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October 30, 2011

Politico

Texas Gov. Rick Perry acknowledged Sunday that he has changed his position on federal loans to energy companies.

"Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace pressed the Republican presidential candidate on a 2008 letter he wrote to the energy secretary, seeking federal support of a nuclear power generating facility in Texas.

"From a general standpoint, any type of federal dollars flowing into these industries we think is bad public policy, whether it’s the ethanol side, whether it’s nuclear power side, whether it’s oil and gas side," Perry said.

"Let me just tell you: I’ve changed my position from the standpoint of having any desire to have the federal government," he said. "I’ve learned some things over the course of the years, and what I’ve learned is the federal government, by and large, you keep ‘em out of these issues, particularly on the energy side."

"Let the market figure it out," he added. "Are you going to have the federal government making some impact on the nuclear energy side from the standpoint of research and development or having places to be able to deal with these spent fuels and reprocess them? Yes. But giving straight up money to energy? Do away with it."

October 17, 2011

Andrei Ozharovsky
Translated by Maria Kaminskaya
Bellona

A court in Tokyo has ruled Japan’s Hitachi liable for over $1 billion in damages resulting from an accident, and subsequent loss of profit, at Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant’s (NPP) Hitachi-made ABWR reactor. Boiling reactors, to which the ABWR series belongs, have earned their share of infamy with Chernobyl’s explosion and the disaster at Fukushima– but they have also proven challenging both in operation and repairs. Still, Hitachi continues to promote ABWRs for export construction, including in Lithuania, where it hopes to build a new station to replace the shut-down Ignalina

Over a billion dollars for forced downtime

On October 6, 2011, the District Court of Tokyo issued a verdict that wrapped up a three-year-long litigation over the protracted repairs and resulting outage following an accident at Reactor Unit 5 of Japan’s Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant, in Omaezaki city, Shizuoka Prefecture.

The court ruled the Japanese electronics and heavy industry giant Hitachi, which manufactured the turbine used at the plant, liable for paying Hamaoka’s operator entity, Chubu Electric Power Company, JPY 90 billion (or $1.17 billion) in compensation for the loss of profit that resulted from the downtime.

Because of problems with the Hitachi-made steam turbine, the reactor at Hamaoka remained in repairs for nearly eight months, since June 2006 to February 2007. The operator company brought a lawsuit in 2008 and the Tokyo District Court has now ruled in its favour.

Even though the steam turbine has been repaired, the plant will likely be completely decommissioned. Last May, according to a story by the BBC, Japan’s Prime Minister Naoto Kan asked Chubu to halt operations at the plant for fears of a repeat disaster of the Fukushima scenario. Extreme efforts to bring under control the nuclear and radiation catastrophe at Fukushima – which last March had been hit by the dual force of an earthquake and an estimated 15-metre tsunami wave, knocking that plant’s power supply and leading to multiple meltdowns and massive releases of radiation – had still been in progress at the time, and are ongoing now.

Hamaoka, located 200 kilometres southwest of Tokyo, is, too, in a seismic-prone area. According to an article by Bloomberg from last May, Kan "[cited] a government study that showed an 87-percent likelihood of a magnitude-8 quake striking the area within 30 years." Chubu Electric agreed to shut Hamaoka’s reactors down.

In Russia, equipment failures at nuclear power plants are not so infrequent and also lead to losses incurred to the operator company. The Russian Federal Service for Ecological, Industrial, and Atomic Supervision, or Rostekhnadzor, says the many disturbances or violations it registers in its yearly reports as occurrences disrupting the operation of Russian NPPs are the result of "such underlying causes as mismanagement, flaws in maintenance organisation, manufacturing defects, and design defects."

Each time a reactor undergoes unplanned repairs owing to an electrical or other equipment failure that results in an emergency shutdown, the nuclear power plant necessarily undersupplies electric power to consumers. Still, lawsuits such as the one heard in Tokyo are unlikely to happen in Russia since the entire industry – from the equipment suppliers to the NPP construction companies to the operator company – remains within the corporate umbrella of the State Nuclear Corporation Rosatom, with all potential disputes settled internally. Because the state is the corporation’s shareholder, all financial losses and costs incurred by emergency repairs are covered with funds provided from the federal budget.

