Author Archive

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Ashley Furness
Austin Business Journal

NRG Energy Inc. has pulled funding to expand a massive nuclear plant in South Texas, officials announced on Tuesday citing events from Japan’s recent tsunami and earthquakes.

A press release said recent nuclear meltdown threats in Japan have “diminished prospects for the South Texas Project nuclear development,” and the company will write down its investment in the Texas project. The move comes just after affiliate Nuclear Innovation North America LLC (NINA) made a similar announcement, and just a few months since NRG began courting Austin Energy to start buying new nuclear power.

"The tragic nuclear incident in Japan has introduced multiple uncertainties around new nuclear development in the United States which have had the effect of dramatically reducing the probability that STP 3&4 can be successfully developed in a timely fashion," NRG President and CEO David Crane said.

NINA is jointly owned by NRG and Toshiba American Nuclear Energy Corp., and was leading development of the two, 1,350-megawatt nuclear reactors at the South Texas Project near Bay City. The companies said while they will not spend any more on the project right now, they will cooperate with partners wanting to continue work.

The decision will cost NRG and Toshiba about $481 million for all of NINA’s net assets. The expansion was slated to cost between $10 billion and $13 billion.

CPS Energy was also a partner. Officials released in March a statement that San Antonio’s municipally owned utility decided to suspend discussions indefinitely with NRG Energy, regarding buying additional supplies of nuclear power from the South Texas Project. CPS Energy owns a 40 percent interest in South Texas Project and a 7.625 percent minority ownership in two units that have yet to be constructed.

April 18, 2011

David Crane, CEO of NRG Energy, Inc.
211 Carnegie Center
Princeton, NJ 08540-6213

Phone: 609-524-4500
Fax: 609-524-4501

Re: Proposed South Texas Project Reactors 3 & 4, Relicensing of Reactors 1 & 2

Dear Mr. Crane and NRG Energy Board of Directors:

In light of the ongoing nuclear crisis in Japan, rising awareness of safety concerns, increasing costs for proposed reactors, potential design change requirements, an investor gap and regulatory and economic uncertainty, we respectfully urge NRG to formally withdraw its Combined Operating License application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for proposed South Texas Project reactors 3 & 4. We ask that you withdraw the related DOE federal loan guarantee application as well.

Existing South Texas Project reactors (1 & 2) are set to retire in 2027 and 2028, but NRG’s relicensing application seeks to add another twenty years of operation for both units. Safety risks increase as reactors age and we urge you to withdraw the relicensing application for Units 1 & 2 and seek to replace the power generated by safer, cleaner energy technologies. We encourage you to pursue Texas projects like your Agua Caliente solar facility that will soon generate 290 MW of power in Arizona.

In an April 13th Reuters article you were quoted as having told the Gulf Coast Power Association that "the project’s odds of success have dropped substantially" and that "TEPCO’s mounting financial problems in the wake of the Fukushima crisis leave the STP expansion with a huge potential gap in ownership." Austin Energy does not appear to be interested in purchasing power from the proposed reactors. CPS Energy does not appear to be interested in investing further or pursuing a power purchase agreement. We question whether there are any investors capable of filling the financing gap.

As you stated in a March Reuters interview, "The economics related to the capital budget are right on the edge of viability." In light of these concerns, why continue to pursue licensing and loan guarantees? When NRG and Toshiba announced minimizing NINA spending towards new reactors, NRG stock value increased. Fully withdrawing from project licensing and the pursuit of loan guarantees could be of financial benefit to NRG.

No doubt you are aware that our organizations, along with the South Texas Association for Responsible Energy, continue to legally contest reactor 3 & 4 licensing. As intervenors we have raised many crucial safety issues, and have anticipated a hearing in August by the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel regarding risks of co-locating multiple reactor units at the site. There is no indication that STP reactors 1 – 4 could adequately deal with fires and explosions and simultaneously maintain core cooling, containment and spent fuel cooling. An April 15, 2011 NRC order extends time for Commission review of Staff’s petition regarding the contention.

We intend to continue pursuing our contention regarding fires and explosions, which is presently before the Commission in a petition for review in the Comanche Peak case. In that case, the Commission issued a March 29, 2011 order indefinitely suspending its timeline for review. Again, we interpret this as indicative of the Commission’s interest in the fires and explosions contention, especially in light of the Fukushima disaster. If the Nuclear Regulatory Commission does grant the STP 3 & 4 reactor license, we intend to continue our legal fight and appeal to federal court.

