Archive for the ‘Exelon – Victoria’ Category

March 19, 2011

By John Couwels,
CNN

Texas ranchers David Huber, on the right, and his son Jason Huber consider the risks of a proposed nuclear plant, seven miles from their property.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Exelon wants to build a $16 billion nuclear plant near Victoria
• Supporters say it will be a boon to the small town’s economy
• The plant would lie on a "growth fault" that opponents say could be unsafe
• Exelon says growth faults are not seismic and do not pose a risk

Victoria, Texas (CNN) — This small Texas town is half a world away from the nuclear disaster unfolding in Japan.

Nevertheless, the calamity is having a ripple effect.

This week, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission held a scheduled two-day public hearing on a nuclear power plant near Victoria.

There, Texans for Sound Energy Policy got a chance to voice their opposition on the proposed plant that would be built by electric power giant Exelon Generation.

Those who support the plant repeatedly stated, "Nuclear power is a safe energy source" at the two-day hearing.

How close are you to a nuclear plant?

In addition, supporters argued that the $16 billion project would add over 750 permanent jobs and 2,500 temporary construction jobs.

The money spent on the plant would be nearly five times more than Victoria’s yearly budget, said Don Pozzi, an administrative judge and lifetime resident of Victoria County.

"That’s a lot of money," said Pozzi,.

In addition to the jobs, he argues the project would help add to the town’s coffers through sales taxes and real estate taxes from new housing.

That, he says, will help the small town of about 87,000 people continue to grow. And that’s exactly what rancher David Huber is afraid of — a larger Victoria with a nuclear power plant.

"I’ve been opposed from the beginning and I’m still opposed," said Huber, 62.

The proposed site for the reactor is located in a rural farming district approximately seven miles from Huber’s ranch. Huber, a 6-foot-2 rancher with a thick Texas accent and an affable personality, said he loves his land and his way of life. His family has been a part of the Victoria farming community since the late 1800s.

"The road Exelon is planning on using for heavy hauling, my grandfather built around 1920," the rancher said, while driving around his ranch with his son, Jason Huber.
Along the way, he proudly points the results of his family’s hard work.

"Our roots are in the ground."

His concerns over the dangers of a possible nuclear reactor so close to his ranch have increased since the nuclear disaster triggered by last week’s quake and tsunami in Japan, he said.

Japan’s nuclear crisis explained

Prior to choosing the location, Exelon Generation studied the possible impact of a nuclear power plant on Victoria’s community, water and ecology.

Exelon is the United States’ largest nuclear power plant operator, running 17 plants in 10 states.

See locations of U.S. nuclear power facilities

After studying the Victoria site, the power company found the risks to be low. But not everyone agrees.

"Nuclear power is a high risk, high stakes business," said Jim Blackburn with Texans for Sound Energy Policy at this week’s NRC public hearing.

There are plane crashes, people continue to fly. There are car accidents, people continue to drive. There’s going to be nuclear power.
–Don Pozzi, Victoria resident, supporter of proposed nuclear plant

The NRC must grant final approval before any new nuclear plants can be built and operated. No new nuclear plant has won final approval in the United States since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, although site work is being done at a couple of locations around the country.

At this week’s hearing, Exelon representative William Scott acknowledged the events in Japan, but he urged people not to overreact to what’s going on in light of the continuous news coverage of the unfolding crisis.

"Everyone here should be sobered by the events in Japan and by the seriousness of matters at hand," Scott said. "Our thoughts and prayers go out to the people in Japan."

Texas town OK with nuclear plant expansion

He said he understands people’s concerns and why politicians have taken a closer look at the safety plans for nuclear plants in their states.

"That’s a perfectly natural reaction. We expect to be held accountable, that’s part of our commitment to safety," said Scott.

The situation in Japan doesn’t seem to have any effect on those who steadfastly support the proposed nuclear plant near Victoria, Pozzi said.

"I don’t expect people will change their minds," he said. "I think people have had their minds made up."

He pointed to an unscientific online poll in the local newspaper, the Victoria Advocate, which found that despite the Japan incident, 53% of the 394 people polled said they favor the Victoria plant compared to 23% who oppose it.