The accident with the turbine

Reactor Unit 5 at Hamaoka was commissioned in January 2005 and was the only one running a reactor of the ABWR type, which stands for Advanced Boiling Water Reactor, a Generation III boiling water reactor (BWR). The other four units at the plant operated BWRs.

The design, certified in 1997 by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, was developed by GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy, an alliance between General Electric and Hitachi. The plant is designed to produce electricity from a turbine generator unit using steam generated in the reactor, says a design description on the International Atomic Energy Agency website.

The accident at Unit 5 happened just eighteen months after the reactor launch. Reports say that in June 2006, turbulence occurred in the stream of radioactive steam flowing from the reactor into the turbine. That, combined with a high-velocity backflow of steam, caused strong vibrations in the turbine.

Of the 840 turbine blades, 622 were damaged as a result. Cracks appeared both in the blades and where they were joined to the turbine rotor. The accident also caused one of the blades to lose a fragment, which led to even more extensive damage.

The single 1,380-megawatt turbine used at the unit proved challenging to repair both on account of the scope of the damage incurred and because of the peculiarities of the ABWR design.

The ABWR is a single-loop reactor. Water is taken to a boil in the reactor vessel and the generated steam flows into the turbine to spin its blades and produce electric power. This approach – which replaced a two-loop system with a steam generator – was opted for in order to simplify the design and cut on operation costs.

In practical experience, however, boiling reactors proved difficult to repair. In a two-loop design, radioactive substances do not reach the turbine and it remains uncontaminated, so should it need repairs, no additional challenge is there to complicate the works.

However, nuclear power plants that use boiling reactors such as the Soviet-designed RBMK series (of which the RBMK-1000 model was used at Ukraine’s Chernobyl, and three Russian nuclear power plants continue to operate the same design) and the US-Japanese BWRs and ABWRs have to contend with turbines that get contaminated with radionuclides in the course of operation.

Special precaution is thus called for when repairing the turbine following a malfunction. Furthermore, the repair itself cannot be started immediately after an accident as a waiting period is needed until radioactivity levels, caused by the short-lived radionuclides in the steam, subside sufficiently to ensure safety.

Exploding reactors and imploding profits

Boiling reactors have not exactly shown a stellar record. It was a graphite-moderated boiling reactor, of the RBMK-1000 model, that exploded in Chernobyl in 1986.

And at Fukushima, even though it was the fatal loss of cooling at the plant, caused by the natural disaster, that was to propel the accident to catastrophic levels, the General Electric Mark I boiling-water reactors were not completely without blame either: The reactors shut down duly when the earthquake hit, but, said several engineers involved with the design of the Mark I model in interviews following the disaster, the reactors’ containment vessels were too small to insure against dramatic build-ups of hydrogen, which led to explosions at Units 1, 2, and 3 at the plant and subsequent damage to the reactor vessels.

Hydrogen venting systems on the reactors also failed, and had to be opened manually, causing critical delays that led up to the hydrogen pressure explosions.

Three engineers with GE who had reviewed the Mark I design in 1975 resigned over these flaws when the company insisted on bringing the reactor to market.

Reactors of the ABWR series have been online since 1996, but their reliability record is not the most reassuring. At some, over 50 percent of overall operation time is spent in outage, repairs, or maintenance. That necessarily affects the bottom line.

For example, in the entire period that Unit 5 was in operation at Hamaoka, it was only producing electricity 46.7 percent of the time.

At Shika, a nuclear power plant in the town of Shika, Ishikawa, where a Hitachi-made ABWR has been in operation at Unit 2 since being commissioned in March 2006, that figure is 47.1 percent.

With a $1 billion blow to its pocket, Hitachi tries peddling its reactors in Lithuania

Hitachi continues its efforts to export the ABWRs, a brainchild of the 1990s, abroad.

One market it has been viewing for export reactor construction is the former Soviet republic of Lithuania, where the old, USSR-built Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant in the town of Visaginas was shut down to comply with the European Union’s membership requirements.

But ever since closing down the old station, which operated two Soviet RBMK-1500 models, Vilnius has been searching for an investor to replace the defunct capacity with a new plant.

