Archive for the ‘Nukes’ Category

December 24, 2009

By MATTHEW L. WALD
New York Times

WASHINGTON – When experts on power grid reliability asked themselves recently how a cleaner energy future would look, seven of eight regional councils imagined how their systems would work with 10 percent wind power.

Only one, representing the southeastern United States, chose a radically different option: doubling nuclear power capacity.

Thirty years after the American nuclear industry abandoned scores of half-built plants because of soaring costs and operating problems like the Three Mile Island accident, skepticism persists over whether the technology is worth investing in.

Yet the pendulum may be swinging back. The 104 plants now running have sharply raised their output, emboldening utilities across the country to make a case for building new ones.

And the industry is about to get a big boost. In the next few days, the Energy Department plans to announce the first of $18.5 billion in loan guarantees for building new reactors.

The guarantees were authorized in a bill passed by Congress in 2005.

It has taken four years for the department to set up a system to evaluate applications and determine how much the borrowers will be charged for the guarantees to compensate the government for taking the risk.

Industry experts think the first guarantee will go to the Southern Company to build two units at its Vogtle nuclear plant near Augusta, Ga.

The money will flow amid a national credit squeeze and intense jockeying among the nation’s wind, solar, geothermal and nuclear sectors. Each is trying to cast itself as an ideal "clean" energy option as the nation moves toward reining in the carbon dioxide emissions linked to global warming.

All of these sources could potentially benefit under a cap-and-trade system that is being considered in Congress as part of climate change legislation. Such a system would set a ceiling on carbon dioxide emissions and allow trading of pollution permits, handicapping the carbon-intensive coal and natural gas sectors.

Historically Republicans have been more enthusiastic than Democrats about nuclear power. So as the climate bill winds its way through the Senate, some Democratic members are seeking to add to the $18.5 billion in loan guarantees for the nuclear industry to attract Republicans and some industrial-state Democrats. (The House version passed in June, 219 to 212.)

Some of the foremost Congressional climate change campaigners are unenthusiastic.

Representative Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who has hounded the nuclear industry for decades over safety questions and who is a sponsor of the House bill, does not favor direct aid to the nuclear industry. He argues that a cap-and-trade system would give the nuclear sector the only boost it deserves.

If that system goes into effect, he said, nuclear power "will be able to compete more effectively in a new marketplace. How effectively they can compete is going to be the question."

Others see combining a cap-and-trade system with a nuclear aid package as a sensible tactic to get Congress to address environmental problems.

"One can argue it certainly is bringing about an unusual marriage of interests here," said Philip R. Sharp, an Indiana Democrat who served in the House of Representatives from 1975 to 1995 and led a House committee with jurisdiction over the electric system.

"It is one of the potential paths for actually getting real action and real legislation", said Mr. Sharp, who now heads the nonpartisan group Resources for the Future.

Economic issues have helped scramble alliances on the state and local level, too. Because new reactors create so many jobs and big tax revenue, the Democratic governors of Maryland and Ohio are working hard to get them built in their states.

State legislatures from Louisiana to South Dakota and local governments from Port Gibson, Miss., to Oswego, N.Y., are also on record favoring new reactors.

Peter A. Bradford, a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission who is now vice chairman of the Union of Concerned Scientists, questions the wisdom of direct aid to the industry.

Unlike cap and trade, in which industries buy and sell the right to release carbon dioxide in a market-oriented system, he said, the loan guarantees finance projects that the private sector deems too risky.

The government would be "picking some winners and bestowing a lot of taxpayer support on them," he said.

By Mr. Bradford’s count, of 28 reactors that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission now lists as planned, half have had major delays, large increases in estimated cost or have been canceled.

If new plants built with government guarantees prove to be a commercial success, the program costs taxpayers nothing; if they prove too expensive to finish or are completed but cannot earn enough to repay the loans, the taxpayer is on the hook.

Complicating the challenge, the forthcoming loan guarantees amount to only $18.5 billion, and the nuclear industry says it needs tens of billions more.

President Obama’s energy secretary, Steven Chu, acknowledged that the sum was small. He said it could finance at most perhaps one plant for each new reactor design, making it hard to determine which design was most practical.

"If I were a power company, maybe one of each would not be helpful," he said. He suggested that the nuclear industry would need to build two or three of each.

But Dr. Chu insists that nuclear power will be an important piece of any climate solution.

"We have a dormant nuclear industry," he said. "We have to start it up in a way that gives the people who are going to make investments the confidence that this is economically viable."

Mindful of the challenges posed by global warming, some environmentalists are cautiously evaluating their positions on nuclear power.

"There is an increasing number of people who have spent their lives as environmental advocates who believe that carbon is such an urgent problem that they have to rethink their skepticism about nuclear power," said Jonathan Lash, the president of the World Resources Institute, who puts himself in that category.

