Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Nov. 23, 2010

By BETSY BLANEY
© 2010 The Associated Press

LUBBOCK, Texas — A state advisory commission is recommending that Texas lawmakers clarify the funding mechanism for a commission that oversees the disposal of low-level radioactive waste disposal in Texas.

The Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission and its eight members — two from Vermont and six from Texas — are currently reimbursed for expenses through a contract with Texas’ environmental regulatory agency. The Sunset Advisory Commission said in a report released last week that Texas legislators need to instead establish a dedicated fund so the low-level compact panel has money to operate.

The compact commission is funded by its member states. Commission chairman Michael Ford said Tuesday that Vermont’s statute describes how money will flow to the entity.

"That facet of the (Texas) law is mute on the entire mechanism of funding," Ford said. "Right now the intent of the Legislature is not described on how that mechanism would occur, so we’re at a bit of a puzzle. The whole mechanism needs a lot of work."

In the early 1980s, the federal government started urging states to build low-level nuclear waste landfills, either on their own or in cooperation with other states in compact systems. Vermont, Texas and Maine formed a compact in 1993. Maine dropped out of the deal several years ago.

Earlier this month, the compact commission voted to publish rules that could be used to consider low-level waste from 36 other states that would be buried at a privately run facility in West Texas near the New Mexico border. There will be a 3-day comment period once the rule is published in the Texas Register, which should happen before the end of the month.

In the report released last week, the Sunset Advisory Commission recommended that revenue allocated by a yet-to-be-established waste disposal fee be sent to a newly created General Revenue Dedicated Account. The account would get only the portion of the fee allotted to cover the costs of the compact commission operations from the state’s licensed disposal facility, Waste Control Specialists.

Lawmakers could then appropriate funds from the account to the compact commission through the environmental agency’, the report states.

"Clearly the issue of the mechanism of funding the compact commission has to be clarified by the legislature," said Chuck McDonald, spokesman for Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists. "No one would dispute that."

The advisory commission’s report says the compact commission could have another problem if legislators don’t act in the upcoming session, the report states. If Waste Control Specialists were to give waste disposal fees directly to the commission, the panel potentially making decisions on importations of radioactive materials would hold its own purse strings, the report states.

"This situation puts the Compact Commission in the conflicting position of impacting total disposal volume of commercial low-level radioactive waste that directly affects its revenue source .," the report states.

If left as is, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality would still reimburse the compact commission, a move the reports says "inappropriately places" the TCEQ in the position of deciding what expenditures are suitable.

One commissioner isn’t so sure the Legislature, which is facing a budget shortfall that may reach $24 billion, will make the changes the advisory commission suggested.

"I can’t predict what the Legislature is going to do," Bob Wilson said. "I don’t know how this is going to work out. My judgment tells me that we are not going to have sufficient funding in the next two years to do what we need to do."

Design plans for construction of the compact’s disposal site have not yet been approved by environmental regulators.

Once the disposal facility accepts the low-level waste — worker clothing, glass, metal and other materials currently stored at nuclear power plants, hospitals, universities and research labs — Texas owns it and is liable for any possible future contamination after the facility closes.

Environmentalists are largely worried about toxins from the Texas site leaking into groundwater beneath the scrub brush land that’s brought oil prosperity to arid West Texas for nearly a century.

Waste Control Specialists contends it’ll be safe, and many local residents applaud any expansion as a way to bring more jobs and prosperity to the West Texas scrubland.

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.

Oct. 28, 2010

By Bob Cox
Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Opponents of a plan to expand the Comanche Peak nuclear power plant told a panel of administrative judges Thursday that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission should take more time to address their objections to a study on environmental issues surrounding the proposed expansion of the facility.

The three-judge panel headed by Ann Marshall Young heard arguments from attorneys for groups opposing Dallas-based Luminant’s plan to add two new reactors at the Comanche Peak plant near Glen Rose, southwest of Fort Worth.

NRC spokeswoman Lara Uselding said the panel will review the legal and technical merits of the objection raised to the draft environmental impact report prepared by the agency’s staff.

The preliminary ruling contained in the draft report found that there were no environmental issues that would preclude the NRC from issuing a license to Luminant to build and eventually operate the two new reactors.

Uselding said it could be two months or more before the judges rule on the validity of the objections raised by opponents of the project and whether to hold a full hearing on the issues.

Opponents of the Comanche Peak project argued that the NRC staff failed to address issues such as alternatives to building additional power plants and whether nuclear power is economically feasible.

Karen Hadden, executive director of the Austin-based Sustainable Energy and Economic Development Coalition, said it wasn’t clear that the objections would get a thorough hearing from the NRC.

"They seem more interested in creating hoops to jump over than getting real information" in the environmental impact report, Hadden said. "This kind of research upfront is what they’re supposed to do to protect the public."

