes in the past four decades. Mercury spewed across the region would be a disaster. Andrews County is 40% minority and 17% below poverty levels. How’s that for environmental justice?

WCS is owned by Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons, who was recently reported to be worth $3.9 billion. He wants Andrews County to provide $75 million for his radioactive waste dump. Maybe he could pull it out of his own pocket? Then again, the plan may be to strap the County with liability through the bond process and leasing buildings that the County would own. What happens if WCS goes broke later? Who pays for the clean up of hazardous waste, toxic mercury or radioactive waste if accidents or natural disasters occur?

Elemental mercury effects – This is what the EPA has to say…

Elemental (metallic) mercury primarily causes health effects when it is breathed as a vapor where it can be absorbed through the lungs. These exposures can occur when elemental mercury is spilled or products that contain elemental mercury break and expose mercury to the air, particularly in warm or poorly-ventilated indoor spaces. The first paragraph on this page lists the factors that determine the severity of the health effects from exposure to mercury. Symptoms include these: tremors; emotional changes (e.g., mood swings, irritability, nervousness, excessive shyness); insomnia; neuromuscular changes (such as weakness, muscle atrophy, twitching); headaches; disturbances in sensations; changes in nerve responses; performance deficits on tests of cognitive function. At higher exposures there may be kidney effects, respiratory failure and death. People concerned about their exposure to elemental mercury should consult their physician.

Additional information on the health effects of elemental mercury is available from the IRIS database at http://www.epa.gov/iris/subst/0370.htm.

Speak out Against Dumping Toxic Mercury on Texas!

Comments on the DOE mercury plan will be accepted until March 30, 2010.

March 30 is the deadline to comment on the Draft Long-Term Management and Storage of Elemental Mercury Environmental Impact Statement

Ways to comment include:

• Toll Free Fax: 1-877-274-5462
  Send a free fax letter now!

• Online at http://www.mercurystorageeis.com/comment.asp

• U.S. Mail:
  Mr. David Levenstein
  EIS Document Manager
  U.S. Department of Energy
  P.O. Box 2612
  Germantown, MD 20874

More Information:

• Major Aquifer map of Texas – Texas Water Development Board, September 1990. Note – We have marked the location of the WCS facility.

• Federal Register Environmental Impact Statement notice

• The Environmental Impact Statement is online at: http://www.mercurystorageeis.com/library.htm
  Both a summary and the full document are available.

Karen Hadden, Guest
Corpus Christi Caller-Times

CORPUS CHRISTI – Heavily subsidized by taxpayers and ratepayers, nuclear power is susceptible to delay, cost overruns and significant environmental risks. Investing billions into more nuclear power threatens to derail funding that would be better spent on energy efficiency and safer, cleaner renewable energy.

Moody’s advises investors that nuclear projects frequently lead to financial crunch and credit rating drops. The two South Texas Project reactors proposed for the existing Bay City site were supposed to lead the so-called "nuclear renaissance," but there has been strong citizen and legal opposition and the cost has already skyrocketed. Estimates now exceed $18 billion, three times original projections. No shovel has yet been turned and no license granted.

Maybe you remember the massive boondoggle when the South Texas nuclear reactors ran six times over budget, were eight years late coming online, and were plagued with mismanagement, construction problems and lawsuits. Think déjà vu.

South Texas Project partners NRG and San Antonio municipal utility CPS Energy have not seen eye to eye. For more than a year a buyer was sought for a portion of the increasingly expensive reactor project, but none surfaced.

When CPS hid a $4 billion cost increase from the public for half a year, the backlash led the company to court to clarify terms for pulling out of the project. A settlement agreement now halts further CPS nuclear investment and shrinks its original 50-50 reactor share by 85 percent. The lesson: Nuclear reactors are simply too risky and too costly.

The good news is that effective and affordable energy solutions are already in place, growing and improving. Wind is a huge success story for Texas. We now lead the nation in wind power. Last October, a record was hit when wind accounted for 25 percent of the state’s electric generation.

Texas is perfectly positioned to demonstrate similar leadership on the solar front. Solar technology is advancing and costs are plummeting. Stimulus funding will help. We have a huge opportunity to develop new clean energy industries and create local jobs – if we do things right.

For example, West Texas wind that comes in at night can be perfectly paired with solar energy generated during the day. Natural gas and energy storage can bridge the gaps between them. Preapproved transmission is helping new wind and solar projects move forward. Geothermal power systems can help heat and cool homes. And "smart grid" technology will lessen the need for clunky baseload plants – the outdated cement trucks of the energy world. It’s time for zippy and flexible energy vehicles that can ramp up or down quickly to meet changing demand.