"But there are many people who are passionate environmentalists who are also passionate opponents of nuclear power, and remain so," he said.

Among the foes is Karen Hadden, executive director of the Sustainable Energy and Economic Development Coalition in Austin, Tex., which is fighting a nuclear project there that is in line for a loan guarantee. While she strongly favors carbon limits, she said, she opposes construction of reactors.

She warned that money for solar, wind and geothermal projects could get siphoned off "in these multibillion-dollar projects that may or may not ever get built."

Daniel L. Roderick, senior vice president for nuclear plant projects at GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy, a partnership between General Electric and Hitachi of Japan, said that a year and a half ago, there were expectations that more than 20 units would be under construction by now in the United States. "That number is currently zero," he said.

Nonetheless, G.E. and other companies have invested tens of millions of dollars in plans for reactors they hope to build around the world, including dozens in the United States.

December 11, 2009

Forrest Wilder
Forrest for the Trees
Texas Observer Blog

After two days of often-contentious hearings, the compact commission postponed a decision on rules governing the import and export of radioactive waste to and from Texas.

The decision to put the vote off for 30 days came this afternoon after dump opponents as well as two commissioners, Bob Gregory and Robert Wilson, expressed concern that the rules were being rushed.

For those of you just tuning in, the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission (try to say that all in one breath) is beginning to tackle the contentious issue of whether to allow Waste Control Specialists, a politically-connected company building a large radioactive waste dump near Andrews, to import radioactive waste from other states.

(Texas and Vermont are the only two states that have an automatic right to bury their radioactive waste at the Andrews dump.)

As commission chairman Michael Ford pointed out they’re only at the point of figuring out how that process will work; decisions about particular import petitions will be made at a later date. Still, Waste Control is eager to speed the process along, telling the commission today and yesterday that the financial survival of the company is at stake.

On the other hand, dump opponent Karen Hadden, executive director of the Sustainable Energy and Economic Development (SEED) Coalition, blasted the proposed language as "an open-ended invitation" to bury waste from around the nation.

Glenn Lewis, a former TCEQ employee, was even more expansive. "I would be reticent, I would be hesitant, I would be circumspect about allowing anyone to put radioactive waste in that hole," he said. "It will leak."

Lewis was one of several TCEQ employees who quit the agency over the upper management’s decision to issue licenses to Waste Control. As Lewis testified, the technical team reviewing Waste Control’s proposed site had concluded that the dump was perilously close to two water tables and was highly likely to leak.

But criticism from Commissioner Wilson was perhaps more unexpected.

Wilson said that comments made yesterday by Waste Control Specialists CEO Rod Baltzer that the Andrews dump was a "national solution" had upset him.

"I’m not at all sure that the state of Texas… bargained for that in 1993," said Wilson, referring to the year that the Texas-Vermont compact law was passed.

Indeed, Waste Control is already proposing to increase the capacity of the compact portion of their dump almost five times over, from 2.3 million cubic feet to 10.8 million cubic feet. Without a bigger landfill that could take radioactive materials from around the country, Waste Control has suggested they could go out of business.

Wilson said he didn’t appreciate being threatened.

"That puts an ungodly amount of pressure on us," he said.

NOTE: There were some other interesting developments at the hearing. I will have more early next week.

San Antonio Business Journal
Monday, February 23, 2009

Environmental groups throughout Texas are lining up to oppose the South Texas Nuclear Operating Co.’s plans to build two additional reactors at its plant near Bay City, Texas.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has filed notice in the Federal Register giving citizens the ability to challenge the proposed reactors. Groups have 60 days to oppose the proposed expansion of the nuclear power plant. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission must still grant a license to build the new reactors.

Environmental groups planning to formally oppose the project include the newly formed Bay City-based South Texas Association for Responsible Energy (STARE), the Sustainable Energy and Economic Development (SEED) Coalition, and Public Citizen.

The South Texas Nuclear Operating Co. is owned by NRG Texas LLC (44 percent), San Antonio-based CPS Energy (40 percent) and Austin Energy (16 percent). The company currently has two nuclear-power generating reactors in operation near Bay City, which is 90 miles southwest of Houston.

NRG and CPS Energy are pursuing the proposed expansion, which will generate more than 2,600 megawatts of electricity, cost $6 billion to build and create enough electricity to power more than 3 million homes, according to a 2008 report by the Texas Comptroller for Public Accounts. Austin Energy has declined to participate in the expansion.

“New reactors would saddle homeowners and taxpayers with additional debt for infrastructure, more radioactive waste that would sit in our community, and more risk of nuclear accidents, health impacts and radioactive exposure,” contends Susan Dancer, executive director of STARE. “These are among the many reasons we will intervene in opposition to more nuclear reactors.”