Bob Cox, 817-390-7723

Constellation, officials working to keep CC3 project going

Wednesday, Oct. 20, 2010

By Meghan Russell,
Staff writer
Southern Maryland Newspapers Online

The nuclear ball is now in EDF’s court.

A letter from Constellation Energy to its UniStar Nuclear Energy partner went public on Friday as the company announced its proposal to sell its 50 percent investment of its nuclear venture in the hopes that Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant’s third reactor can move forward.

In the letter to Constellation’s partner, Electricite de France (EDF) SA, company vice Chairman Michael J. Wallace proposed transferring its 50 percent interest in UniStar, including the land where the third reactor is set to be built, for just $1. The company requested reimbursement of $117 million in generic development costs for the U.S. Evolutionary Power Reactor (EPR), just a fraction of the two companies’ joint investment of $817 million in the Calvert Cliffs 3 venture.

In addition, Constellation pledged its full support and cooperation in seeing through the transfer’s terms and assisting EDF however it can in bringing the reactor to Calvert.

"Having invested considerable time and resources into our partnership, we agree with you that there is significant market value in UniStar," Wallace’s letter states. "Our proposal provides a solution by which our companies can quickly resolve UniStar’s ownership structure, so that EDF can preserve and maximize UniStar’s value and advance the prospects of CC3 with confidence."

In the terms listed at the letter’s end, Wallace said that Constellation will continue to provide administrative services for a period of up to one year after the deal’s closing, when new terms will be discussed.

Furthermore, the option to sell $2 billion of fossil fuel energy to EDF — an issue that has raised concerns over their partnership’s future — is a separate issue altogether, Wallace continued, and Constellation will address it as such: "That commercial dispute should not be used to hold the prospect of CC3 hostage."

But even if EDF agreed to take the project under its wing, many skeptics, like the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, doubt the conditions are right for a "nuclear renaissance" and believe Calvert Cliffs 3 was doomed from the start.

"Calvert Cliffs’ demise was a result of several factors, the most important of which were: soaring construction cost estimates; increased and aggressive competition from other generation sources; falling electrical demand coupled with increased energy efficiency programs; serious reactor design deficiencies; and overreliance on government handouts," NIRS Executive Director Michael Marriotte said in a press release Thursday. "The Office of Management and Budget and the Department of Energy are responsible for none of these factors. In fact, their loan offer for Calvert Cliffs 3 was overly generous considering the overwhelming array of market forces and roadblocks facing this project."

Marriotte said the "simple reality" is that a nuclear renaissance in the U.S. will be impossible if new reactors remain too expensive to build and natural gas remains "dirt cheap" while renewable energy costs continue to decline and consumer demand remains on a downward spiral. The same forces acting against Calvert Cliffs will most likely cause the remaining nuclear reactor loan guarantees to fall through for the South Texas Project and Virgil C. Summer Nuclear Station reactor project in South Carolina as well.

Peter Bradford, a commissioner with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the former chairman of the New York State Public Service Commission, added, "The four pillars of the nuclear revival — underestimated costs, ignored risks, political ballyhoo and prodigious but inadequate subsidies — now make clear that we are dealing not with a renaissance but with a bubble. The main remaining question is just how much taxpayer money will go into keeping it inflated."

Constellation addressed the unfavorable conditions in its letter to EDF but also acknowledged a herd of Calvert Cliffs 3 supporters, hoping they might continue to fight for the project.

"We have had the firm support of the Maryland Congressional delegation, the Governor, our allies in labor and the public officials and the people of Calvert County," Wallace wrote. "House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md., 5th), in particular, has been a stalwart supporter of the project and has done and will continue to do all he can to improve conditions for the renaissance of new nuclear. And for this we are very grateful."

Hoyer said he is also optimistic about the third reactor. He, along with Gov. Martin O’Malley and Sens. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) and Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.), sent a letter to Mayo A. Shattuck III, president and CEO of Constellation, and Henri Proglio, chairman and CEO of EDF, on Friday.

The letter urged the two companies to engage in active negations immediately regarding Calvert Cliffs 3.

"The [third reactor] is extremely important to the State of Maryland, and especially the Fifth District, for its promise to create jobs and invest in the next generation of nuclear energy," Hoyer said in a press release.

Cardin, who also sees merit in the new nuclear future, said, "The quality jobs and economic opportunities for communities in Maryland are undeniable, but the benefits that next-generation nuclear facilities like this will bring to our nation are even greater. Nuclear energy is an essential component of a new, clean-energy economy and an energy-independent United States. Projects like [Calvert Cliffs 3] will strengthen our national security, economic security and our environment."

Former Republican governor and gubernatorial candidate Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr. has touted the project during campaign stops in Southern Maryland and has used its deterioration as further fuel in his run against O’Malley.

