Archive for the ‘Nukes’ Category

September 30, 2011

Atomic Safety and Licensing Board order – allowing a full hearing on the foreign ownership of South Texas Project reactors

• Read Foreign Control Release and related ASLB Order

Saturday, Sept. 24, 2011

By Rob Pavey, Staff Writer
Agusta Chronicle

Those deliberations – which begin Tuesday – are the latest in a series of firsts for an expansion that could bring 3,500 construction jobs to Georgia.

Nuclear Regulatory Comm­ission Chairman Gregory Jaczko noted that the Vogtle application is the first to reach the final steps toward obtaining the first "combined operating license" that would allow both the construction and operation of new reactors.

"This mandatory hearing on the first COL application represents a critical step in the NRC’s license review process," he said.

The $14.8 billion Vogtle project, if licensed, would also have the first new commercial power reactors to be built in the U.S. in a generation – and would be the first project in the nation to utilize the new AP1000 modular reactor design created by Westingthouse.

"I look forward to working with my colleagues as we approach this significant assignment of delving into the adequacy of the NRC staff’s review of this application," Jaczko said of the hearing, which will include presentations from Southern Nuclear experts and NRC staff members.

Although testimony will be Tuesday and possibly Wednesday, the commission will not rule on the request this week, said Scott Burnell, an NRC headquarters spokesman.

"This is more information gathering and discussion," he said. "The authority to issue the license lies with the director of the NRC Office of New Reactors, and he would be able to make a final decision once the commission issues its findings."

Southern Nuclear has passed most major milestones in the licensing process – such as safety and environmental reviews – but cannot receive a combined operating license until the NRC formally agrees to certify the design of the AP1000 reactors.

Although the NRC has indicated it will recommend certification for the design, that final step has not yet occurred. "The staff expects to give the commission that proposed final rule in the near future, but we don’t have a specific date."

The AP1000 has been praised for its passive cooling system in which water stored above the reactor can flow into the unit by gravity, and without electricity or pumps. The first such units in the world are already under construction in China, where four new units are being added to existing nuclear plants.

If the certification rule is approved late this year, it could allow a decision on the Vogtle license early next year, Burnell said.

Southern Nuclear officials, meanwhile, are optimistic that all those issues could be resolved earlier.

"We still believe we will receive the COL around the end of the year," company spokesman Steve Higginbottom said. "We can see the finish line."

Some work is already under way at the Burke County site, as allowed under a federal Early Site Permit that enabled site preparation to begin before a formal license is granted. Those efforts will help the construction of Units 3 and 4 move along faster, with a current schedule that calls for bringing the new units online in 2016 and 2017.

One other first for the Vogtle project involves Southern Nuclear’s acquisition of the first-ever federal loan guarantee announced by the Obama Administration in February 2010.

The agreement, for which final terms remain under negotiation, will allow up to $8.33 billion in financing for the project. One of the conditions of receiving that financial commitment is the final approval for the combined operating license.

Although the NRC’s scrutiny this week of the Vogtle application is the first, another nearby project isn’t far behind.

SCANA Corp. is planning two new reactors at its V.C. Summer Nuclear Plant in South Carolina, and is scheduled to go before the NRC to discuss its final license request Oct. 11-12, Burnell said.

Last week, Moody’s Investors Service downgraded the ratings of SCANA Corp., citing, among other reasons, "the heightened risk associated with a large nuclear construction program extending through 2019 that is expected to be about 50 percent debt financed and will pressure future financial metrics."

Higginbottom said there have been no downgrades of Southern Co. ratings related specifically to nuclear.

"We don’t believe the SCANA downgrade will have any impact on us," he said. "Moody’s downgrade of SCANA was primarily a result of the size of the project to the size of the company."

Southern Nuclear, owned by Southern Co., operates the plant for its co-owners, including Georgia Power Co., which owns 45.7 percent of Vogtle. The remaining ownership is split among Oglethorpe Power Corp., the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia and Dalton Utilities.

Photo: Eric Schultz/Associated Press
The Tennessee Valley Authority’s never-completed Bellefonte nuclear plant in Hollywood, Ala.

August 18, 2011

By MATTHEW L. WALD
New York Times

The directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority unanimously approved a plan on Thursday to finish the partly built Bellefonte 1 nuclear reactor, a project on which the authority spent billions of dollars in the 1970s and ’80s but dropped in 1988 because of cost overruns and declining estimates of power demand.

The revived reactor, in Hollywood, Ala., is not expected to be completed before 2018 to 2020 — or about a half-century after the project was first announced, and following nearly a quarter-century of limbo.

