Archive for the ‘Comanche Peak’ Category

September 22, 2010

Jack Z. Smith
Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Sept. 22–GLEN ROSE — Numerous elected officials, civic leaders and residents of Somervell and Hood counties expressed support for a multibillion-dollar expansion of the Comanche Peak nuclear power plant at a public meeting here Tuesday.

But a series of speakers repeatedly expressed one nagging concern: whether the proposed addition of two 1,700-megawatt reactors would significantly lower water levels on Lake Granbury, which would be heavily tapped to provide cooling water for the new units.

"Such a huge drain on the water reserves does not seem prudent," said Sue Williams, who along with her husband, Joe Williams, cited their concerns. They live on the lake and are members of the Lake Granbury Waterfront Owners Association.

Significantly lower lake levels could hamper recreational activities such as fishing and boating and reduce property values of surrounding residences, some residents say.

Approximately 200 people packed the Somervell County Expo center for a lengthy afternoon meeting held by the staff of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The officials sought comments on the commission’s preliminary finding that there are no environmental grounds to preclude issuing combined construction and operating licenses to Luminant, operator of the Comanche Peak plant, for building the two new reactors, which would more than double the plant’s generating capacity. The plant is four miles north of Glen Rose, the Somervell County seat, and is 45 miles southwest of Fort Worth.

Rafael Flores, Luminant’s senior vice president and chief nuclear officer, sought to reassure residents by pledging that the company would try to minimize the impact on the lake. Estimates in a draft environmental impact statement said that the percentage of time that Lake Granbury is at “full pool level” would drop from 57 percent to 46 percent. The percentage of time that the lake would be 2 feet or more below full pool level would go from 10 to 25 percent. On average, the lake level would be 7 inches lower.

Flores said the actual impact would likely be less.

Numerous speakers said the expansion would provide economic benefits by adding jobs and tax revenues for local government. They also said Luminant has been a model corporate citizen in terms of civic involvement by employees.

August 9, 2010

By Jack Z. Smith
Fort Worth Star-Telegram

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has made a preliminary finding that "there are no environmental impacts that would preclude" issuing combined construction and operating licenses for a proposed expansion of the Comanche Peak nuclear power plant 45 miles southwest of Fort Worth.

The federal agency’s decision is contained in a draft environmental impact statement that was filed late Friday with the Environmental Protection Agency, commission spokesman Scott Burnell told the Star-Telegram Monday.

Dallas-based Luminant, the electric power generator proposing to build two new 1,700-megawatt reactors at Comanche Peak, is "pleased with the NRC’s preliminary recommendation" in support of "more safe, dependable nuclear power in Texas," said company spokeswoman Ashley Monts.

Karen Hadden, executive director of the Sustainable Energy and Economic Development (SEED) Coalition, an opponent of the plant expansion, said Monday: "We remain very concerned that there are environmental impacts that are not being adequately addressed."

Water usage an issue

Hadden said the group is particularly concerned about water withdrawals from Lake Granbury that would be required for the two new reactors. The group previously estimated that withdrawals could reach 91.5 million gallons per day during maximum operations. Luminant has said that there should be sufficient water supplies and that substantial volumes will be recycled.

Hadden’s group has urged that instead of building the new reactors, additional renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power should be developed, in conjunction with compressed-air energy storage and natural gas-fired generation.

Public meetings

NRC staff members will seek public comment on the agency’s preliminary finding in meetings to be held from 1 to 4 p.m. and 7 to 10 p.m. on Sept. 21 in the Glen Rose Expo Center at 202 Bo Gibbs Blvd. in Glen Rose. Staffers from the NRC and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will discuss the draft environmental impact statement at the meetings.

NRC staffers will be available for informal discussions with the public during "open house" sessions from noon to 1 p.m. and 6 to 7 p.m. at the center, immediately preceding the three-hour meetings that begin at 1 p.m. and 7 p.m.

Continued opposition

Hadden said the SEED coalition, together with a group of plant opponents known as True Cost of Nukes, will "continue to oppose these new reactors."

"We will be at the Sept. 21 meetings and encourage the citizens to join us," she said.

The two new reactors, dubbed Units 3 and 4, would more than double generating capacity at the current two-unit Comanche Peak plant four miles north of Glen Rose.

Cost estimate

Luminant CEO David Campbell estimated in July that the plant expansion would cost $15 billion to $20 billion. Luminant hopes to win approval of combined construction and operating licenses by late 2012 or early 2013, he said. The new units could go online in the 2018-2020 timeframe, perhaps a year apart, he said.

