Tag Archives: Nuclear

Last NRC call about foreign ownership of U.S. nuclear reactors: now until noon today

Call in this morning or send written comments. Here are the previous materials (this URL works; the one in the NRC PR is broken). See also NRC’s PR and Commission Direction. The nuclear industry has been pushing for changes for a year now; see more posts. Rather than relaxing rules on foreign ownership of operating reactors, how about stop accepting foreign nuke parts from the likes of document-forging Doosan, which supplies Plant Vogtle among a dozen or so other U.S. nukes?

Try joining the webinar from a Linux system and you get:

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They support Windows, Mac, iOS, or Android, but not Linux. Seriously? And NRC is asking technical questions?

NRC PR 7 August 2013, NRC Webinar Aug. 21 to Discuss Regulations On Foreign Ownership of U.S. Reactors, Continue reading →

Down, up, down again: Arkansas Nuclear One

Entergy announced August 8th that its Arkansas nuke was back up after a man died there in March, but it only made it to 87% power on August 12th and then back to zero yesterday. There’s no NRC event for yesterday’s downtime: what’s going on? Meanwhile, the dead man’s family is suing Entergy, and Entergy is suing its contractors. Sounds like the Plant Vogtle circular firing squad.

ANO Feb-Aug 2013

THV11 wrote 8 August 2013, Nuclear One unit back on after deadly accident and EBR staff wrote more detail for Energy Business Review 9 August 2013, Entergy restarts Unit 1 at Arkansas Nuclear One power plant,

Prior to restart, the unit needed an extensive restoration, including damage evaluation, repairs to non-nuclear plant components and rescheduling its refueling activities.

The restoration was made compulsory following the collapse of a contractor’s crane on 31 March 2013, while shifting a generator stator out of the turbine building.

Hm, “made compulsory” by whom? NRC? OSHA, which also investigated? Arkansas? Other? Continue reading →

Climate change adversely affecting U.S. power grid

Yes, and moving away from baseload coal, nukes, and natural gas and towards distributed solar and wind power will help with that, both directly by making the grid more resilient, and indirectly by slowing climate change.

Clare Foran wrote for NationalJournal 12 August 2013, Climate Change Is Threatening the Power Grid: So says the White House, in a new report that recommends strengthening the grid.

Just days away from the 10-year anniversary of the worst power outage in U.S. history, the White House and the Energy Department released a report on Monday evaluating the resiliency of the nation’s electric grid and recommending steps to prevent future blackouts.

The report called storms and severe weather “the leading cause of power outages in the United States,” and warned against the steep cost of weather-related damage to the electric grid. It put the price tag for electrical failures caused by inclement weather at between $18 billion and $33 billion annually, and noted that costs have increased in recent years, jumping from a range of $14 billion to $26 billion in 2003 to $27 billion to $52 billion in 2012. Storms exceeding a billion dollars in damages (electrical and otherwise) have also become more frequent in the past decade, as the chart below shows.

Well, Entergy’s Arkansas Nuclear 1 (ANO1) is still down more than four months after a fatal accident (hey, look at that; Continue reading →

New nukes make no financial sense –financial expert to GA PSC

If new nukes make no sense because of natural gas prices, they make even less sense with continually-dropping solar power prices.

Ray Henry wrote for AP yesterday, Regulator: New nuke plant now wouldn’t make sense,

If Georgia was starting from scratch, it would not build a nuclear power plant….

An analyst working for state regulators, Philip Hayet, said in written testimony that the total costs of building two more nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle (VOH’-gohl) is more expensive than the next-best option, constructing natural gas plants.

Still, Hayet said it is cheaper in most scenarios to finish the nuclear plant rather than halt the project and instead build natural gas plants.

But it’s not cheaper to finish a nuke than to halt it and get on with wind offshore and distributed solar power throughout Georgia.

GA PSC didn’t publish Hayet’s calculations, using the old excuse of “they involve proprietary financial information from Southern Co. subsidiary Georgia Power”. But Edison Electric Institute didn’t need any proprietary financial information to compute that Continue reading →

Millstone 3 nuke down since Friday, NRC tells us Monday

Friday a reactor tripped off, and NRC got around to telling us about it today: Millstone 3, 3.2 miles WSW of New London, Connecticut, about half way between Boston and New York. I hear a few people live around there. That’s its second downtime in six months. Why is nuclear considered reliable baseload? Distributed solar power wouldn’t all be down at once, and wouldn’t risk irradiating millions of people.

Here’s Event Number 49260: Continue reading →

VDT links Plant Vogtle nuke cost overruns to Kemper Coal

Even the VDT has caught on to cost overruns for Kemper Coal and the new nukes at Plant Vogtle.