"The T.V.A, has wrestled with the fate of Bellefonte since 1988," said Marilyn A. Brown, a board member who is a professor of energy policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Public Policy. The decision comes at a time when other countries, Germany and Switzerland, for example, are leaning away from nuclear power and closing older plants, after the meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi reactor complex in Japan in March.

The long-anticipated "nuclear renaissance" in the United States appears to have stalled as well, with only four reactors currently being built, two in Georgia and two in South Carolina.

Read more at the New York Times website….

September 21, 2011

San Antonio Current Blog – The Que Que

Remember when we suggested Rick Perry was looking for stooges to help turn one of his top funder’s nuclear dumps into a national enterprise? Well, he had to look no further than former CPS Energy CEO Milton Lee. Perry’s new appointments to the state commission governing the two-state Texas-Vermont Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission, announced last week, brought in a slate of new faces who will help determine the future of radioactive-waste dumping in Texas — and how much Dallas billionaire Perry donor Harold Simmons will make on the state’s favored Waste Control Specialists’ site in Andrews County.

Lee, who made his exit as CEO of San Antonio’s city-owned power utility last year, enjoyed a rocky tenure. One of the chief architects of the proposed expansion of the South Texas (nuclear) Project, now on hold as the Fukushima radioactive dust continues to settle, Lee helped implement years of aggravated attrition at CPS, forcing the exit of hundreds of employees and prompting a lawsuit from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers alleging dozens of cases of sex-, age-, and race-based discrimination.

Karen Hadden, director of the Austin-based SEED Coalition, said Lee’s appointment to the radwaste commission raises serious questions, given the gravity of decisions the commission will make in the coming years – namely, whether or not to make WCS the nation’s radwaste dumping grounds. Lee’s track record for environmental concern, she claims, is dubious, pointing to Lee’s role in helping form the Climate Policy Group, which consisted mostly of publicly-owned utilities heavily invested in coal power. Under Lee, the utility spent more than $120,000 lobbying against cap-and-trade policies through member dues to the CPG and trips to Washington D.C.

What’s notable, but unsurprising, is whom Perry failed to reappoint — Bobby Gregory, the commission’s persistent opposing voice, who had been a thorn in the side of radwaste expansionists. Perry had tried to coax Gregory off the radwaste commission by offering him a prestigious board-of-regents appointment, which would have conveniently required him to step down from the radwaste commission before it voted on whether to open up the West Texas dump to waste from an additional 34 states, something Gregory openly opposed (the commission ultimately passed the proposal).

Fri Sep 16, 2011

By MARK DUNPHY
Irish Weather Online

Damaged Fukushima Nuclear Plant

Radioactive Substances May Return To Japanese Coast In 20-30 Years

A new study shows radioactive substances which leaked into the sea after March’s Fukushima crisis could return to Japanese coasts in 20 to 30 years, local media reported on Friday.

The research investigation was carried out by the Meteorological Research Institute and the Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry, indicating that the leaked radioactive cesium is likely to circulate through the northern Pacific Ocean in a clockwise pattern before returning to Japan’s coast line in two or three decades, the Kyodo news agency reported.

The study also showed that the estimated amount of radioactive cesium-137 which was directly released into the sea from March until the end of May was about 3,500 terabecquerels. It also estimated that about 10,000 terabecquerels of additional cesium-137 dropped into the ocean after it was released into the air.

Ocean currents are expected to disperse the radioactive substance eastward and into the northern Pacific Ocean. According to the research, the current from around the Philippines would carry the cesium back to the country after previously shifting southwestward.

With an estimated half life of about 30 years, studies have shown that cesium-137 can cause cancer as it accumulates in the body’s muscle system once inside the human body.
High levels of radioactive cesium have also been found in Japanese beef. The latest case occurred last week in the country’s Iwate Prefecture, located in the Tohoku region of Honshu Island, as tests showed that two of eight beef cattle being shipped exceeded the government’s allowable limit of 500 becquerels of cesium per kilogram (2.25 pounds).
In July, radioactive cesium was found in straw fed to cattle at a farm in Minamisoma, Fukushima Prefecture with an average of 75,000 becquerels of the radioactive isotope per kilogram (2.25 pounds), which is about 56 times the allowable limit.

Japan has been facing an ongoing nuclear crisis since the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was severely damaged on March 11 when a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and a subsequent tsunami devastated the country. The disaster disabled the cooling systems of the plant, and radioactive elements leaked into the sea and were later found in water, air and food products in some parts of Japan.

At least 23,482 people were killed, while 8,069 people remain missing. There are still more than 88,000 people who are staying in shelters in 21 prefectures around Japan.