“There are cleaner, more affordable ways to generate electricity," says Cindy Wheeler of the Consumers’ Energy Coalition in San Antonio. “With the economic downturn, we shouldn’t generate power that’s not needed. San Antonio has reduced energy use by 16 percent over the past two years.”

CPS Energy officials say the utility must look for ways to meet the energy needs of customers.

“At CPS Energy, we constantly look at all viable options to provide our customers with reliable, cost-competitive electricity that’s produced in an environmentally responsible manner,” says CPS Energy spokeswoman Theresa Brown Cortez. “Currently, we use low-sulfur coal, renewable sources such as wind and solar, nuclear energy, natural gas as well as energy efficiency and conservation to meet our customers’ electrical needs.”

CPS Energy officials say its staff will continue to evaluate options for generating electricity to meet the future needs of ratepayers.

“As we’ve indicated on numerous occasions, a decision on CPS Energy’s participation in expanding (the nuclear power plant) won’t come until later this year,” Cortez says.

Pennsylvania Highways
October 29, 2007

Before March 28, 1979, hardly anyone aside from those living in Central Pennsylvania, knew where Three Mile Island was located. However, after that date, anyone in the world with access to a TV, a radio, or a newspaper could take a map of Pennsylvania and point to a sandbar in the middle of the Susquehanna River.

The TMI-2 reactor had just come online in December 1978, and was the same design as the reactors of the Shippingport Nuclear Power Plant near Beaver. The accident began in the early morning of March 28, when a little after 4:00 AM, pumps supplying water to TMI-2’s steam generators tripped. With no water, there would be no steam, and therefore the plant’s safety system kicked into action and shut down the steam turbine and the generator it powered. The nuclear reactions in the core continued until the system dropped the control rods into the core to halt the fission process, which is a process called “scramming.” Even with the control rods in the core, heat continued to rise because decaying radioactive materials left from the fission process continued to heat the water.

The accident fell into the laps of four men: William Zewe, shift supervisor for TMI-1 and TMI-2; Fred Scheimann, shift foreman for TMI-2; and two control room operators, Edward Frederick and Craig Faust. Each man had been trained by Metropolitan Edison and Babcock & Wilcox and licensed by the NRC. However, nothing in their training had prepared them for this problem.

The first word of the accident came at 8:25 AM, with a report from WKBO-AM in Harrisburg. Using a yellow Camero with a CB radio, the station’s traffic reporter Dave “Captain Dave” Edwards relayed information that police and fire fighters were mobilizing in Middletown. He also mentioned that there was no steam emanating from the plant’s cooling towers. Mike Pintek, then WKBO’s news director and who would later move onto KDKA-AM in Pittsburgh, called the plant to speak to someone in the public relations office. The receptionist, hurried as she was, instead connected him to the control room to a man who said, “I can’t talk now, we’ve got a problem. Call Reading and talk to them.” The man denied that “there are any fire engines,” and told Pintek to telephone Met Ed, owners of the plant, in Reading.

Read more…

BLUE RIDGE ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE LEAGUE
PO Box 88 ~ Glendale Springs, North Carolina 28629 ~ Phone (336) 982-2691 ~ Fax (336) 982-2954 ~ Email: BREDL@skybest.com

PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Download in pdf format for printing.

CONTACT:
Louis Zeller (336) 982-2691 or (336) 977-0852
www.bredl.org

Victory in Landmark Clean Water Act Challenge
League and Lake Residents Overturn Dominion Nuke Permit

Today a Virginia court in Richmond ruled that state agencies violated federal law and that the water quality permit for Dominion-Virginia Power’s North Anna nuclear station is revoked. Judge Spencer ruled that Lake Anna water quality is governed by the federal Clean Water Act and that Virginia’s Attorney General was wrong in supporting the state’s water permit.

This landmark decision favored the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League and co-plaintiffs residing near Lake Anna by determining that the so-called hot side of the lake is “waters of the United States.” The Virginia State Water Control Board must now go back to the drawing board to evaluate the adverse impacts of hot water discharges to Lake Anna from the two nuclear reactors.

Louis Zeller, Science Director of the League, said, “We and lakeside residents have long believed that Dominion is guilty of thermal pollution; however, we believe that the greatest impact of the Richmond court’s decision is that the Commonwealth and the people must reject the permitting of a third reactor at our endangered Lake Anna.”

The League is conducting research to see how many other power plants will be affected by this decision.

-end-

The Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League’s Petition for Appeal was filed in Circuit Court for the City of Richmond on December 28, 2007 pursuant to Virginia Code §§ 62.1-44.29 and 2.2-4026 and Rule 2A:4 of the Rules of the Supreme Court of Virginia. The appeal sought judicial review of the October 29, 2007 decision by the Virginia State Water Control Board to re-issue Virginia Pollution Discharge Elimination System Permit No. VA0052451 to Dominion-Virginia Power’s North Anna nuclear power plant Units 1 and 2.