Archive for the ‘News’ Category

March 9, 2011

The QueQue
San Antonio Current

As city-owned CPS Energy re-enters talks with NRG Energy about possibly buying more deeply into the proposed nuclear power plant expansion they only recently largely extracted themselves from, local and Austin-based activists are fighting a sense of regret and déjà vu. "We wish CPS would have learned the lesson that it should have learned a year ago. I wish we didn’t have to go through this again," Cindy Weehler, of the anti-nuclear group Energía Mía, said at a Tuesday press conference in front of City Hall.

After getting clearance from the CPS Energy Board of Trustees last week, CEO Doyle Beneby is planning to entertain proposals that could once again throw CPS and NRG into deeper partnership, priming the city to either further invest in the group’s two proposed South Texas Project reactors or agree to a long-term power purchasing deal.

Just a year ago, CPS and NRG’s equal partnership in the proposed nukes imploded in a $32-billion lawsuit amid allegations of fraud and manipulation on the part of NRG. quot;The history is so messy, so why would this even be considered again?quot; Weehler asked.

Karen Hadden, director for Texas clean-energy group SEED Coalition, said she has approached city council members and found "no excitementquot; about Beneby’s move. quot;Our concern is these talks just came up so quickly. We’re worried that serious arm-twisting could occur to push this thing through,quot; Hadden said.

March 9, 2011

By Tracy Idell Hamilton
San Antonio Express-News

Anti-nuclear activists gathered in front of City Hall on Tuesday to object to CPS Energy’s recent decision to discuss buying more power from the two reactors that might be add to the South Texas Project.

Two dozen people held banners and signs like "Solar Sí, Nuclear No" as speakers described their disbelief that CPS Energy once again is talking to erstwhile partner NRG Energy about buying more power from the reactors, presuming they’re built.

"We’re outraged," said Amanda Haas of the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center. "Why are we back in the same place we were two years ago?"

Opponents ticked off a litany of reasons CPS should not buy more power, including the specter of increased costs, more nuclear waste and the risk to American taxpayers who would be on the hook if the project defaults after getting federal loan guarantees.

"Nuclear was a bad idea then, and it’s a bad idea now," said Maria Berriozábal, a former city councilwoman and social justice activist. "CPS Energy can expect an angry citizen outcry if they decide to seriously consider NRG’s offer."

NRG hasn’t made an offer just yet.

On Monday, a team of CPS executives met with representatives from the investor-owned utility for the first time since CEO Doyle Beneby received board approval to hear NRG’s pitch to either increase the utility’s investment in the project or buy more power for an agreed-on price for a certain number of years.

CPS owns 7.6 percent of the project, or about 200 megawatts.

Beneby has said he’s more inclined toward a purchase power agreement than an increased share of the project, because it affords the utility more protections.

Beneby says he’s listening to NRG because he needs 851 megawatts to replace those lost when he shutters the Deely coal plants, likely by 2018. He wants those megawatts to be cheap and have lower emissions than coal, and is looking at nuclear, natural gas and other options.

Opponents Tuesday also focused on the messy divorce between CPS and NRG last year, asking why CPS would even consider talking to a group it accused of malfeasance and fraud in a $32 billion lawsuit.

That lawsuit never was fought. Instead, the parties agreed to litigate an earlier suit that sought to clarify CPS’ rights if it chose to pull out of the crumbling nuclear deal. But CPS must now live with the negative portrait it painted of its former partner.

Beneby, who wasn’t with CPS at the time, said the utility has "400 million reasons" to listen to NRG, referring to the roughly $400 million the utility has invested in the expansion.

"That’s a huge amount of money to get nothing for," he said.

He’s been meeting with community groups of all stripes since he arrived last summer; he met with several nuclear opponents Monday and a group of business people last week.

He said their concerns were almost the exact opposite: The business people "wanted to know why I was retiring a coal plant that is producing cheap power, and why CPS entered into solar and wind deals with no public input."

Beneby said he will bring any proposed deal to the Board of Trustees for approval.

Saturday, February 26, 2011

ADAM GOLDMAN, Associated Press,
BETSY BLANEY, Associated Press
San Antonio Express-News

Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari, 20, is shown in this undated photo made available by the Lubbock County Sheriff’s Office Thursday, Feb. 24, 2011. The Justice Department said Thursday that the student from Saudi Arabia studying chemical engineering in Texas purchased explosive chemicals over the Internet as part of a plan to hide bomb materials inside dolls and baby carriages to blow up dams, nuclear plants or the Dallas home of former President George W. Bush. Photo: Lubbock County Sheriff / AP

Separately, Con-way Freight, the shipping company, notified Lubbock police and the FBI the same day with similar suspicions because it appeared the order wasn’t intended for commercial use. Within weeks, federal agents had traced Aldawsari’s other online purchases, discovered extremist posts he made on the Internet and secretly searched his apartment, computer and e-mail accounts and read his diary, according to court records.

Neighbors in Lubbock said they didn’t remember seeing Aldawsari but noticed an unusual number of people in the hallway the day of his arrest.

"That’s so scary," said Sally Dierschke, a 21-year-old senior at Texas Tech. "That’s my neighbor. … Of course, I’m scared."

Ahmid Obaidan, a senior at Tennessee State University who also is from Saudi Arabia, met Aldawsari in Nashville, Tennessee, when Aldawsari was studying at an English language center at Vanderbilt University.

"He was quiet. I thought he was a good guy," Obaidan said.