The expansion would create approximately 5,000 jobs at the Comanche Peak site during five years of construction, and more than 500 permanent jobs there, economist Ray Perryman has estimated

The expanded plant’s indirect economic effect would create 2,847 permanent jobs in the Somervell County area in the general vicinity of Comanche Peak, and 6,264 permanent jobs throughout Texas, Perryman has estimated.

The two new reactors would provide enough power to serve an estimated 1.7 million homes.

Future hearing

A three-member panel of the federal Atomic Safety and Licensing Board agreed in late June to hold a future hearing regarding arguments by plant opponents that a combination of renewable energy, natural gas and energy storage could provide a feasible alternative to expansion of Comanche Peak. No hearing date has been set, said Burnell, the NRC spokesman.

Jack Z. Smith, 817-390-7724

June 28, 2010

By Kate Galbraith
Texas Tribune

Seventeen years ago, Texas turned on its last nuclear reactor, about 50 miles southwest of Fort Worth. In another decade, several more reactors could get built here — if events in Washington go the power companies’ way.

Nuclear power now accounts for 14 percent of Texas’s electricity usage (below the national average, 20 percent). The case for adding more reactors rests on a rising appetite for electricity sparked by a growing population and ever-proliferating gadgetry. And proponents point out that nuclear power, unlike coal or natural gas, is virtually free of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with global warming during its operations, although environmentalists strongly dispute the merits of the plants.

The federal government is moving ahead with a program that provides loan guarantees for the plants — a crucial step to placate financiers nervous about the economic risk of building them. Earlier this month, the Department of Energy agreed to a $3.4 billion guarantee for the expansion of a nuclear facility in Georgia, and the Obama administration recently asked Congress for more funds to help out more plants. Two proposed nuclear projects in Texas are high on the list of potential recipients.

"We’re very serious about moving ahead," says Jeff Simmons, who is leading the development efforts to add two new reactors to the Comanche Peak plant in Glen Rose, near Fort Worth. The project is a joint venture between subsidiaries of Luminant, a big Texas power generator, and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. The companies are hoping to get a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by the end of 2012 — a crucial green light for the plant.

"Before we even get the license, we will be hundreds of millions of dollars into the development of this project," Simmons says.

A second project is proposed for Bay City. Already, that site, called the South Texas Project, has two reactors, which began operating in the late 1980s. NRG Energy and CPS Energy, the San Antonio utility, have applied for a license to add two more reactors as well, although CPS recently whittled down its share of the project in a legal settlement as cost estimates ballooned.

Many hurdles remain before either project can be built, however. No new nuclear plants in the United States have been started in several decades (the Bay City and Glen Rose projects are the only ones in Texas and are among the last plants nationally to be built). Fears of another Three-Mile Island-type accident have hung over the industry, and the economics are daunting. Nuclear plants are extremely expensive to build — each new reactor can cost $6 billion to $8 billion, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute. As a result, many plant operators have convinced the government to extend the life of old plants rather than build new ones. (The four existing Texas reactors are new enough so that an extension is not an issue yet.)

Cost concerns have been compounded by the recent economic turmoil. With the credit markets still tight, financing a huge project is difficult. Also, the recession has depressed demand for electricity — which makes it less necessary to build more power plants in the near term. Texas’s electric usage last year was 1.3 percent less than forecast, and a new report from ERCOT, the state grid operator, projects that peak electricity use will grow by 1.72 percent annually between 2010 and 2019, compared with last year’s projection of 2 percent growth during those years. Also, low natural gas prices have pulled down the overall price of electricity, making it harder to justify building an expensive plant.

Economic uncertainties propelled one major nuclear plant operator, Exelon, to pull back on its plans. Last year Exelon changed its license application for a new plant in Victoria County to a less arduous application, for an "early site permit," which covers environmental and safety portions of the applications only.

"Right now we don’t plan to build a plant there. We do want to preserve the option to build there in the future," says Craig Nesbit, the vice president for communications at Exelon Generation.

Companies exploring a fourth possible Texas plant, in the Panhandle, have not yet applied for a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, despite statements in 2008 that an application was planned for 2009.

The federal government holds the key to the economics, through loan guarantees. These essentially mean that the government will pick up the tab if the borrower — the plant owner — defaults. Earlier this month Southern Company agreed to a $3.4 billion loan guarantee for a reactor project in Georgia, part of a $8.3 billion loan-guarantee package for the plant announced in February. The total federal pot currently stands at $18.5 billion — enough for one more project but perhaps not more. (There is also a far smaller amount allocated to loan guarantees for renewable energy projects, which are considered risky and in need of federal guarantees because of their newness.)