Energy efficiency is reducing electric demand. New homes and businesses are being built to use less energy and save on electricity bills. New legislation has allowed for better financing of energy upgrades. Those who wisely make improvements will be free of ongoing debt should they decide to sell their home.

In the end, who will want expensive nuclear power when more affordable options are available? Industrial customers want short-term, flexible energy contracts, not long-term burdens.

Texas ratepayers are at huge financial risk if NRG continues down the nuclear path. Luminant also seeks to build two more reactors. Their reactor design for Comanche Peak has never been built anywhere in the world. It’s time to drop expensive and risky nuclear power. We should pursue affordable energy efficiency first and then tap the free power of Texas’ sun and wind.

Karen Hadden is the executive director of the Texas based Sustainable Energy & Economic Development (SEED) Coalition. She can be reached at (512) 797-8481. Copyright (C) 2010 by the Texas Lone Star Forum, Austin.

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By MATTHEW L. WALD
New York Times

MONTPELIER, Vt. – In an unusual state foray into nuclear regulation, the Vermont Senate voted 26 to 4 Wednesday to block a license extension for the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, citing radioactive leaks, misstatements in testimony by plant officials and other problems.

Unless the chamber reverses itself, it would be the first time in more than 20 years that the public or its representatives decided to close a reactor.

The vote came barely over a week after President Obama declared a new era of rebirth for the nation’s nuclear industry, announcing federal loan guarantees of $8.3 billion to assure the construction of a twin-reactor plant near Augusta, Ga.

Vermont Yankee’s recent troubles are viewed by some as a challenge to arguments that reactors are clean, well run and worth the enormous investment involved in building and operating them.

In a small, ornate chamber packed with plant opponents, the state lawmakers voiced frustration over recent leaks of radioactive tritium at the 38-year-old plant as well as the collapse of a cooling tower in 2007 and inaccurate testimony by the plant’s owner, the Louisiana-based nuclear operator Entergy. Plant officials had testified under oath that there were no underground pipes at Vermont Yankee that could leak tritium, although there were.

Experts tracking the leaks have found no evidence that the substance has entered the drinking supply or harmed a human being.

Lawmakers at Wednesday’s session also voiced doubts that Entergy would have enough money to decommission the plant in view of the costly tritium leak and other troubles.

"They’ve been their own worst enemy," said Robert Starr, a Democrat from the town of North Troy, although he proposed sending the bill for study to another committee. That vote failed 24 to 6.

In the decisive vote, senators defeated a resolution that would have authorized the state to issue a certificate of "public good," which would be necessary to keep Vermont Yankee operating.

Under Vermont law, any extension of the plant’s license beyond 2012 would have to be approved by both houses. So unless the Senate reverses itself and the House also approves an extension, the plant would have to close by March of that year.

The controversy in Vermont is viewed with deep apprehension and some anger by the nuclear industry. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Washington, which normally calls the shots on plant safety issues, has been poised to give the plant another 20 years. Commission officials have declined to comment on Vermont’s action. The last time a reactor in the United States was closed by a vote of the public or its representatives was in June 1989, when the voters of the Sacramento Municipal Utility District decided to shut the Rancho Seco reactor. The issues in that case were mostly economic; the plant kept breaking down, forcing the district to buy electricity from neighbors, and had been shut from December, 1985 to early 1988 for repairs.

Popular referendums to close reactors have been brought in several states but always failed. But several old reactors – including Maine Yankee, in Wiscasset, Me., Connecticut Yankee, in Haddam Neck, and Yankee Rowe, in Rowe, Mass., were closed by their owners because they had expensive safety problems and were not very profitable. The Yankee plants were of different designs but were owned by overlapping partnerships of New England utilities.

Commissioned in August 1966, and given its operating license in March 1972, Vermont Yankee is one of the older plants in the American inventory of 104 power reactors. The oldest still running is Oyster Creek, near Toms River, N.J., which is of a very similar design and opened in December, 1969.

It recently won a 20-year extension of its initial 40-year license although, to the indignation of its opponents, plant owners announced a few days after the renewal that it also was leaking tritium.

Although the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is supposed to have sole authority to regulate safety issues under a 56-year-old federal law that was intended to encourage the growth of civilian use of nuclear power, Entergy gave the state of Vermont a opening in 2004 when it bought the plant from a group of local utilities.

It agreed in a memorandum of understanding that the state’s "certificate of public good," a state-issued permit that all power plants must have, would expire with the original 40-year license and that another certificate would be required.

Then the plant went through a series of problems, including the collapse of the cooling tower in August 2007. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said the three-story wooden tower, one of several, was not required for the safe shutdown of the plant and that its collapse was not a safety failure, but the distinction did little to buff the plant’s image.