The FBI said the North Carolina company reported the attempts to purchase 1.3 gallons (4.9 liters) of phenol, a chemical that can be used to make the explosive trinitrophenol, also known as TNP, or picric acid. Aldawsari falsely told the supplier he was associated with a university and wanted the phenol for "off-campus, personal research," according to court records. Frustrated by questions, Aldawsari canceled his order and later e-mailed himself instructions for producing phenol, the documents say.

TNP, the chemical explosive that Aldawsari was suspected of trying to make, has approximately the same destructive power as TNT. FBI bomb experts said the amounts in the Aldawsari case would have yielded almost 15 pounds (6.8 kilograms) of explosive. That’s about the same amount used per bomb in the London subway attacks that killed scores of people in July 2005.

Prosecutors said that in December, he bought 30 liters of concentrated nitric acid for about $450 from QualiChem Technologies in Georgia, and three gallons of concentrated sulfuric acid that are combined to make TNP. The FBI later found the chemicals in Aldawsari’s apartment as well as beakers, flasks, wiring, a Hazmat suit and clocks.

A Saudi industrial company, which was not identified in court documents, was paying Aldawsari’s tuition and living expenses in the U.S.

Casey declined to go into why the arrest occurred when it did.

"We just felt it was the right time," he said.

___

Goldman reported from Washington.

January 31, 2011

By MATTHEW L. WALD
New York Times

WASHINGTON — In his State of the Union address, President Obama proposed giving the nuclear construction business a type of help it has never had, a role in a quota for clean energy. But recent setbacks in a hoped-for “nuclear renaissance” raise questions about how much of a role nuclear power can play.

Of four reactor projects identified by the Energy Department in 2009 as the most likely candidates for federal loan guarantees, only two are moving forward. At a third, in Calvert Cliffs, Md., there has been no public sign of progress since the lead partner withdrew in October and the other partner said it would seek a replacement.

And at the fourth, in Texas, a would-be builder has been driven to try something never done before in nuclear construction: finding a buyer for the electricity before the concrete is even poured. Customers are not rushing forward, given that the market is awash in generating capacity and an alternative fuel, natural gas, is currently cheap.

Read more at the New York Times web site.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Sarah Gardner
Marketplace

Listen to the show

Plans for new nuclear power plants in the U.S. lose appeal as Congress doesn’t act on carbon emissions rules and natural gas becomes plentiful and cheap.

Kai Ryssdal: Three years ago, Marketplace’s Sarah Gardner did a story about American nuclear power, about how that industry was gearing up for a big comeback. There were new tax credits, building permits and regulatory changes in the air. Suffice it to say, a lot has changed.

Sarah Gardner: It’s always instructive and humbling to go back to stories I’ve reported and see how things turned out. It’s like playing "Where Are They Now?" but with news events, not celebrities.

So I dug up that 2007 "nuclear renaissance" piece from the Marketplace archives. It opens with a sound bite from David Crane, the CEO of NRG Energy. His company had just filed the first petition to build a nuclear power plant in the U.S. in nearly 30 years.

David Crane: It’s important for all of us to recognize that that was then, and this is now. The nuclear industry today is not the nuclear industry of the 1970s.

When I interviewed Crane in 2007, he was jazzed about safety advances in nuclear technology and new federal loan guarantees. Other utility execs were too. By 2008, they’d drawn up plans to build at least two dozen new reactors here. Fast forward to 2011…

Crane: All I would say is that the process has taken a very long time.

Crane still hasn’t gotten a desperately needed loan guarantee. And his company’s already shelled out half a billion on this nuclear venture, and they haven’t broken ground yet.

Paul Patterson: I think the reality caught up with the hype, so to speak.

Energy analyst Paul Patterson says it’s not just NRG’s nuclear power dreams that are on hold. In fact, most of a few dozen proposed reactors are in limbo. Congress never did pass a cap on greenhouse gases emitted by coal burning power plants, which would have made fossil fuels more expensive and nuclear power more competitive. And federal subsidies never reached the levels nuclear lobbyists hoped for. But the biggest, baddest enemy of that "nuclear revival"? Cheap natural gas.

Again, CEO David Crane.

David Crane: It was absolutely not predicted by anybody, expert or soothsayer.

A glut of natural gas has driven down prices and now makes nuclear look wildly expensive. Natural gas is a fossil fuel, but emits half the greenhouse gases of coal. Energy companies have discovered and tapped into huge reserves of shale gas in the U.S.

Bernard Weinstein is associate director of the Maguire Energy Institute in Dallas.

Bernard Weinstein: We’ve got at least a 200-year supply of natural gas in the United States. So if you’re a utility executive and you’re scratching your head, maybe I don’t want to commit to a nuclear plant right now.

Peter Bradford, a former nuclear regulator, says nuclear power’s always been a hard sell. Its history of cost overruns and plant cancellations means Wall Street won’t touch it. And the feds are cautious too. Last fall, Constellation Energy walked away from a promising nuclear project in Maryland.

Bradford said the Department of Energy demanded what Constellation called a "shockingly high" fee for a government loan guarantee.

Peter Bradford: And the nuclear industry’s position now is "We can’t go forward in the face of a fee like that. We need something that’s more like a gift."

And right now, any gifts from the feds are unlikely. So, what happens another three years from now? Well, if the experts are right this time, the industry will be lucky to have a few nuclear reactors under construction. Of course, as this story’s taught me, things can change.

I’m Sarah Gardner for Marketplace.