Apparently $1.88 billion wasn’t enough for
Southern Company to charge the ratepayers
of Mississippi Power enough for their “clean coal” plant.
“Escalating costs”: kind of like
SO’s new nukes at Plant Vogtle?
Southern Company CEO Fanning says “I know people will try and link
those, but they are not at all even similar.”
What do you think?
Kristi Swartz wrote for the AJC 24 April 2103, Miss. power plant costs hurt Southern Co. profit,
Continue readingAs long as we leave it to Georgia Power and Southern Company, Georgia will remain far behind in solar power jobs, profits, and energy independence. Hear Southern Company CEO Thomas A. Fanning say:
We remain very bullish on solar. When we think about renewables, I think renewables are exceedingly important to this nation’s future. My sense is until we see significant technology innovation, my sense is that that will probably very late in this decade or beyond that, we still are gonna get by far the lion’s share of electricity from central stations.
SO’s “bullish on solar” means nuclear, “clean coal”, and natural gas
big baseload power stations, and forget about solar or wind.
That’s why
Georgia Power has raised customer rates to pay for gas and nuclear plants
while complaining about solar.
Here’s Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers:
“Renewable (energy sources are) going to have a sliver,” Bowers said of fuels to create electricity. “Is it going to be 2 or 4 percent? That’s yet to be determined. Economics will drive that. But you always remember (that renewable energy is) an intermittent resource. It’s not one you can depend on 100 percent of the time.”
What is to be done?
-jsq
It doesn’t take a tsunami to take down Fukushima: rats can do it repeatedly.
Mainich.jp, and Google Translate version,
Inspection and rat carcasses found cooling system stop: Unit 2 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant
(23 minutes 15:22 April last update) 01 minutes 13:22 April Mainichi Shimbun in 2013The 22nd, TEPCO announced that it had stopped the cooling system of the spent fuel pool of Unit 2 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Since the corpse of two dogs rat is found inside the transformer in the outdoors, I will check the equipment.
From state = Fukuichi live camera of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant of 50 at around 2:00 pmAccording to the Nuclear Regulatory Agency and Tokyo Electric Power, 15 at around 10:00 am the same day, workers found a dead rat in the two animals terminal near the pool cooling transformer inside. Remove the mouse, stop the power for inspection of equipment 35 at around 11:00 the same. expected start is 3 to 4 hours later.
Water temperature of the pool of power stop time is 13.9 degrees. There is enough time to rise up to 65 degree of operational safety, TEPCO has “no problem. Administrative stopped just in case for inspection” he said. [Torii true flat]
Reuters’ version, Fukushima nuclear cooling system offline for 3rd time in 5 weeks, adds:
Last month, a 29-hour power supply halt affecting nine facilities, including four spent fuel pool cooling systems, was caused by a rat touching exposed wires in a temporary switchboard, triggering a circuit breaker.
In early April, the No.3 unit’s spent fuel pool cooling system stopped, after workers appeared to have had inadvertently caused a power outage when they were trying to install a net to keep small animals from crawling into the reactor building. (Reporting by Risa Maeda; Editing by Chris Gallagher)
Apparently that net didn’t work. Should we trust our safety to nuclear plants that can be shut down by rats? The tritium-leaking reactors at Plant Hatch at Baxley are the same design as at Fukushima. Former U.S. NRC Chairman Jaczko says we should phase them all out while former Indian Atomic Energy Regulatory Board Chair Gopalakrishnan says the reactors currently building in India, already three years behind schedule and now found to incorporate numerous defects and deficiencies amid gross lack of transparency, must be stopped. We know a better way: solar and wind power. Let’s get on with that.
-jsq
Owed to Masaichi Shiozaki.
It’s not just Georgia Power that
raised rates to pay for nuclear and natural gas plants and then complained about solar.
Ontario has the same scam.
John Spears wrote for the Toronto Star yesterday, Mad about your hydro bill? Blame nuclear and gas plants: Payments to nuclear and gas-fired generators are the main ingredients in the largest component on Ontario hydro bills Continue reading
Last month former U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chair Jaczko
said all 104 operating U.S. nuclear power reactors are unsafe.
This month former Indian
Atomic Energy Regulatory Board Chair Gopalakrishnan
says the reactors currently building in India, already three years
behind schedule and now found to incorporate numerous defects and
deficiencies amid gross lack of transparency, must be stopped.
When will the NRC stop the restart of the flawed and non-transparent San Onofre 2?
