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ARTICLE ARCHIVE

Nuclear Costs

Estimates for new reactor construction costs continue to sky-rocket. Conservative estimates range between $6 and $12 billion per reactor but Standard & Poor's predicts a continued rise. The nuclear power industry is lobbying for heavy federal subsidization including unlimited loan guarantees but the Congressional Budget Office predicts the risk of default will be well over 50 percent, leaving taxpayers to foot the bill. Beyond Nuclear opposes taxpayer and ratepayer subsidies for the nuclear energy industry.

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Thursday
May092013

"Worst Week Since Fukushima: 4 Setbacks in 3 Days are Latest Stumbles for Nuclear Power Industry"

Former NRC Commissioner Peter Bradford, and energy economist Mark Cooper, both of the Vermont Law School, as well as Dan Hirsch of the Committee to Bridge the Gap, held a telephone press conference yesterday on the subject of "WORST WEEK SINCE FUKUSHIMA: 4 MAJOR SETBACKS IN 3 DAYS ARE LATEST STUMBLES FOR U.S. NUCLEAR POWER INDUSTRY." An audio recording of the news conference has been posted online.

The four setbacks in three days include: 1) the cancellation of two proposed new reactors at South Texas Project, because they violate U.S. law against foreign ownership of nuclear power plants; 2) Southern California Edison's threat that if NRC does not allow it to restart operations at its crippled San Onofre nuclear power plant, it will permanently shutdown both reactors there; 3) Duke Energy's cancellation of two proposed new atomic reactors at its Shearon Harris nuclear power plant in North Carolina; and 4) Florida's amendment to its previously highly permissive "advance cost recovery" or "Construction Work in Progress" law, via which ratepayers have been gouged to pay for proposed new reactors, when there is no guarantee the proposed new reactors will ever actually get built or generate electricity.

Peter Bradford also added the May 7th shutdown of Dominion's Kewaunee atomic reactor in WI -- despite the 20 years of operating license still left to it -- as another example of the "worst week since Fukushima" for the U.S. nuclear power industry.

Bad nuclear power economics underlie all the setbacks.

Tuesday
May072013

High noon for nuclear power: Dominion's Kewaunee atomic reactor permanently shuts down!

Dominion's Kewaunee atomic reactor, on the Lake Michigan shore of northern WI near Green BayAs reported by Platt's, at 12 PM Noon Central time today, Dominion's Kewaunee atomic reactor was permanently shutdown. Last October, Dominion announced its intention to permanently close Kewaunee by mid-2013. Dominion explained its decision in the media as due to "economic reasons." However, one of Dominion's spokespeople did admit in a press interview that those "economic reasons" included the high cost of vitally needed safety repairs.

Dominion had attempted to sell Kewaunee, but found no buyers. Platt's reports "CMS Energy -- which sold Palisades, its only nuclear station, to Entergy in 2007 -- had considered buying the plant, but decided against it because of low gas prices and investor pushback."

Arnie Gundersen of Fairewinds Associates, Inc points out that Kewaunee still had an operating license for another 20 years, but Dominion is unable to operate the reactor economically. Gundersen also points out that the 60-year SAFESTOR plan prior to decommissioning means Kewaunee will not be dismantled and cleaned up until about a century after it commenced operations, in 1973.

Duke Energy's announcement in recent weeks regarding the fatally cracked containment at its Crystal River, FL reactor, and today's final SCRAM at Kewaunee, are the first permanent shutdowns of commercial atomic reactors in the U.S. in about 15 years. Kewaunee joins Zion 1 & 2 in IL, and Big Rock Point in MI, on the list of reactors on the Lake Michigan shore permanently shutdown. Point Beach 1 & 2 in WI, as well as Cook 1 & 2 and Palisades in MI, are reactors still operating on the Lake Michigan shoreline. Lake Michigan is a headwaters of the Great Lakes, 20% of the world's surface fresh water, and drinking water supply for 8 U.S. states, 2 Canadian provinces, and a large number of Native American First Nations.

Tuesday
May072013

Entergy Watch: Environmental coalition challenges Entergy's financial qualifications to continue operating reactors

"Burning money" graphic by Gene Case, Avenging AngelsAs reported by E&E's Hannah Northey at Greenwire, an environmental coalition including such groups as Alliance for a Green Economy (AGREE), Beyond Nuclear, Citizens Awareness Network (CAN), and Pilgrim Watch, has launched an emergency enforcement petition at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, challenging the financial qualifications of Entergy Nuclear to safely operate and decommission such reactors at FitzPatrick in New York, Pilgrim in Massachusetts, and Vermont Yankee. All three reactors happen to be twin designs to Fukushima Daiichi Units 1 to 4, that is, General Electric Mark I boiling water reactors. The coalition's petition cited financial analyses by UBS on Entergy's dire economic straits. Representatives from coalition groups, including Beyond Nuclear's Paul Gunter, testified today before an NRC Petition Review Board at the agency's headquarters in Rockville, MD. 