As a result, there is jostling for a place in the loan-guarantee queue. The South Texas Project is third in line, after the Georgia project and a plant proposed by Constellation Energy. The Comanche Peak project is fifth in line. The Obama administration asked Congress in May to add $9 billion to the $18.5 billion program, which would mean enough for a few more projects after the Georgia one.

Environmentalists think nuclear power is a terrible idea.

"We think expanding the Texas nuclear fleet is a huge mistake because of cost and waste issues primarily — and that there are significantly cheaper alternatives that could provide the power at a fraction of the cost," says Tom "Smitty" Smith, the Texas director of the environmental and consumer advocacy group Public Citizen. Energy-efficiency and renewable energy — such as the wind power that has grown quickly in Texas — would be far more cost-effective, he says.

Smith also maintains that nuclear plants’ "zero-emissions" arguments on greenhouse gases (although potentially crucial in the forthcoming debate about national energy legislation) are a red herring. "There are enormous emissions of greenhouse gases during the mining and enrichment, construction, decommissioning and then the storage for 50,000 years of this waste," he says. (At both existing Texas plants, the waste is stored on-site.)

But in Somervell County, home to the Comanche Peak reactors, there is community support for building more. The county has used homeland security grants to buy a military-style armored truck — to defend itself and its plant if needed.

"We’ve got to have more nuclear power," says County Judge Walter Maynard. "From a selfish standpoint, it’s very viable to our local economy."

April 15, 2010

By JACK Z. SMITH
Fort Worth Star-Telegram

GRANBURY — Luminant, the power generator proposing a multibillion-dollar expansion of the Comanche Peak nuclear power plant, took issue Thursday with arguments that it failed to give sufficient consideration to renewable energy alternatives and catastrophic radiation leaks that might result from an event such as a terrorist attack.

The issues were debated by lawyers for Luminant and plant opponents at a hearing held in Granbury by a three-judge panel of the federal Atomic Safety and Licensing Board. The hearing is part of Luminant’s application for a license to expand Comanche Peak from two to four reactors. The plant is near Glen Rose, 45 miles southwest of Fort Worth.

The panel is expected to decide, perhaps within two months, whether Luminant’s environmental report on the proposed expansion gives adequate consideration to alternatives to nuclear power and to safety risks posed by building reactors near the existing ones, which went online in the early 1990s.

Luminant attorney Steven Frantz said renewable energy options, such as a combination of wind and solar energy supplemented by natural-gas-fired generation and a compressed-air energy storage system, wouldn’t meet the need for a "baseload" power plant that could reliably generate large volumes of electricity around the clock.

"There are no combined wind and solar facilities anywhere in the world that provide baseload power," Frantz said. "It’s never been done."

Robert Eye, an attorney for opponents of the nuclear expansion, argued that the technology for wind and solar power is "advancing on an almost daily basis."

Frantz said amendments to Luminant’s environmental report adequately address concerns about the ability of Comanche Peak to contain radiation leaks. But Eye countered that Luminant failed to sufficiently consider the possibility that substantial radiation could be emitted by spent nuclear fuel if there were an accident.

Plant opponents, dubbed "intervenors" in the licensing process, are the Sustainable Energy and Economic Development Coalition, Public Citizen, True Cost of Nukes and state Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth.

Attorneys for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which licenses new reactors, often sided with Luminant’s lawyers Thursday in the oral arguments on its amended environmental plan.

The war of words continued outside the Central Jury Room of the Hood County Justice Center, where the hearing was held by atomic licensing board administrative judges Ann Marshall Young, Gary Arnold and Alice Mignerey.

"Despite limitations on what was allowed to be presented about clean and safe energy alternatives to more reactors, we were able to make a strong case," Burnam said Thursday on behalf of plant opponents. "Hopefully, the panel of judges will listen," said Burnam, who called nuclear power "an outdated and dangerous way to generate electricity."

Eliza Brown, clean energy advocate for sustainable-energy coalition, said "all it takes is one serious accident such as a meltdown or terrorist attack on a spent fuel pool to result in catastrophe. … Deaths and cancers would result from radiation releases, as well as birth defects from genetic damage."

In an interview with the Star-Telegram, Comanche Peak Site Vice President Mitch Lucas countered that the plant "has seen 20 years of very safe operation."

"I’m completely confident in the safety of the existing units and the [proposed] new units," he said.

The plant’s concrete walls are four to four-and-a-half feet thick with "massive rebar [reinforcing steel]," Lucas said. He said the plant’s "robust design" could help it withstand a hit by a large plane, such as those used on 9-11.

Comanche Peak "was already a very, very secure facility, but we’ve increased security after 9-11," Lucas said.