Throughout 2009, Lithuania was seen pursuing negotiations over the new nuclear power plant project in Visaginas, with Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius indicating in June that year that a new nuclear reactor serving all three Baltic states – Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia – as well as Poland, could be completed by 2018.

In May 2009, AFP reported that Canada was pitching a CANDU reactor to Lithuania. By then Lithuania’s government had already talked with such reactor manufacturers as the French Areva, Spanish Endesa, General Electric-Hitachi and Westinghouse from the US, the British Nukem, and Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

With many factors complicating Lithuania’s new nuclear push – such as, for one, the rival efforts from Belarus, which is bent on building a nuclear power plant in its Ostrovets, close to the Lithuanian border, or from Russia’s Rosatom, with its own project in the Russian westernmost enclave of Kaliningrad, also on the border with Lithuania – the search for an investor and construction partner has not been easy.

But recently, Lithuania announced it found one in Hitachi.

Having apparently hitched his political future to the nuclear wagon, Premier Kubilius now seems willing to give the reins to a reactor construction project to a company that is now grappling with a $1 billion liability payment for a faulty turbine in Japan.

Media reports cite Kubilius as saying that concession agreements on the construction of the new NPP in Visaginas could be reached before the end of the year.

Hitachi is understandably interested in pushing a reactor on a less than favourable post-Fukushima market. New contracts are hard to come by, and previously signed deals are under threat of being called off by the increasingly reluctant customers. As an example, the deal for an ABWR reactor pitched for the South Texas Project in the US fell through in March 2011.

There are also rumours that some of the equipment Hitachi has already manufactured to deploy at that site will now be sent to Lithuania.

Meanwhile, the public may not be all too happy about the prospects of Hitachi coming to Lithuania with a new reactor. Ecological organisations continue to protest both the new project in Visaginas and those pushed for by Russia and Belarus.

Fearing that the three new stations will ensnare the region into a dangerous nuclear noose, environmentalists are collecting signatures calling for a nuclear-free status, and a parliamentary commission in Vilnius has also been gathered to look into the issue of whether the decision to build a new plant in Lithuania has sufficient merit to proceed with the plans.

Media Release:
For Immediate Release

October 1, 2011

Contact:
Karen Hadden, SEED Coalition 512-797-8481
Brett Jarmer and Robert V. Eye, Attorneys, 785-234-4040
Susan Dancer, South Texas Association for Responsible Energy, 979-479-0627

Austin, Texas Opponents of two proposed South Texas Project nuclear reactors received a favorable order from Atomic Safety and Licensing Board judges allowing a full hearing to proceed regarding the project’s foreign ownership. Licensing efforts may be impacted as a result. In April, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission told Unistar Nuclear Energy it could not get an operating license for its planned reactor at Calvert Cliffs in Maryland because it was fully owned by France’s Électricité de France (EDF)-a foreign entity.

"Federal law is clear that foreign controlled corporations are not eligible to apply for a license to build and operate nuclear power plants. The evidence is that Toshiba is in control of the project and this precludes obtaining an NRC license for South Texas Project 3 & 4," said Brett Jarmer, a lawyer for the Intervenors; SEED Coalition, Public Citizen and South Texas Association for Responsible Energy.

"Foreign investment in U.S nuclear projects is not per se prohibited; but Toshiba is paying all the bills for the STP 3 & 4 project. This makes it difficult to accept that Toshiba doesn’t control the project," said attorney Robert Eye.

"National security and safety concerns justify NRC’s limits on foreign ownership and control of nuclear reactors," said Karen Hadden, Director of the Sustainable Energy and Economic Development (SEED) Coalition. "What if a foreign company runs a U.S. reactor carelessly? What if a nation that’s friendly today becomes hostile toward the US in the future and tries threaten us with our own reactors?"

"Even if the reactors are operated by the South Texas Nuclear Operating Company, they will get their orders from foreign owners. What if their concerns are more about cost-cutting and less about safety?" asked Susan Dancer, President of South Texas Association for Responsible Energy. "Japanese investors would have us believe that they can come to America and safely build, own and operate nuclear plants, and that we should not concern ourselves with passé laws and regulations, but the Fukushima disaster has demonstrated the flawed Japanese model of nuclear safety. Our nuclear reactors should be controlled by the people most concerned about our country: fellow Americans."