VDT posted an AP article 29 July 2013, Miss. deal may figure into Georgia nuclear plant, and Charlotte Observer posted it the day before, including Ray Henry as the author,

In Mississippi, the Southern Co. utility took financial losses when the cost of building a new power plant went over budget. In Georgia, another of the company’s projects is going over budget, but it has not yet taken a financial hit.

Southern Company subsidiary Mississippi Power promised utility regulators that it would charge its customers only for $2.4 billion in costs for building a coal-fired power plant in Kemper Country. Those customers will also have to pay off another $1 billion in bonds for the project, though the utility cannot make a profit off that borrowed money.

The utility’s deal in Mississippi has become a point of debate as Georgia regulators consider who should pay for the increased cost of building two more nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle (VOH’-gohl), southeast of Augusta. Public Service Commissioner Tim Echols said he wants Southern Co. subsidiary Georgia Power to consider a Mississippi-style deal here, and Georgia regulators are carefully tracking financial developments in Mississippi.

Echols said he was interested in the idea of a project spending cap.

“I’m sure when they made that deal they didn’t think they were going to over the cap, but they did,” Echols said.

Oh, come now, they went 26 times over budget last time. Why would anyone believe Continue reading →

Fukushima has contaminated its aquifer; what about our aquifer?

Fukushima is dumping radioactive water into its aquifer. Plant Hatch is the same design and sits above the Floridan Aquifer we drink out of. Can’t happen here? On 19 December 2001 TEPCO said there was no possibility of a tsunami large enough to knock out Fukushima Daiichi. Plant Hatch is the same design as Fukushima, and while a tsunami really is unlikely at Hatch, for all we know Hatch still has substandard fire protection and the risk if Hatch does go bad is like the risk if a French reactor goes bad: soil contamination the size of France and Germany (or larger than Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, and north Florida) plus radioactive contamination of the aquifer we drink out of.

Harvey Wasserman wrote for the Progress today, The Fukushima Nightmare Gets Worse, Continue reading →

Palisades nuke down 11 times since 2011

Decrepit nuke leaked radioactive water into Lake Michigan in May 2013, and “The same tank sprang a leak in 2012.” That reactor has been down so many times the reporter couldn’t count them all. When will we realize what Korea and now Japan has: the nuclear industry colludes to hide its mistakes from the public, and the public needs to do something about it.

David N. Goodman wrote for AP 6 May 2013, Nuclear Regulatory Commission: ‘Very slightly radioactive water’ enters Lake Michigan,

Early Sunday morning, the tank was ruled inoperable and the nuclear power plant began powering down. This is reportedly the ninth time that the facility has been shut down since 2011.

Nope, ten times; count ’em:

> Palisades nuke down 11 times since 2011

And it stayed down from May 6th to June 17th 2013. Plus who knows what it’s leaking now that they didn’t bother to take it down for? Continue reading →

EPA raising radiation limits? Comment period still open

Should we worry about those radioactive tuna off California? Should we raise radiation limits like EPA is proposing?

J. D. Heyes wrote for NaturalNews 30 May 2012, Fukushima radiation now detected in the U.S. food supply,

“I wouldn’t tell anyone what’s safe to eat or what’s not safe to eat,” Madigan told Reuters. “It’s become clear that some people feel that any amount of radioactivity, in their minds, is bad and they’d like to avoid it. But compared to what’s there naturally […] and what’s established as safety limits, it’s not a large amount at all.”

PR from Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility 8 April 2013, WHITE HOUSE APPROVES RADICAL RADIATION CLEANUP ROLLBACK: Civilian Cancer Deaths Expected to Skyrocket Following Radiological Incidents,

The White House has given final approval for dramatically raising permissible radioactive levels in drinking water and soil following “radiological incidents,” such as nuclear power-plant accidents and dirty bombs. The final version, slated for Federal Register publication as soon as today, is a win for the nuclear industry which seeks Continue reading →

Southern Company backed off on cost overrun request

Fitch reaffirmed SO’s and Georgia Power’s (and Mississippi Power’s) ratings today after Southern Company backed off a week ago from risking losing the larger cost overrun request to GA PSC. Beware: SO will be back, when maybe fewer people are looking. Or maybe that tiger team will issue its summer report and the titanic Southern Company ship will finally change course towards distributed solar and wind power.

Jonathan Shapiro wrote for AP 31 July 2013, AP: Georgia Power To Waive Request for Extra Vogtle Costs

[Southern Company] CEO Thomas Fanning told analysts Wednesday that the Atlanta-based company reached a preliminary deal with Georgia officials.

Under the plan, the company would only seek right now to collect the $209 million that it spent building the two new reactors at Plant Vogtle from July to December.

The company would waive Continue reading →