FitzPatrick, Pilgrim, and Vermont Yankee have each already recieved 20-year license extension rubber-stamps from NRC. FitzPatrick, even though it never installed a hardened vent in the early 1990s, to deal with its too small, too weak containment -- the only one, of 23 Mark I in the U.S., to not do so. Pilgrim became the longest contested license extension -- a proceeding lasting over 6 years -- thanks to the efforts of Mary Lampert at Pilgrim Watch. And the Vermont Yankee license extension was actually blocked by the State of Vermont -- this court battle between and involving the state, Entergy, and NRC rages on in multiple federal and state venues.

Sunday
Mar032013

Nuclear Relapse? Canceled! Nuclear power? Game over!

Peter BradfordAs reported by ScienceDaily in an article entitled "U.S. May Face Inevitable Nuclear Power Exit,"  the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (BAS) has concluded its three part "Nuclear Exit" series with a look at the United States. The previous two installments examined the nuclear power phase-out in Germany, and the nuclear power status quo in France.

The BAS U.S. coverage features former U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Commissioner, Union of Concerned Scientists board member, and Vermont Law School professor Peter Bradford's "How to close the U.S. nuclear industry: Do nothing," which concludes that, without massive taxpayer or ratepayer infusions, almost all proposed new reactors will not happen, and currently operating reactors will permanently shutdown by mid-century, unless the NRC rubber-stamps 80 years of operations (as opposed to the current, already risky 60).

In a section entitled "Picturing a U.S. phase-out," Bradford writes:

"The countries that have recently decided to phase out nuclear energy have done so by governmental fiat, complete with statutory deadlines both for individual reactors and for nuclear power in general. But no such sweeping action is really necessary in countries that have chosen to procure power generation through market mechanisms. The US experience demonstrates that absence of governmental intervention will create a glide path, determined in part by how long a country is prepared to allow its oldest reactors to operate, but in fact by the interplay between gas-driven electricity prices and the point in time at which older plants must make significant capital investments." (emphasis added)

Bradford points out that "By this standard, units at Crystal River and San Onofre--currently closed by major equipment failures--appear to be serious shutdown candidates, though they may survive, because they are located in Florida and California, respectively, states in which regulators can override market verdicts and impose their repair costs on customers."

In fact, Duke/Progress has thrown in the towel on Crystal River, announcing that it is now permanently shutdown. And Friends of the Earth, along with a groundswell of grassroots anti-nuclear activism in southern California, is doing all it can to keep San Onofre Units 2 and 3 shutdown for good, as well.

A spokesman for Dominion Nuclear admitted that the "purely economic reasons" which led to the utility's decison to close its Kewaunee atomic reactor on the Lake Michigan shoreline in Wisconsin -- the first atomic reactor shutdown announcement in 15 years in the U.S. -- was the inability to make needed, major safety repairs and turn a profit, given the competitive electricity market.

And Entergy Nuclear's brand new CEO, Leo Denault, admitted to Reuters that numerous of his "dirty dozen" atomic reactors -- especially the merchant plants (those in deregulated, competitive electricity markets) -- face tough economic challenges, due to costly upkeep (a.k.a., essential safety-significant repairs and component replacements).

Reuters reported: "[Denault] said some plants are in the more challenging economic situations for a variety of reasons, including 'the market for both energy and capacity, their size, their contracting positions and the investment required to maintain the safety and integrity of the plants.'" (emphasis added)

At its Palisades atomic reactor on the Lake Michigan shore in southwest Michigan, Entergy has chosen to forego numerous major, needed repairs (such as replacing the badly corroded reactor lid; replacing the deteriorated steam generators, for the second time in the plant's history; dealing with the worst embrittled reactor pressure vessel in the U.S.; making needed fire protection upgrades, etc.) for six long years now, apparently in order to "balance the books" -- that is, to prioritize profits (and executive salaries, and shareholder returns) over public safety.

Thursday
Feb212013

Fermi 3 proposed new reactor price tag skyrockets to $20 billion

An artist's rendition of the $20 billion boondoggle ESBWR targeted to be built at Fermi 3On Feb. 19, 2013, the environmental coalition intervening in opposition to the construction and operation of Detroit Edison's proposed new Fermi 3 atomic reactor filed new and amended contentions in response to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Final Environmental Impact Statement about the proposal. The coalition issued a news release. As environmental coalition attorney Terry Lodge says in the press release, Fermi 3's price tag has skyrocketed to $20 billion.

Documents related to environmental intervenors' filing of Feb. 19, 2013 in opposition to the General Electric-Hitachi so-called "Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor" (or ESBWR, see image, left) proposed to be constructed and operated at the Fermi nuclear power plant in Monroe County, Michigan, on the Lake Erie shoreline, as well as documents reveal the major schedule delays afflicting the project:

Intervenors' Feb. 19, 2013 "MOTION FOR RESUBMISSION OF CONTENTIONS 3 AND 13, FOR RESUBMISSION OF CONTENTION 23 OR ITS ADMISSION AS A NEW CONTENTION, AND FOR ADMISSION OF NEW CONTENTIONS 26 AND 27";

Current Fermi 3 COLA Review Schedule (Feb. 15, 2013), showing 2 years and 10 month of delay;

Original Fermi 3 Schedule (June 30, 2009).