NRC announces 3 year delay in licensing Duke's proposed 2 new William Lee atomic reactors in South Carolina
In addition to its announced abandonment of its Levy County, Florida proposed new nuclear power plant, Duke Nuclear suffered another blow this week, E&E reported today in an article entitled "Budget cuts, workload delay decision on S.C. reactors." The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) announced that federal budget cuts, its post-Fukushima workload, and Duke's decision to move the location of the two proposed new William Lee atomic reactors had led to the postponement of a licensing decision by three years, to April 2016.
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Mark Cooper of Vermont Law School's Institute for Energy and the EnvironmentEnergy economist Mark Cooper at Vermont Law School's Institute for Energy and the Environment has issued a media statement in response to Duke/Progess's announced abandonment of its proposal to build two new atomic reactors at Levy County, Florida.
Cooper's statement begins:
"The announcement by Duke that it is abandoning the Levy reactor project in Florida is the second such announcement by that utility in the space of just a few weeks. The Duke decision to pull the plug on Levy follows by just one day the announcement that the French-subsidized nuclear giant EDF is pulling out of the U.S. nuclear power market due to the inability of nuclear power to compete with alternatives and the dramatic reduction in demand growth caused by increasing efficiency of electricity consuming devices. Exelon, with the largest U.S. nuclear fleet, recently purchased the nuclear assets of Constellation in an effort to achieve synergies (i.e. lower the operating costs) of its nuclear assets. Entergy, the second largest nuclear operator, has reorganized its nuclear assets and is slashing staffing..."
On July 17th, Cooper published a report, "Renaissance in Reverse," documenting the likelihood that up to 38 atomic reactors nationwide would "retire early," before the expiration of their operating licenses, including a dozen at risk of near-term permanent shutdown, due to an array of economic, operational, and safety factors. This is in addition to nearly three dozen proposed new reactors across the U.S., which up until recently, were listed on the NRC's website. Other than the 4 proposed new reactors at Vogtle, GA and Summer, SC, most of the rest are either indefinitely postponed, or else outright canceled.