Archive for the ‘Nukes’ Category

February 17, 2010

By Tracy Idell Hamilton and Anton Caputo
San Antonio Express-News

CPS Energy expects to announce a settlement today in its $32 billion lawsuit against its partner in a proposed nuclear project, Nuclear Innovation North America.

Utility officials confirmed they are planning to make an announcement this afternoon, barring any last-minute breakdown in negotiations.

A settlement could put the proposed expansion of the South Texas Project back in the forefront for federal loan guarantees that both partners say are crucial to its fate.

The project once was considered a front-runner for the taxpayer-backed guarantees, but its chances diminished in the wake of rising cost estimates, shrinking political support and high-stakes litigation.

On Tuesday, the Obama administration announced the first of the loan guarantees, pledging $8 billion for two new reactors to be built at an existing nuclear power plant in Burke, Ga.

The settlement also could clarify whether CPS plans to stay in the project or withdraw, allowing NINA to find new partners.

CPS acting General Manager Jelynne LeBlanc-Burley declined to comment.

"We’re still finalizing the details," spokeswoman Lisa Lewis said. "But we hope to have more to share tomorrow."

NRG spokesman David Knox wouldn’t comment on the settlement announcement, but earlier in the day issued a statement that the parties were working hard to come to an agreement that could push the project back into contention for the loan guarantees.

NRG owns most of NINA.

In the wake of CPS’ lawsuit, NRG CEO David Crane had said NRG would back out of the project if the loan guarantees didn’t come through.

CPS and NRG, along with Austin Energy, are partners in the two existing nuclear reactors outside Bay City. Austin Energy chose not to take part in the two-reactor expansion, citing cost and risk.

In August, at Mayor Julián Castro’s prodding, CPS agreed to sell about half its stake in the proposed expansion.

Before those efforts began, however, news that the utility’s nuclear development team kept a significantly higher cost estimate from its board exploded into public view, upending a planned vote by the City Council to pump another $400 million into the project.

The expansion had been sold to the council and the public as a $10 billion deal, with another $3 billion in financing costs. The higher estimate kept hidden by executives was as much as $4 billion more.

CPS already has spent about $370 million on engineering and permitting and still is shelling out about $1 million a day to keep from going into default.

In December, it asked a judge to clarify its rights if it were to pull out of the deal, including the fate of the $370 million and half of the site and infrastructure, which CPS says has a value of at least $1 billion.

NRG and NINA argued that if CPS walked away, it would forfeit everything. A state judge disagreed, but sent the parties back to the table to work out the value of CPS’ investment should it choose to bow out of the project.

Negotiations, which recently moved to Austin, where they were mediated by the chairman of the Public Utilities Commission, have centered on how much that ownership is worth, in either a dollar value or a percentage of the project.

Chairman Barry Smitherman said he stepped in to help break the impasse, with the full backing of Gov. Rick Perry, because it was important for the state to get nuclear going again.

February 15, 2010

By Robert Alvarez
CommonDreams.org

When President Obama rolled out his proposed budget to Congress for the coming year, he said it would build "on the largest investment in clean energy in history." But Obama’s definition of "clean energy" includes a commitment to help companies garner billions of dollars in loans for nuclear reactor construction. And, unfortunately, nuclear energy isn’t safe or clean and it’s too costly for the nation.

The government’s role in the energy marketplace is clear in its loan-guarantee programs. This year, the Energy Department proposes to provide $166 billion in federal energy loan guarantees to aid the ailing auto industry and help finance nuclear, coal, and renewable energy projects. Sadly, the nuclear industry is slated to get the largest–and riskiest–share of that support.

Wall Street has refused to finance nuclear power for more than 30 years, rendering new construction impossible. The Obama administration, in a move to placate Senate Republicans, proposes to fund new power reactors with some $54.5 billion in federal loan guarantees. Because of the way the guarantees are structured, the actual loans will be made by the Federal Financing Bank out of the U.S. Treasury. Last year, the Government Accountability Office estimated that these loans have more than a 50-50 chance of failing. Because of skyrocketing costs, these loans might pay for five reactors–and merely expand the nation’s electrical supply by less than 1 percent.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration is moving to terminate funds for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste disposal site in Nevada. After nearly 30 years of trying, disposal of high-level radioactive waste is proving to be extremely difficult, so Obama has convened a "blue ribbon" panel of experts to recommend what to do with it. The accumulation of spent power-reactor fuel poses new safety issues, which will be the reality for several decades to come. Spent fuel pools–which currently contain about four times what their original designs envisioned­are more vulnerable to terrorist attacks than reactors.