"There are plane crashes, people continue to fly. There are car accidents, people continue to drive," Pozzi said. "There’s going to be nuclear power."
Victoria’s Mayor Will Armstrong agreed.

"My support hasn’t wavered at all," he said.

Victoria county commissioner Gary Burns said he and other city officials have "wined and dined" Exelon in hopes of bringing billions of dollars to Victoria’s economy. Burns said if the deal falls through, the town’s economic future is at risk.

Those who oppose the plant said the site where Exelon would build the plant lies on a "growth fault" which doesn’t trigger earthquakes but can cause the Earth to shift.
Blackburn and his Texans for Sound Energy Policy group fears the ground beneath the proposed nuclear site could sink, causing the cooling water ponds, vital to a nuclear plant, to drain away.

"It has active oil and gas extraction," Blackburn said about the proposed site. "It can and will change over time."

[What if] all of a sudden that [proposed] plant has a problem and there’s an evacuation for a 10 mile radius? I’m in the 10 miles radius. What do I do? Try and pick up and try to run? This is my life.
–David Huber, Texas rancher

Blackburn said Exelon has not addressed the growth fault issue in its filings with the NRC. But Steve Frantz, an attorney representing Exelon pointed out that the growth faults are "are not tectonic in nature."

A study of the area shows one growth fault in the area moved only 8 inches over 40 years.

"They pose no seismic threat," said Frantz. "The only threat is a possibility of surface deformation if the growth faults were to move."

He did say all safety structures including vital safety cooling ponds would be located away from the growth faults.

"We did find it and studied it," said Frantz. "We planned the safety-related structures 500 feet away, which we felt was more than adequate."

Blackburn insists that even though growth faults are not seismic, they still pose "potential dangers to the safe operation of a nuclear facility."

"TSEP believes that good engineering can address many potential safety issues," he said. "However, you cannot engineer around issues that are not recognized, studied and evaluated."

Some residents, like Huber, who would live near the proposed site, feel that it’s a risk that is not worth taking.

"(What if) all of a sudden that (proposed) plant has a problem and there’s an evacuation for a 10-mile radius?" the rancher wondered.

"I’m in the 10-mile radius. What do I do? Try and pick up and try to run? This is my life."

"Why would you even want to risk this natural beauty?" he asked, as he stood on the banks of the San Antonio River next to his ranch at sunset.

November 22, 2010

Peter Wynn Thompson
The New York Times

The north reactor building at the retired Zion Nuclear Power Station in Zion, Ill.

ZION, Ill. — Twelve years ago, Commonwealth Edison found itself in a bind.

The twin-unit nuclear reactor known as Zion Station has been in limbo for more than a decade, and Commonwealth Edison, now part of Exelon, paid about $10 million a year to baby-sit the defunct reactor.

The Zion Station, its twin-unit nuclear reactor here, was no longer profitable. But the company could not afford to tear it down: the cost of dismantling the vast steel and concrete building, with multiple areas of radioactive contamination, would exceed $1 billion, double what it had cost to build the reactors in the 1970s. Nor could Commonwealth Edison walk away from the plant, because of the contamination.

The result was that Zion Station sat in limbo for more than a decade, and Commonwealth Edison, now part of Exelon, paid about $10 million a year to baby-sit the defunct reactor.

Now, though, the company is trying out a radical new approach to decommissioning the plant that promises to make the process faster, simpler and 25 percent less expensive — instead of hiring a contractor, it has turned the job and the reactors over to a nuclear demolition company that owns a nuclear dump site. The cost will be covered by the $900 million that Exelon accumulated in a decommissioning fund.

If the approach is successful, it could have implications for 10 other nuclear plants around the country that are waiting to be decommissioned, and for the 104 reactors that are still in operation but will eventually be torn down. It will also save money for electricity customers, who often end up paying for the cleanup of nuclear plants through their utility bills.

The decommissioning operation at Zion, which began on Sept. 1, will skip one of the slowest, dirtiest and most costly parts of tearing down a nuclear plant: separating radioactive materials, which must go to a licensed dump, from nonradioactive materials, which can go to an ordinary industrial landfill.