Additional concerns regarding expansion of South Texas Project include the following:

• The proposed nuclear reactors would consume vast quantities of increasingly precious water, in a time when drought is expected to increase in Texas. Reactors 3 & 4 would use
  23,000 gallons of water every minute, which equates to filling a backyard swimming pool every single minute of every day – 1440 swimming pools a day. The two existing reactors have used up to 49% of the flow of the Colorado River. With projections of increasing drought and in a time of raging wildfires in Texas, it is questionable as to whether there will be enough water to supply nuclear reactors and the many other users that need it. It is also questionable as to whether the water we do have will be cool enough to adequately cool the reactors. Brown’s Ferry in Tennessee has had to shut down in the recent past because the river water was too hot.

• The operating history of the Advanced Boiling Water Reactor (ABWR) design has not been stellar. The few ABWR’s that exist in Japan have had significant technical problems. All seven reactors at the Kashiwazaki Kariwa site, including two ABWR’s, had to be shut down in 2002 when deliberate falsification of safety data was discovered. A major earthquake in July of 2007 caused the two ABWR reactors to remain shut down for an extended length of time. Radioactive water reached the Sea of Japan and the two reactors didn’t come back online until 2009.

• Radioactive waste remains a problem that has not been solved, so the time has come to stop generating more or it. After decades of trying, the U.S. still has no disposal site for the highly radioactive spent fuel rods from nuclear reactors, the "high-level" waste. Reactor containment vessels and other reactor wastes that remain radioactive for up to millions of years have been deemed "low-level" waste. These radioactive materials would be shipped on our highways and rails to a West Texas site that was approved despite the fact that all eight TCEQ staff members who reviewed the license unanimously recommended denying it. They raised concerns about water contamination since they believe the site will not adequately isolate the radioactive waste from water and they stated that the license did not meet legal requirements.

• There is not a good market for nuclear power. New nuclear reactors would produce energy at far higher costs than the market price of power in Texas, an unwise investment. Potomac Economics recently reported to Texas’ main grid operator, ERCOT, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, in a State of the Market report that "Estimated net revenues for nuclear and coal resources were insufficient to support new market entry in 2009." This trend is continuing in 2010 because natural gas prices and wholesale market prices
  remain very low.

We look forward to working with you on projects in Texas that we can and will support, such as solar, wind or energy efficiency projects. We would greatly appreciate hearing that NRG has decided to withdraw its combined operating license application (COLA) for STP 3 & 4 and request for federal loan guarantees, as well as the re-licensing application for STP 1 & 2. Thank you and please reply to our request in writing.

Sincerely,

Karen Hadden
SEED Coalition
1303 San Antonio St., #100
Austin, Texas 78701
512-797-8481

Tom "Smitty" Smith
Public Citizen
1303 San Antonio St.
Austin, Texas 78701
512-477-1155

Susan Dancer
South Texas Association for Responsible Energy
PO Box 209
Blessing, Texas 77419

Robert Singleton
Solar Si Nuclear No
2048 W. Stassney, #234
Austin, Texas 78745

Cindy Weehler
Energia Mia
2411 W. Magnolia
San Antonio, Texas 78727

Robin Schneider
Texas Campaign for the Environment
611 S. Congress Avenue, #200
Austin, Texas 78704

Amanda Haas
Esperanza Peace and Justice Center
922 San Pedro
San Antonio, TX 78212

Diana Lopez
The Southwest Workers’ Union
P.O. Box 830706
San Antonio, TX 78283

Cyrus Reed
Lone Star Chapter Sierra Club
1202 San Antonio
Austin, Texas 78701

Russell Seal
Consumers’ Energy Coalition
202 E. Park Avenue
San Antonio, Texas 78212

Peggy Day
Alamo Group of the Lone Star Chapter Sierra Club
P.O. Box 6443
San Antonio, Texas 78209

Apr. 19, 2011

By Katie Fehrenbacher
GigaOm

When I last chatted with NRG Energy CEO David Crane, he explained to me how the nuclear disaster in Japan had created an environment of uncertainty for U.S. nuclear projects, and specifically for the expansion of NRG’s own South Texas nuclear plant. That’s partly because Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the beleaguered utility that owns the damaged nuclear plants in Japan, was supposed to be an investor in NRG’s nuclear project. Well, this afternoon in a note to investors, NRG Energy says it will be providing no more money for the development of the South Texas Project units 3&4, and will be recording a first quarter 2011 pretax charge of about $481 million.