In 2004, a National Academy of Sciences panel concluded that drainage of water from a spent fuel pond by an act of malice could lead to a catastrophic radiological fire. A year earlier, my colleagues and I pointed out these risks could be greatly reduced by putting most of the spent reactor fuel into dry, hardened concrete and steel containers–as nations like Germany have already done.

Meanwhile, despite Obama’s rhetoric about reshaping America’s energy future, he’s asking for a budget that would have the Energy Department continue to spend 10 times more on nuclear weapons than energy conservation.

Even with economic stimulus funding, the department’s actual energy functions comprise only 15 percent of its total budget and continue to take a backseat to propping up the nations’ large and antiquated nuclear weapons infrastructure. In fact, the Energy Department’s proposed budget for the 2011 fiscal year, minus stimulus money, looks a whole lot like it did in the Bush administration, and as it has during several presidents’ tenures.

More than 65 percent of our energy budget covers military nuclear activities and the cleanup of weapons sites. Its single largest expenditure maintains some 9,200 intact nuclear warheads. Even though the department hasn’t built a new nuclear weapon for 20 years, its weapons complex is spending at rates comparable to that during the height of the nuclear arms race in the 1950s.

There’s currently a 15-year backlog of discarded nuclear warheads. Yet, Obama’s proposed budget would halve spending on weapons dismantlement over the next five years. The physical elimination of nuclear weapons continues to have a low priority in Obama administration because it competes for funds to build a new weapons production complex–a "holy grail" of the nuclear weapons establishment.

The Energy Department faces a brave new world in which, for the first time, it is being called on to employ millions of Americans to create a new energy future for the United States. It doesn’t appear that the Obama administration will meet this challenge. Instead, more of the nation’s tapped-out treasure is going for costly nuclear power, and nuclear weapons we don’t need and could never use.

Robert Alvarez, an Institute for Policy Studies senior scholar, served as senior policy adviser to the Energy Department’s secretary and deputy assistant secretary for national security and the environment from 1993 to 1999.
www.ips-dc.org

January 30, 2010

Columns: Harvey Wasserman
Free Press

Amidst utter chaos in the atomic reactor industry, Team Obama is poised to vastly expand a bitterly contested loan guarantee program that may cost far more than expected, both financially and politically.

The long-stalled, much-hyped "Renaissance" in atomic power has failed to find private financing. New construction projects are opposed for financial reasons by fiscal conservatives such as the Heritage Foundation and National Taxpayers Union, and by a national grassroots safe energy campaign that has already beaten such loan guarantees three times.

New reactor designs are being challenged by regulators in both the US and Europe. Key projects, new and old, are engulfed in political/financial uproars in Florida, Texas, Maryland, Vermont, New Jersey and elsewhere.

And 53 years after the opening of the first commercial reactor at Shippingport, Pennsylvania, Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu is now convening a "Blue Ribbon" commission on managing radioactive waste, for which the industry still has no solution. Though stacked with reactor advocates, the commission may certify the death certificate for Nevada’s failed Yucca Mountain dump.

In 2005 George W. Bush’s Energy Bill embraced appropriations for an $18.5 billion loan guarantee program, which the Obama administration now may want to triple. But the DOE has been unable to minister to a chaotic industry in no shape to proceed with new reactor construction. As many as five government agencies are negotiating over interest rates, accountability, capital sourcing, scoring, potential default and accident liability, design flaws and other fiscal, procedural and regulatory issues, any or all of which could wind up in the courts.

In 2007 a national grassroots uprising helped kill a proposed addition of $50 billion in guarantees, then beat them twice again.

When Obama endorsed "safe, clean nuclear power plants" and "clean coal" in this year’s State of the Union, more than
10,000 MoveOn.org members slammed that as the worst moment of the speech.

The first designated recipient of the residual Bush guarantees may be at the Vogtle site in Waynesboro, Georgia, where two reactors now operate. Georgia regulators have ruled that consumers must pay for two proposed new reactors even as they are being built.