In a move that has also deepened unease, Entergy has been trying to spin off the reactor and five others, including the Indian Point reactors in New York, into a new company that would borrow money to pay back Entergy and sell stock on Wall Street. Many opponents in Vermont worry that this would allow Entergy, based in New Orleans, to avoid legal liability for any problems at the plants and that a spinoff could be detrimental to the state.

"It’s a dump job," said Nancy Braus of Putney, a plant opponent who watched the Senate action from a corner of the chamber. She pointed out that the estimates of the cost of decommissioning the plant run over $1 billion, roughly the amount of the entire annual state budget, and that Entergy has only about $450 million on hand.

The tritium leak is an especially sore point. While there is no evidence that it has entered the drinking water or given any human being a dose of radiation, legislators were dismayed that plant officials had testified that there were no underground pipes at Vermont Yankee that the substance could escape from.

Before Senate debate began Wednesday morning, Entergy said it had instructed a law firm to examine the misstatements under oath and had concluded that officials had not intended to deceive the state. It said that communications had "led to misunderstandings" and had been taken out of context. The result, the company said, was that "the responses were incomplete and misleading."

Curt Hebert, a spokesman for the company, said Entergy had put five senior employees on administrative leave and that "all the discipline taken had financial consequences for the employees involved."

Mr. Hebert acknowledged in an interview that the leaks, the cooling tower collapse and other problems had been "almost a perfect storm" for the plant.

Adding to the uncertainty, all the members of Vermont’s Senate and House face re-election in the fall, and there will be a new governor next year as well.

Some plant supporters have raised the possibility of a lawsuit should the two houses decline to extend Vermont Yankee’s operating license next year.

But Christopher M. Kilian, director of the Vermont office of the Conservation Law Foundation, said that because of the structure of the law, requiring affirmative action of both houses for the plant to stay open, a suit would face difficult hurdles.

"There will not be an act of the legislature for anyone to challenge," he said.

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By Cassandra Sweet
Wall Street Journal

A nuclear-power venture owned by NRG Energy Inc., Toshiba Corp. and a Texas utility resolved a legal dispute Wednesday that allows one of the first new U.S. nuclear-power projects in decades to proceed.

The agreement, between the joint venture, Nuclear Innovation North America, and San Antonio municipal utility CPS Energy, reduces the utility’s stake in the south Texas nuclear power project to 7.6%, from 50%, with the joint venture retaining 92.4%, according to CPS and NRG.

The agreement ends a $32 billion lawsuit that CPS filed in December to reduce its participation in the project, and allows development of the plant to proceed, the companies said.

The project is part of a wave of new nuclear power plant development for which the Obama administration has expressed support as a way to fight climate change and meet growing U.S. energy demand. Unlike power plants that run on fossil fuels like coal and natural gas, nuclear power plants don’t produce significant greenhouse-gas emissions that have been blamed for contributing to climate change.

"With this agreement, we can continue developing one of the leading nuclear power projects in the country," said NINA Chief Executive Steve Winn.

The agreement also resolves ownership issues that might have held up an application the companies filed for federal loan guarantees, said NRG spokesman Dave Knox. If the companies get the federal loan guarantees, NINA, which is 88%-owned by NRG and 12%-owned by Toshiba, has agreed to pay CPS $80 million and donate $10 million over four years to its residential customer assistance program.

CPS said its remaining stake in the project is worth about $1 billion. The agreement requires CPS to help with the project’s loan guarantee application, but excuses the utility from spending more money on the project. The utility has said it has spent about $370 million on the project’s engineering and permitting.

"This agreement extracts the maximum value for our community at this stage of the project’s development," CPS Acting General Manager Jelynne LeBlanc Burley said in a statement.

The settlement requires approval by the CPS board, which could make a decision as early as Monday.

The project, estimated to cost between $9 billion and $12 billion, would add two new nuclear power units to an existing nuclear reactor, expanding the facility by 2,700 megawatts, enough power for more than 2 million homes.

CPS sued NINA in December, alleging that NRG misled the utility on project costs and saying it might withdraw. In January, after initial negotiations failed, NRG Energy Chief Executive David Crane said the company would exit the project and suffer a $400 million write-off if the dispute couldn’t be resolved.

The two sides agreed before the dispute to each sell a 10% stake in the project, but uncertainty around CPS’s involvement has stymied these efforts. Tokyo Electric Power Co. said last month it’s considering purchasing a stake in the project and remains interested.

–Mark Peters contributed to this article.
Write to Cassandra Sweet at cassandra.sweet(at)dowjones.com

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