The new idea is not to bother sorting the two. Instead, anything that could include radioactive contamination will be treated as radioactive waste.

Exelon could never have done this on its own, because the fee for disposing of radioactive waste was too high. But the company has given the reactor to EnergySolutions, a conglomerate that includes companies that have long done nuclear cleanups, and which also owns a nuclear dump.

"This is a first-of-a-kind arrangement," said Adam H. Levin, director of spent fuel and decommissioning at Exelon.

He added that others could do the job for less than Exelon and acknowledged, "utilities in general are not very good at tearing plants down."

Government regulations require that nuclear reactor sites be thoroughly decontaminated, so that they can be released for re-use — often a lengthy process. The plan is to return Zion’s site, in the midst of parkland on the Lake Michigan shore north of Chicago, to re-use by 2020 — 12 years earlier than expected under Exelon’s original plan, which was to begin in 2013 and finish in 2032.

Any money left over from the $900 million in the plant’s decommissioning fund goes back to electricity customers in the Chicago area.

On Sept. 1, Exelon transferred ownership, along with the license issued by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, to EnergySolutions, which is based in Salt Lake City.

The company owns a one-square-mile area of desert about 70 miles west of there, in Clive, Utah, where most of the Zion plant is supposed to be shipped. The dump in Clive already has parts of several other defunct nuclear plants — including Maine Yankee in Wiscasset, Me., and Yankee Rowe in Rowe, Mass.

In those two cases, the reactor owners tried to sort the radioactive materials from the nonradioactive, in order to dispose of ordinary concrete and steel at recycling centers or industrial landfills. It turned out to be a costly mistake, many in the industry now say.

Workers used a device like a pneumatic drill to "scabble" the concrete, knocking off the surface layer.

"It got to be very, very complicated and nasty work," said Andrew C. Kadak, a nuclear consultant who at the time was president of the company that operated Yankee Rowe. Often, he said, a survey would find that the concrete was not clean, or worse: that a tiny bit of radioactive material was mistakenly shipped to a "clean" landfill.

"It’s easier to suppose everything is radioactive," Mr. Kadak said.

Sometimes a contractor hired to decommission plants would also find radioactive material in unexpected places or at unexpectedly high levels, other experts said.

Crowds of workers would stand idle while the contractor sought the plant owner’s authorization to deviate from the procedures specified in the contract — a costly proposition at a site with 500 workers paid collectively "$30,000 to $50,000 an hour," said John A. Christian, president of the Commercial Services subsidiary of EnergySolutions.

At Rowe, managers finally gave up and shipped vast amounts of concrete, much of it clean, to the repository in Clive.

The new plan for Zion, by far the largest nuclear power plant to be decommissioned and the first twin-unit reactor to be torn down, eliminates the relationship between contractor and owner. EnergySolutions has hardly any internal cost for burial, beyond shipping.

Mark Walker, a spokesman for EnergySolutions, said that the dump could accommodate all 104 of the nation’s operating nuclear plants, "with space left over."

It could also absorb plants that are shut and awaiting decommissioning, like Indian Point 1 in Buchanan, N.Y.; Millstone 1 in Waterford, Conn.; and Three Mile Island 2, near Harrisburg, Pa., the site of the 1979 accident.

Not everyone is delighted with the idea of Exelon turning the job over to EnergySolutions.

Tom Rielly, the executive principal of Vista 360, a community group in nearby Libertyville, Ill., said that with a monopoly provider of dump space also functioning as the contractor, it would be difficult to determine what was being charged for disposal and whether electricity customers were getting a good deal.

But approval from utility regulators in Illinois was not required for the deal, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave its assent, so the work is going forward.

EnergySolutions cannot dispose of all the waste.

Clive is licensed only for the least contaminated material. And the spent nuclear fuel is in the same situation as used reactor fuel all over the country: the Energy Department is under contract to take it, but has no place to dispose of it.

Until a permanent repository is built at the proposed Yucca Mountain facility in Nevada or another location, the waste will stay at the Zion site in steel and concrete casks built to last for decades.