But initial estimates of $2-3 billion per unit have soared to $8 billion and more, even long before construction begins. Standardized designs have not been certified. On-going technical challenges remind potential investors that the first generation of reactors cost an average of more than double their original estimates.

The Westinghouse AP-1000 model, currently slated for Vogtle—and for another site in South Carolina—has become an unwanted front runner.

Owned by Japan’s Toshiba, Westinghouse has been warned by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission of serious design problems relating to hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes.

The issues are not abstract. Florida’s Turkey Point plant took a direct hit from Hurricane Andrew in 1991, sustaining more than $100 million in damage while dangerously losing off-site communication and power, desperately relying on what Mary Olson of NIRS terms "shaky back-up power." Ohio’s Perry reactor was damaged by a 1986 earthquake that knocked out surrounding roads and bridges. A state commission later warned that evacuation under such conditions could be impossible.

Long considered a loyal industry lap-dog, the NRC’s willingness to send Westinghouse back to the drawing board indicates the AP-1000’s problems are serious. That they could be expensive and time-consuming to correct means the Vogtle project may prove a losing choice for the first loan guarantees.

South Texas is also high among candidates for loan money. But San Antonio, a primary partner in a two-reactor project there, has been rocked by political fallout from soaring cost estimates. As the San Antonio city council recently prepared to approve financing, it learned the price had jumped by $4 billion, to a staggering $17-18 billion. Angry debate over who-knew-what-when has led to the possibility that the city could pull out altogether.

In Florida, four reactors have been put on hold by a plummeting economy and the shifting political aims of Governor Charlie Crist. Crist originally supported two reactors proposed by Florida Power & Light to be built at Turkey Point, south of Miami, and two more proposed near Tampa by Progress Energy. State regulators voted to allow the utilities to charge ratepayers before construction began, or even a license was approved.

But Crist is now running for US Senate, and has distanced himself from the increasingly unpopular utilities. With votes from two new appointees, the Public Service Commission has nixed more than $1 billion in rate hikes. The utilities have in turn suspended preliminary reactor construction (though they say they will continue to pursue licenses).

At Calvert Cliffs, Maryland, the financially tortured Constellation Energy has committed to the French AREVA’s European Power Reactor, now under serious challenge by regulators in France, Finland and Great Britain. An EPR under construction in Finland is now at least three years behind schedule, and more than $3 billion over budget.

Meanwhile, at Entergy’s 30-year-old Yankee reactor In Vermont, a series of radiation and information leaks have severely damaged prospects for re-licensing. The decision will soon be made by a deeply divided state legislature. "It would be better for the industry to let Vermont Yankee die a quiet death in the Green Mountain state," says Deb Katz of the grassroots Citizens Awareness Network. "With radioactive leaks, lies and systemic mismanagement, Entergy is no poster child for a new generation of nukes."

Meanwhile, New Jersey may require operators of the aging Oyster Creek reactor to install sizable towers to protect what’s left of the severely damaged Barnegat Bay, which the plant uses for cooling. Though the requirement may not be enforced for as much as seven years, the towers’ high cost could prompt a shut-down of the relatively small plant.

This unending stream of technical, financial and political downfalls could doom the "reactor renaissance" to history’s radioactive dump heap. "President Obama needs to remember what Candidate Obama promised: no more taxpayer subsidies for nuclear power," said Michael Mariotte, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service. "Renewables and energy efficiency provide both greater carbon emissions reductions and more jobs per dollar spent than nuclear. Unlike nuclear power, they are relatively quick to install, and are actually safe and clean."

Indeed, despite Congressional and White House support for these latest proposed loan guarantees, the grassroots fight over both old and new nukes grows fiercer by the day.

In the long run, this alleged "nuclear renaissance" could prove to be little more than a rhetorical relapse.

———-

Harvey Wasserman’s SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH is at www.harveywasserman.com, along with his HISTORY OF THE US. He is Senior Advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service, and Senior Editor of www.freepress.org, where this article first appeared.

For Immediate Release:
January 22, 2010

Contact:
Karen Hadden, SEED Coalition, 512-797-8481

State Representative Lon Burnam Asks Tough Questions of Compact Commission

Austin, TX Today State Representative Lon Burnam (District 90, Ft. Worth) called on the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission to answer tough questions regarding their proposed rule that would open Texas up to becoming the nation’s radioactive waste dump. The Compact includes only the states of Texas and Vermont, but the draft import/export rule that is prime on today’s agenda essentially invites with open arms radioactive waste from the rest of the country and possibly the world. The waste would go to a site in Andrews County in West Texas that is owned by Waste Control Specialists (WCS).

