Southern Company might want to pay attention to this story about shareholders protesting the owner of the radiation-leaking Fukushima nuclear plants complaining in record numbers. Or SO shareholders might want to pay attention.
Anger against the company has intensified, after it released an in-house report into the disaster, in which it denies ever hiding information and blames the Japanese Government for confusion and delays.
In its 352-page report, TEPCO also claims that on March 13, less than 48 hours after a massive tsunami slammed into the Fukushima nuclear plant, it dispatched employees to the village of Namie, just a few kilometres north-west of the plant, and right in the path of the approaching radioactive plume.
But Tamotsu Baba, the mayor of Namie, has told the ABC’s AM that claim is a lie.
“TEPCO’s report says that on the 13th of March their employees visited our offices to explain the situation,” he said.
“We were never visited by anyone from TEPCO. Nor was the situation explained to us.
“I feel they are liars. TEPCO’s report makes me angry.”
At Southern Company’s (SO) shareholder meeting, I enumerated some examples in the U.S., Japan, and Germany of nuclear gone bad, and pointed out Japan, Germany, and even Bulgaria had already or were getting out of nuclear, while Southern Company and Georgia continued to bet the farm on nuclear, and I asked what was SO’s exit strategy for when that bad bet goes bad? SO CEO Thomas A. Fanning said they had learned everything there was to learn from Fukushima, and besides Plant Vogtle is 100 miles inland where there are no earthquakes. He didn’t mention the same description applies to Chernobyl. He did say SO planned to make the U.S. nuclear industry the best in the world.
You kept using big bets and then bet the farm. Very interesting terminology.
Regarding operations credibility, a year ago Vogtle Unit 1 shut down 2 days after the NRC gave Vogtle a clean bill of health. But the SO CEO says it’s all better now.
Here’s the video, followed by links to sources for the points I made:
Exit strategy for when this big nuclear bet goes bad? –John S. Quarterman Shareholder Meeting, Southern Company (SO), Callaway Gardens, Pine Mountain, Georgia, 23 May 2012. Video by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).
Here are the main points I was reading from, with links:
Southern Company wants even more special loan guarantee terms for its new Plant Vogtle nukes. When that or CWIP gets revoked, maybe Southern Company will see that solar is a lot less trouble, and more profitable.
It’s about a proposed $8.33 billion nuke power loan guarantee package for two reactors being built at Georgia’s Vogtle. Obama anointed it last year for the Southern Company, parent to Georgia Power. Two other reactors sporadically operate there. Southern just ravaged the new construction side of the site, stripping virtually all vegetation.
It’s also stripped Georgia ratepayers of ever-more millions of dollars, soon to become billions. This project is in the Peach State for its law forcing the public to pay for reactor construction in advance.
Look on your Georgia Power bill for Nuclear Construction Cost Recovery Rider, aka Construction Work in Progress (CWIP). It’s probably about 3% of your bill, for power you may never receive.
If you get your electricity from an EMC instead, remember Georgia’s Electric Member Corporations already participate in the existing Plant Vogtle nukes, so you’ll be on the hook one way or another for the new nukes.
When the project fails, or the reactors melt, the public still must pay.
And even before then, Georgia Power customers get to pay for cost overruns. Not to worry; last time nukes were built at Plant Vogtle, they only ran over budget by a factor of seven.
A report released in February by the Independent Investigation Commission on the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident stated that the storage pool of the plant’s No. 4 reactor has clearly been shown to be “the weakest link” in the parallel, chain-reaction crises of the nuclear disaster. The worse-case scenario drawn up by the government includes not only the collapse of the No. 4 reactor pool, but the disintegration of spent fuel rods from all the plant’s other reactors. If this were to happen, residents in the Tokyo metropolitan area would be forced to evacuate.
Fukushima is about 200 miles from Tokyo. Plant Hatch at Baxley, which has the same reactor design as at Fukushima, is about the same distance from Atlanta and Charleston, closer to Tallahassee and Jacksonville, and much closer to many of us in south Georgia.
The article concludes:
We cannot accept the absurd condescension of those who fear the worse-case scenario, labeling them as “overreacting.” We have no time to humor the senseless thinking that instead, those who downplay the risks for the sake of economic growth are “realistic.”
So, what do you get in a solar spill? Sunshine. What do you get when a wind turbine breaks? Maybe some local damage. What do you get when a nuclear plant fails? Oh….
Most countries are not building more nuclear power plants,
and some are shutting down some of the ones they have,
because Fukushima has confirmed what Chernoby and Three Mile Island
already told us: maybe the physics is sound, but the business
model leads to unsafe plants.
But in the U.S. and Georgia, it’s full speed ahead for new nukes,
regardless of the risks of radiation leaks or cost overruns.
“We don’t see Fukushima as having a significant impact on the
U.S. industry,” says Scott Peterson, vice president of the industry’s
Nuclear Energy Institute. “The Nuclear Regulatory Commission was renewing
10 licenses for U.S. plants, extending them 20 years in operation. We
were continuing to move forward in examining new reactor designs.”
Nevermind that those extensions mostly go well beyond the design
lifespans of the plants extended.
Marc Chupka, who advises electric utilities as an economist with the
Brattle Group in Washington, wonders who’s going to pay for them.
“Right now, just the plain economics of nuclear power are
underwater,” he says. He notes that over the past decade,
construction costs have skyrocketed and natural gas got more
plentiful and cheaper.
“Things change significantly over relatively short periods of time,”
Chupka says, noting that it takes about a dozen years to plan and
build a new nuclear plant. “That makes it an incredibly challenging
environment to plan for the long term. And that adds to the risk and
it makes investors understandably skittish.”
So we could do what Germany is doing:
Germany says the same: The government will throw its weight and
wealth into solar and wind energy to replace nuclear power.
in-house report into the disaster, in which it denies ever hiding information and blames the Japanese Government for confusion and delays.