When will the NRC or GA PSC or the GA legislature or even Southern Company
coming to its senses stop the 19-month-late $1-billion-overbudget
flawed-concrete Plant Vogtle 3 and 4 before they waste any more
of our resources that could be going to solar and wind jobs and energy?
Underground may be out of sight, but it just keeps seeping farther,
getting into more wells, poisoning more wetlands, and getting into the air,
causing cancer and other diseases.
Katie Leslie and Shannon McCaffrey wrote for the AJC 13 April 2013, 20 years later, Fort Gillem contamination still spreading,
In the early 1990s the U.S. Army discovered hazardous chemicals dumped at Fort Gillem seeping into residential wells in neighboring Forest Park. The finding prompted the military to pass out bottled water and convert many residents to a county water system from their private wells.
But two decades and a base closure later, state officials say the Army still hasn’t done enough to clean up known and suspected carcinogens that are migrating from groundwater into surface water and, potentially, into the air residents breathe.
We might want to think about that before importing coal ash; oh, wait, we already did! Maybe at least we should not import any more of it. We already have cancer-causing arsenic in some of our wells; we don’t need more. And what about that Continue reading
Spring means soon time for the Southern Company Stockholder meeting!
See what one of the biggest electric utilities in the world is up to,
and maybe make a few suggestions.
Here are videos of what you missed last year, and here is the official SO notice for this year (I got a link to it because I’m a shareholder): Notice of Annual Meeting of Stockholders of The Southern Company
DATE: Wednesday, May 22, 2013 TIME: 10:00 a.m., ET PLACE: The Lodge Conference Center at Callaway Gardens
Highway 18
Pine Mountain, Georgia 3182
It includes a list of Items of Business, which doesn’t mention that
stockholders are usually allowed to ask questions.
Those questions are usually answered by Thomas A. fanning,
Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer,
who included a letter (text below) in which he recites
his usual list of energy sources, in his usual order: Continue reading
A quake big enough to shake houses, about 100 miles from the broken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors. Details from Japan Meteorological Agency:
Earthquake Information (Information on seismic intensity at each site)
Issued at 21:10 JST 17 Apr 2013
Occurred at (JST) Latitude
(degree)Longitude
(degree)Depth Magnitude Region Name 21:03 JST 17 Apr 2013 38.5N 141.6E 60 km 5.8 Miyagi-ken Oki
-jsq
PS: Owed to Masaichi Shiozaki.
Should we believe the operator of the broken San Onofre 2 nuclear plant that it’s safe to restart at 70% power? The same operator that knew the now-broken steam generators were flawed before it installed them? Recommended by the same NRC staff who couldn’t answer opponents’ questions? The same NRC that doesn’t publish licensee documents and says that’s never been a practice?
SanDiego6.com wrote yesterday,
Sen. Boxer Blasts Report on San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station,
On Monday, Southern California Edison announced it had formalized a request to amend its operating license to allow it to operate its Unit 2 reactor at 70 percent beginning June 1.
The reactor was undergoing scheduled maintenance in January 2012 when a small, non-injury leak was discovered in plant’s other reactor. The plant has been shut down since.
According to Edison, vibrations that led to premature wearing of steam pressure tubes in the reactors don’t occur at 70 percent power. The utility wants to operate on limited power for the five warm weather months and then shut down for an inspection of the tubes.
After the inspection, the reactor would resume operating at 70 percent power. The company said it would use the collected tube data to determine an appropriate power setting for the long term.
There’s the catch:
Continue readingEcological Options Network (EON) posted video of public comments at the latest Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) meeting about restarting San Onofre 2, where documents indicate Southern California Edison knew the new steam generators were defective years before they even installed them.
EON noted:In these video excerpts from the 4-3-2013 NRC webcast, informed activists hammer the NRC staff and SoCal Edison reps with penetrating comments and questions about apparently collusive fast-track plans to restart one of San Onofre’s broken reactors—in a tsunami and earthquake zone, in the middle of a strategic U.S. military base, in a surrounding urban area with a population of 8.5 million people—a plant that is not cost-effective 99% of the time, operated by a utility with the worst safety record in the country.Activists just helped convince NRC to deny a license for Calvert Cliffs 3 in Maryland, and Continue readingWhat could possibly go wrong?
Participants include Ace Hoffman, David Freeman, Kendra Ulrich, Dan Hirsch, John Geesman, Ray Lutz, Gary Headrick and Myla Reson.