“Turning Texas into the nation’s radioactive dumping ground so that WCS can make billions of dollars is irresponsible, especially since it will endanger public health and vital groundwater resources for thousands of years to come” said Representative Burnam. “Strong controls must be adopted now.”

“The Compact was formed to manage low-level radioactive waste generated in the Compact states, Texas and Vermont, so why is the Commission developing rules to import waste from around the country?” asked Representative Burnam, as he began with ten hard-hitting questions regarding the draft rule.

Texas and Vermont, the only two Compact parties, have expressed a need to dispose of at least 6 million cubic feet of radioactive waste in the next 50 years. Yet this volume, estimated by the Texas Compact Commission, is nearly three times more than the capacity of the site.

“If the Commission develops a rule for import, isn’t the Commission making the explicit assumption that the capacity of the site will be expanded and that the license will be amended for expansion? How can the Commission make such an assumption without a technical review of the site?” inquired Representative Burnam. He expressed concerns as to how the Commission can reconcile the discrepancy between Texas and Vermont’s estimated disposal needs and the stated capacity of site.

The State of Texas becomes liable for radioactive waste as soon as it comes across the border into our state and nuclear energy expert Dr. Arjun Makhijani has stated that increased environmental impacts would result from importing radioactive waste from outside of the Compact. Leaks from the dump site could lead to health threatening radioactive contamination. With significant potential impacts the rule should be considered a ‘major environmental rule’ and Burnam inquired as to why the Commission has not deemed it so, and then asked, “Why does the Commission not discuss the liability implications for Texas resulting from the import rule?”

Representative Burnam and safe energy advocates are calling on the Compact Commission to exercise its power and authority to protect and promote the “health, safety and welfare” of Texans as the law requires. The Commission should not allow waste to be imported from outside Texas and Vermont and should prevent Texas becoming the nation’s radioactive waste dumping ground.

The Compact meeting will be streamed live at: www.house.state.tx.us/fx/av/live/extlivecmte24.ram
Representative Burnam’s ten questions, SEED Coalition’s Comments on the draft rule, and supporting expert analysis are available online at www.nukefreetexas.org. SEED Coalition’s comments are endorsed by Public Citizen, Environment Texas, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, WE CAN, No Bonds for Billionaires and the South Texas Association for Responsible Energy.

January 11, 2010

By KATHERINE LING
Greenwire

While President Obama’s fiscal 2011 budget proposal is expected to sound a death knell for the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, the administration has so far failed to launch the blue-ribbon commission it promised almost a year ago to decide on a waste-disposal alternative.

Hanging in the balance is 60,000 metric tons of commercial and defense nuclear waste.

"I find it quite disconcerting that a commission with a proper broad charter to look at this problem hasn’t been created," said Arjun Makhijani, president of Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, a nonprofit opposed to nuclear power.

"I think the bigger danger is that inaction will simply lead us back to Yucca Mountain," Makhijani said, adding, "Leaving the problem to fester is not good."

No one expected the issue would be left to fester last February when Obama dramatically cut funding for the Nevada repository in his fiscal 2010 budget request and announced his intention to form a commission to chart an alternative waste-management solution. Energy Secretary Steven Chu quickly followed up, telling Congress last March that the commission would be formed "ideally" within a month and would craft recommendations by the end of 2009.

Last week, Chu responded to questions about the commission by saying the Energy Department is "working as hard and fast as we can on that."

The lawmaker who has led opposition to the Yucca project, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), is confident that the administration’s delay won’t translate into a revival of the Nevada project. "The administration has been very clear that Yucca will never be built," Reid spokeswoman Regan Lachapelle said. "Senator Reid understands that it takes time to assemble the highly qualified people needed to determine how best to dispose of the nation’s nuclear waste."

But despite agreements between Reid and the administration, Yucca Mountain remains — by law — the disposal site for U.S. nuclear waste. The DOE repository license has not been withdrawn, nor has the department moved to do so, according to an industry source. Meanwhile, Reid is facing a tough re-election battle this year.