Ouch. NRG said in a statement that given the "diminished prospects" of the South Texas nuclear project it "will not invest additional capital in the STP development effort." At the same time, NRG said it would fully support any of its current or future partners if they want to continue to develop STP 3&4 units. (Crane will be speaking at our Green:Net 2011 event this Thursday April 21, in San Francisco).

The design work for the project had already essentially been halted, as NRG Energy waited for a review of the industry by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in the wake of the incident at the Fukushima reactors in Japan. The NRC is reviewing all nuclear projects built and under construction in the U.S. to see if there could be any lessons learned from the Japanese nuclear incident. Nuclear industry executives fear the NRC review process will be very lengthy and will paralyze any new nuclear projects in the pipeline, which was what happened in the aftermath of the nuclear incident at Three Mile Island in 1979. Crane told me last month that he hoped a NRC review process wouldn’t last any longer than 3 months.

CPS Energy, which had been in discussions to purchase the nuclear power from NRG’s expanded plants, had already suspended its talks to buy the power. CPS also owns over 7 percent in the expansion project.

The U.S. hasn’t built any new nuclear reactors in decades, thanks to fears after Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. The short-term costs of nuclear construction after the Japanese nuclear disaster is expected to soar in the short term, and development of new nuclear technologies from some startups could be stalled as well. Nuclear technology has also crept along because of the low price of natural gas.

NRG’s decision to cut its losses so to speak, is an even greater indication that the Japanese nuclear disaster has set back development of nuclear power in the U.S. by many years. Other countries, like Germany, are moving even more swiftly to halt the construction of nuclear plants.

NRG will be holding a conference call later today to provide more details on its decision.

April 15, 2011

By Gang Phan
International Business Times

TEPCO may pay I million yen ($11988) to each household within 30 kilometers of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Japan’s industry minister Banri Kaieda said on Friday.

About 48,000 households are with in the radius.

Kaieda said the company is expected to begin handing out the provisional damages payments as early as this month.

The details is in a provisional compensation package for residents affected by the crisis of the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

TEPCO will hold a press conference on this issue from 1 p.m. local time today, said Masataka Shimizu, president of the TEPCO.

Environment News Service

TOKYO, Japan, April 8, 2011 (ENS) – Four people have died and more than 100 were injured in the 7.1 magnitude earthquake that rocked the northeast coast of Japan’s Honshu island on Thursday, the second quake stronger than 7.0 to hit the area in less than a month.

Many buildings were damaged and over 3.6 million households are without electric power.

Thursday’s quake did not change the status of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, crippled in the March 11 earthquake, but it caused a power supply interruption to a different nuclear plant and a uranium enrichment facility.

Power was lost on two of three lines supplying off-site power to the Onagawa nuclear power site on the Pacific Ocean about 120 kilometers (75 miles) north of the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

Water leaked out of spent fuel pools at Onagawa but there was no change in the radiation levels outside the plant, operator Tohoku Electric Power Co said on Friday.

"Cooling of the spent fuel pool was temporarily lost, but has subsequently been restored," reported the International Atomic Energy Agency, adding that no change was observed in the readings from the on-site radiation monitoring post.

During Thursday’s earthquake, water sloshed out of spent fuel pools at three of the Onagawa plant’s reactors, which have been in cold shutdown mode since the 9.0 magnitude quake on March 11. The most water spilled was 3.8 liters, Tohoku reported.

Radioactive water also leaked in three other locations in Onagawa’s Unit 3 reactor complex.

The March 11 earthquake damaged the turbines in the Unit 3 reactor at Onagawa after a fire broke out. On March 13, Tohoku Electric declared a brief emergency at the site when radiation levels spiked, but within hours the IAEA announced that radiation levels had returned to normal background levels.

One of the crippled external power supplies at Onagawa was restored on Friday morning, Tohoku said.

The Japan nuclear safety agency confirmed that the earthquake Thursday caused Rokkasho reprocessing plant and uranium enrichment facility in Aomori Prefecture to lose off-site power, but emergency power supply kicked in and the facilities currently are operating on emergency diesel generators.

The situation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant remains "very serious," according to the IAEA. The plant suffered major damage from the earthquake and tsunami that struck the country on 11 March and has been spewing radioactive contamination into the environment ever since.

Fukushima Daiichi operator Tokyo Electric Power says radiation levels continue to rise in seawater north of the plant.

TEPCO said seawater collected on Thursday 30 meters from plant outlets tested at 110 becquerels of radioactive iodine-131 per cubic centimeter. That level is 2,800 times higher than the maximum allowed under government standards.

Samples taken at the same place tested lower on Tuesday and Wednesday.