Ehrlich met last Thursday with several local business owners, mostly from the Lusby and Solomons area, who had been anticipating the arrival of 4,000 new workers and made plans to either expand or hire new employees. Now, along with Unit 3, those plans are on hold.

"Just last week, Martin O’Malley had the ear of the President of the United States – an extraordinary opportunity to make a personal appeal in support of this project," Ehrlich said in a statement released last Friday. "Instead, he put his reelection campaign ahead of the interests of everyday Marylanders who would benefit from the thousands of new jobs associated with this project."

Del. Anthony J. O’Donnell (R-Calvert, St. Mary’s), congressional candidate Charles Lollar and Calvert County Commissioner Jerry Clark (R) joined Ehrlich at the roundtable discussion in Solomons.

"We’re in desperate need of new revenues," O’Donnell said Monday night following a candidate forum in Leonardtown. "The business community is afraid they’ll need to pick up the slack through their taxes."

O’Donnell placed the blame of the project’s downfall on O’Malley, saying the governor’s attempts to extract rate relief from Constellation while the Maryland Public Service Commission reviewed the company’s merger with EDF delayed the project eight months. "We shouldn’t be here," O’Donnell said. "My assessment is this patient is on life support, but there’s a faint pulse."

mrussell(at)somdnews.com

October 20, 2010

Media Release

Oral Argument Oct. 21 In Bay City, Texas

Download this press release in pdf format for printing

Bay City, Texas Opponents of two proposed South Texas Project nuclear reactors will present their case at an Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB) panel on Oct. 21st in Bay City, Texas. The hearing will begin at 9 a.m. in the Bay City Civic Center, 201 7th St. in Bay City.

Attorney Bob Eye will represent SEED Coalition, Public Citizen and the South Texas Association for Responsible Energy. Among the concerns that will be raised in the South Texas Project Combined License (COL) proceeding is the co-location issue -would other reactors at the site be able to operate safely if a fire or a serious accident damaged one or more reactors? Another issue at the hearing will be the failure of the license applicant, NRG, to analyze cleaner, cheaper and safer energy alternatives.

New contentions have been filed based on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the proposed reactors. Twenty new contentions focus on the inadequate analysis of the need for power (14 subparts), alternatives to nuclear power to meet the stated purpose and need, and the effects of global warming on plant water use and water availability.

"Nuclear power is the most expensive way to generate electricity. Costs for proposed South Texas Project nuclear reactors have already tripled. The $18.2 billion estimate doesn’t include cost overruns from delay and construction problems, costs of radioactive waste disposal or decommissioning reactors. Nuclear reactors simply don’t make sense financially," said Karen Hadden, Director of the Sustainable Energy and Economic Development (SEED) Coalition. "In fact, Constellation Energy just withdrew their license application for a Maryland nuclear reactor due to high costs."

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) 2009 State of the Market report says "Estimated net revenues for nuclear and coal resources were also insufficient to support new entry in 2009."

The Associated Press recently reported, "Even companies that are finalists for federal loan guarantees, NRG Energy and Constellation Energy, announced recently that they have nearly stopped spending on their projects… Analysts say low natural gas prices are making the project uneconomic. NRG chief executive David Crane said he will not pursue the company’s two-reactor project in South Texas if gas prices stay low, even if his project is offered a loan guarantee."

"Austin decided not to participate in the reactor project due to expected delay and cost overruns. San Antonio’s CPS Energy got a good look at the return on investment and pulled way back. The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board needs to realize that there are safer, more affordable ways to supply our power," said David Power, an expert in the case.

"Today Texas has excess energy capacity and leads the nation in wind generation. Solar costs are plummeting and cheap gas can be used to back up renewable solar and wind power. The proposed reactors are a hazard to our health, safety and our pocketbooks," said Power.

The ASLB is the independent body within the NRC that presides over proceedings involving the licensing of civilian nuclear facilities, such as nuclear power plants.

The session is open for public observation, but participation will be limited to the parties admitted to the proceeding, the public interest groups, the applicant – STP Nuclear Operating Company – and NRC staff. Early arrival is suggested to allow for security screening for all members of the public interested in attending.

STP Nuclear Operating Company submitted a COL application Sept. 20, 2007, seeking permission to construct and operate two new nuclear reactors at the South Texas Project site near Bay City. The ASLB granted intervenor status and an opportunity for a hearing to the Sustainable Energy and Economic Development SEED Coalition, the South Texas Association for Responsible Energy, and Public Citizen.

The groups have submitted objections, or contentions, challenging the COL application. The ASLB panel will hear oral argument on several matters: two motions to dismiss the groups’ admitted contention; the groups’ request to file additional contentions based on the NRC staff’s draft Environmental Impact Statement; and the groups’ request for access to a draft NRC document regarding new reactor reviews.