September 30, 2011

Atomic Safety and Licensing Board order – allowing a full hearing on the foreign ownership of South Texas Project reactors

• Read Foreign Control Release and related ASLB Order

Saturday, Sept. 24, 2011

By Rob Pavey, Staff Writer
Agusta Chronicle

Those deliberations – which begin Tuesday – are the latest in a series of firsts for an expansion that could bring 3,500 construction jobs to Georgia.

Nuclear Regulatory Comm­ission Chairman Gregory Jaczko noted that the Vogtle application is the first to reach the final steps toward obtaining the first "combined operating license" that would allow both the construction and operation of new reactors.

"This mandatory hearing on the first COL application represents a critical step in the NRC’s license review process," he said.

The $14.8 billion Vogtle project, if licensed, would also have the first new commercial power reactors to be built in the U.S. in a generation – and would be the first project in the nation to utilize the new AP1000 modular reactor design created by Westingthouse.

"I look forward to working with my colleagues as we approach this significant assignment of delving into the adequacy of the NRC staff’s review of this application," Jaczko said of the hearing, which will include presentations from Southern Nuclear experts and NRC staff members.

Although testimony will be Tuesday and possibly Wednesday, the commission will not rule on the request this week, said Scott Burnell, an NRC headquarters spokesman.

"This is more information gathering and discussion," he said. "The authority to issue the license lies with the director of the NRC Office of New Reactors, and he would be able to make a final decision once the commission issues its findings."

Southern Nuclear has passed most major milestones in the licensing process – such as safety and environmental reviews – but cannot receive a combined operating license until the NRC formally agrees to certify the design of the AP1000 reactors.

Although the NRC has indicated it will recommend certification for the design, that final step has not yet occurred. "The staff expects to give the commission that proposed final rule in the near future, but we don’t have a specific date."

The AP1000 has been praised for its passive cooling system in which water stored above the reactor can flow into the unit by gravity, and without electricity or pumps. The first such units in the world are already under construction in China, where four new units are being added to existing nuclear plants.

If the certification rule is approved late this year, it could allow a decision on the Vogtle license early next year, Burnell said.

Southern Nuclear officials, meanwhile, are optimistic that all those issues could be resolved earlier.

"We still believe we will receive the COL around the end of the year," company spokesman Steve Higginbottom said. "We can see the finish line."

Some work is already under way at the Burke County site, as allowed under a federal Early Site Permit that enabled site preparation to begin before a formal license is granted. Those efforts will help the construction of Units 3 and 4 move along faster, with a current schedule that calls for bringing the new units online in 2016 and 2017.

One other first for the Vogtle project involves Southern Nuclear’s acquisition of the first-ever federal loan guarantee announced by the Obama Administration in February 2010.

The agreement, for which final terms remain under negotiation, will allow up to $8.33 billion in financing for the project. One of the conditions of receiving that financial commitment is the final approval for the combined operating license.

Although the NRC’s scrutiny this week of the Vogtle application is the first, another nearby project isn’t far behind.

SCANA Corp. is planning two new reactors at its V.C. Summer Nuclear Plant in South Carolina, and is scheduled to go before the NRC to discuss its final license request Oct. 11-12, Burnell said.

Last week, Moody’s Investors Service downgraded the ratings of SCANA Corp., citing, among other reasons, "the heightened risk associated with a large nuclear construction program extending through 2019 that is expected to be about 50 percent debt financed and will pressure future financial metrics."

Higginbottom said there have been no downgrades of Southern Co. ratings related specifically to nuclear.

"We don’t believe the SCANA downgrade will have any impact on us," he said. "Moody’s downgrade of SCANA was primarily a result of the size of the project to the size of the company."

Southern Nuclear, owned by Southern Co., operates the plant for its co-owners, including Georgia Power Co., which owns 45.7 percent of Vogtle. The remaining ownership is split among Oglethorpe Power Corp., the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia and Dalton Utilities.