Moreover, some say that disagreement over whether the blue-ribbon panel should consider Yucca Mountain as a potential waste management solution is one reason the administration has taken so long to get the commission going. Qualified candidates, several sources say, do not agree Yucca should be taken off the table.

"I think it is too early to predict what the long-term prospects for Yucca Mountain will be, but the project certainly appears to be near death right now," said Ed Lyman, a senior scientist for the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists.

"Ultimately, the U.S. will have to restart the siting process for a nuclear waste repository, and whether Yucca Mountain will be a viable candidate again remains to be seen, given its technical and political challenges."

Ramifications

Lyman said the Yucca project suspension "has created a vacuum in the nation’s nuclear waste disposal policy that is allowing a lot of silly ideas … to flourish." Among those ideas, he said, is a push for reprocessing spent fuel.

Meanwhile, Lyman said, new nuclear power plants are being proposed that will create even more waste than the nation’s fleet of 104 reactors.

"It will be a risky proposition if the U.S. goes forward with the construction of a large number of new nuclear plants if there is no credible plan to safely dispose of the waste they will generate, and development of such a plan will take time and effort," Lyman said.

On the other hand, Derrick Freeman, senior director of legislative programs at the Nuclear Energy Institute, maintains that the delay in getting the commission launched should not affect the power industry’s plans for more plants, since the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has ruled that plants’ waste may be stored on-site for at least 100 years.

But while the federal efforts lag, the industry — and therefore its customers — is still paying fees on electricity generated by nuclear plants into a waste fund that currently has no objective. The industry wants that to end.

"Yucca has been something that DOE has been working on for the last 20 years, funded through our fees, and now we continue to pay fees into the waste fund," Freeman said. "If the administration does defund or eliminate Yucca, we should be able to suspend our fees or put them into an escrow account."

Several Republicans, including Sen. John McCain of Arizona, have introduced measures to do just that, but to no avail. The problem: The fees — worth about $750 million a year — go to the Treasury. Take them away and Congress would need to cut spending or find alternative sources of revenue. On paper, the waste fund is worth about $25 billion.

Another financial ramification of delay is the increasing federal financial liability.

Under DOE’s contract with utilities, the government was supposed to have started taking spent fuel from power plants by 1998. Utilities have so far recovered more than $7 billion for the partial breach of contract from Treasury’s general judgment fund.

A key question: Would a federal defunding of the Yucca Mountain project without providing an alternative mean the government has breached the utility contract? NEI is examining the matter and has not ruled out taking legal action.

There are also nine power plants that have been decommissioned but still have 2,800 metric tons of on-site used fuel, said Brian O’Connell, director of the nuclear waste program at the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners.

"The properties would otherwise be turned back for productive use but for the stranded nuclear waste," O’Connell said. "We subscribe to the belief that it is economic and safer to collect all that stuff in the nine locations and put them in a central site that is better designed, managed and operated for that purpose."

‘Not some political football’

While a federal commission should be formed quickly to address questions of waste storage, financial liability and a final depository, most experts say determining a U.S. course on nuclear waste should not be hasty.

An energy bill that cleared the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last year requires the blue-ribbon commission to provide a report within two years of its establishment. While some Republicans pushed for a six-month timeline, Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) said that was too little time.

IEER’s Makhijani and others agree, although Makhijani said the commission should not be part of any energy bill.

"This is a serious thing. This is not some political football," he said.

The panel should examine a wide range of issues for a repository before considering any dump site, Makhijani said. Such an examination would require scientists, engineers and policy experts. But companies and groups with stakes in the issue say they are in the dark as to who might be asked to join the panel.

Among the names being floated for the commission: former Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.), who has participated in several commissions, including the Iraq Study Group, and is now president and director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and Shirley Ann Jackson, a former NRC chairwoman and current president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Another big question about the commission: Would it be established under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which requires a public record and hearings, and formally provides its report to Congress? The 9/11 Commission, which Hamilton co-chaired, worked under that law.

The panel could also be established through executive branch authority. The energy advisory committee headed by then-Vice President Dick Cheney worked that way. It was the subject of much controversy and lawsuits regarding the participants in the dozens of private meetings held before the final report — which heavily influenced the 2001 and 2005 energy bills — was published in 2001.

Copyright 2010 E&E Publishing. All Rights Reserved.

For more news on energy and the environment, visit www.greenwire.com.