The proposed new reactors would add 3,400 megawatts of generation capacity at Comanche Peak, more than doubling the current 2,300-megawatt capacity. Luminant has estimated the expansion cost at $15 billion, but former Texas utility regulatory official Clarence Johnson has pegged the cost at $23.8 billion to $27.6 billion.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

By RANDY LEE LOFTIS
The Dallas Morning News

GRANBURY – The prospect of expanding Comanche Peak, the two-reactor plant 75 miles southwest of Dallas that churns out nuclear power, is stirring arguments over the atom that date back to the first round of nuclear construction decades ago, plus some new ones barely imagined in the 1970s.

Federal regulators heard Thursday from Comanche Peak’s owner and operator, Luminant Generating Co., and from a group of opponents on some issues that have long dominated nuclear debate, such as the consequences and likelihood of a catastrophic radioactive accident.

Three Nuclear Regulatory Commission administrative law judges sifting through Luminant’s application to add two reactors to the two-reactor plant also listened as the company and its opponents argued over newer concerns, such as a potential terrorist strike on the plant with a hijacked airliner.

The judges are considering whether Luminant included enough information about environmental impacts in documents submitted with its NRC license application. Opponents say the review was inadequate, while the company calls it the most comprehensive such study in history.

Comanche Peak – which received its Unit 1 operating license 20 years ago Saturday — is among 18 sites nationwide where power companies have filed applications to build new reactors, the first to be proposed in about 30 years. Some recently announced reactors are on hold and might not be built for economic or other reasons, but Comanche Peak is moving forward.

Three sites are in Texas: Comanche Peak in Somervell County; the existing South Texas Plant in Matagorda County; and a new plant proposed in Victoria County. Amarillo is also a potential site.

Plans for new reactors are working their way through a streamlined but still complex licensing procedure at the NRC, which is run by a five-member commission. President Barack Obama has appointed one sitting commissioner and will fill two vacancies.

Obama is a nuclear power supporter, describing it as a clean and efficient source of electricity and part of a comprehensive energy strategy. His administration, with congressional approval, is providing billions of dollars in federal loan guarantees for new plants, hoping to encourage investors to back the plans.

At the same time, the administration has stopped work on a permanent repository for highly radioactive, long-lived nuclear plant waste. Waste now sits in storage at each plant.

Finances for the new plants are in flux, but industry experts say they expect most new reactors to cost about $10 billion.

Each new plant undergoes engineering and environmental scrutiny. Comanche Peak’s environmental review, the topic of Thursday’s hearing in Granbury, is guiding the NRC as it determines whether Luminant’s plan complies with the National Environmental Policy Act.

That law requires consideration of impacts on public health and safety, water, air, land and wildlife.

The review also provides a one-stop source to members of the public who want to review the expansion plan’s environmental consequences for themselves.

Those factors make the review’s adequacy a major factor in the government’s decision on Luminant’s plan.

"The question is: Is the information that they have provided complete?" the NRC panel’s chairman, Ann Marshall Young, told about 30 people in the jury assembly room of the Hood County Justice Center.

Luminant attorney Steve Frantz told the NRC judges that the company had prepared the most detailed environmental review of a nuclear plant ever attempted, covering everything from land use to the consequences of simultaneous accidents at all four reactors.

"Nobody’s ever gone to this extent before," Frantz said.

Opponents, including some Texas environmental groups and state Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth, contended that Luminant’s environmental review omits crucial and required information.

The hole in the environmental review "may have been partially filled, but it has not been completely filled," said Robert Eye, the opponents’ attorney.

Eye said the review does not adequately address whether a severe accident at one unit might make it impossible for the other units to shut down quickly. Neither, he said, does it fully consider alternatives to nuclear power, including new technologies in wind and solar power and natural gas.

The federal environmental policy act requires consideration of alternatives to the proposed project.

In earlier proceedings, the NRC judges allowed those contentions to move forward, indicating that they raised valid issues. Luminant then revised its environmental report to address both issues.

Frantz told the judges that Luminant’s new submittals should automatically invalidate the opponents’ objections about the review’s adequacy. Some issues, such as making the plant safe from an airborne terrorist attack, are covered by NRC design and construction rules, but their possible consequences get little attention in the environmental review because they are considered "speculative and remote," he said.

"We have addressed a reasonable set of alternatives," he said. Unless some new issue arises, he said, "there is no reason to go further."

Eye, however, said it isn’t reasonable for Luminant to dismiss the potential of wind and solar power as substitutes for new reactors when wind power is growing rapidly in Texas and wind and solar technology is "advancing on almost a daily basis."