Frank Flammini, a control room operator, has worked at the Zion Station since before it shut down.

The room, filled with 1970s-style dials, used to have at least six people around the clock, but on a recent afternoon he sat alone in the control room with his coffee cup, next to the one modern piece of equipment, a flat-panel display showing the temperature, water level and humidity of the room housing the spent fuel.

Mr. Flammini, 54, said he was called on now and then to make sure equipment was "tagged out" so that workers could safely dismantle it. But hours go by with little to do.

The parking lot of Zion is so quiet these days that the raccoons and skunks have been joined by shy species like coyote.

Mr. Flammini said he knew his job here was not permanent.

"It’ll get very busy for about four years, and then it’ll go away entirely," he said.

June 30, 2009

Victoria Advocate

Exelon Nuclear won’t decide whether to build a Victoria County plant for at least three years – and possibly as many 20.

The company bought itself a two-decade window to weigh its options by announcing Tuesday it will seek an early site permit instead of a construction and operating license.

Exelon planned to decide by early next year whether to build locally. Unforeseen U.S. economic woes, unpredictable energy prices and a lack of ample federal loan guarantees threw a reactor-sized wrench into those plans, Exelon spokespeople said.

The decision to file the early site permit, though, gives nuclear supporters hope. The move shows Exelon hasn’t given up wholly on building locally, they say.

"The fact they’re willing to move forward with this early site permit means they still have strong confidence in Victoria and in this site," said Dale Fowler, president of the Victoria Economic Development Corp. "I view that as very positive."

Even so, Fowler and Mayor Will Armstrong said the move disappoints. The economic boom of breaking ground on hundreds of new jobs and homegrown energy is delayed for years.

An early site permit, if granted, gives a federal stamp of approval to the proposed Victoria County location. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will evaluate factors such as site safety, environmental impact and emergency planning.

"Once they get the early site permit, then they could apply for a license to build and operate a nuclear power plant," said Victor Dricks, a Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman.

The early site permit, and construction and operating license, each require about three years of federal study. If Exelon one day chooses to build the plant, some data from the early site permit can be used toward the construction and operating license.

"It could expedite that second licensing process," Dricks said.

Exelon spokespeople said Tuesday’s announcement does not reflect disinterest in this region.

"Victoria is a great site for a nuclear power plant," said Bill Harris, Exelon’s Victoria-based spokesman. "Economically speaking, now’s not the time."

Craig Nesbit, another spokesman, added, "We are not walking away from Victoria. We are simply extending the decision time, giving ourselves more time to let things settle out a bit."

The company renewed recently its water reservation agreement with the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority.

Exelon extended its agreement – a reservation of 75,000-acre-feet of water per year – for another year, said Bill West, the river authority’s general manager. The one-year agreement costs Exelon $1.1 million.

Exelon won’t likely reserve the costly river water for extended periods beyond its one-year agreement, Nesbit said.

"In order to do an early site permit, we have to have a fairly competent water supply," the Exelon spokesman said. "We’re going to continue talking with the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority. We have water reservations through next June. If the river authority has other uses for that water after that, they’ll use it elsewhere."

Exelon could turn to other river authorities or the Gulf of Mexico for needed water, Nesbit said. The Guadalupe River, however, is the company’s best option.

West would not speculate about other water customers the river authority could sell to, or how Exelon’s decision will affect regional water planning.

"We’ve got some time to work on it," West said.

In the meantime, Exelon continues its hostile bid to take over NRG Energy, which proposes to build two new reactors in Bay City. The city is home to the South Texas Project, an operational nuclear power plant.

NRG Energy is one of four likely recipients of $18.5 billion in federal loan guarantees, the Energy Department announced in May.

NRG stockholders meet in mid July to further discuss the takeover attempts.

Nuclear opponents say that while the economic sky fell on Exelon’s attempts to build locally, problems bubble in other areas.

"There are major water issues regarding the Victoria site," said Jim Blackburn, Goliad County’s Houston-based environmental lawyer. "The decision gives Exelon time that frankly does not surprise me they need. I think they’re aware of the serious concerns at the Victoria site, specifically as they relate to water."