Tag Archives: Solar

Crystal River nuke still can’t get insurance payoff

Nobody wants to pay to fix Progress Energy's Crystal River nuke: not PGN, not its new owner Duke Energy, not Nuclear Electric Insurance Ltd. (NEIL). So maybe this nuke, only 160 miles from here, will be staying shut permanently? What say we do the same for the new nukes at Plant Vogtle, only 200 miles from here, before they even open?

John Downey wrote for the Charlotte Business Journal, Crystal River nuke plant stymies Duke Energy Utility facing penalties, high costs for repairs,

After two mediation sessions, Progress Energy Florida and its insurer haven't agreed how much of the potential repair costs for the utility's crippled Crystal River nuclear unit are covered.

It appears all but certain that Progress — a Duke Energy Corp. subsidiary — will have to pay millions of dollars as a penalty for failing to make a timely decision on whether to repair the plant.

Repair expenses have been calculated at between $1.5 billion and $3.4 billion, plus what it costs to buy power to replace what Crystal River would have produced while it is being repaired.

What kept shut Crystal River down from 2009 on was a concrete containment separation. Maybe those errors in pouring concrete at Plant Vogtle are Continue reading →

Fire in Texas nuclear reactor

Do fires at nuclear plants like Plant Hatch actually still occur? Yep, at the South Texas Nuclear Project, just this week. And that STP Unit 2 is a different design and newer (1989) than Hatch 1 or 2. Austin has been trying to sell its share in that lemon since 1981. Even TEPCO cancelled plans for new reactors there in 2011, due to cost overruns and the Fukushima disaster. What say we cancel our new nuclear lemons at Plant Vogtle?

According to the NRC event report for 9 January 2013:

UNUSUAL EVENT DECLARED DUE TO MAIN TRANSFORMER FIRE

“Fire in Unit 2 main transformer 2A. Reactor trip. Two train of offsite power lost to Unit 2.”

“An Unusual Event was declared based on EAL HU-2—Fire or explosion in protected area or switchyard which affects normal plant operations.”

At 1655 CST, South Texas Unit 2 declared an Unusual Event due to a main transformer fire. Unit 2 tripped from 100% power and is currently at 0% power in Mode 3. The transformer fire is out. In addition to the loss of the main transformer, several safety related electrical busses and non-safety electrical busses lost offsite power. The appropriate emergency diesel generators started and powered the safety related busses. Unit 2 is currently stable and on natural circulation due to the loss of power to the reactor coolant pumps. Auxiliary feedwater is functioning as required and decay heat is being removed through the steam generator atmospheric relief valves. Unit 1 was unaffected by the event.

The licensee notified the NRC Resident Inspector.

Notified DHS SWO, FEMA, DHS NICC and NuclearSSA via email.

According to the NRC, they still don’t know Continue reading →

Help Sierra Club send a message to Georgia Power CEO Bowers

Georgia Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign probably contributed to Georgia Power’s recent decision to shut down some coal plants. Now Sierra Club offers a petition to ask Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers to go farther, and replace those coal plants with solar offshore wind power for jobs and health for Georgia.

Dirty Coal is Out, Help Usher Clean Energy In!

Georgia Power recently announced their plans to retire three of their oldest and dirtiest coal fired power plants. Now, we must send a clear message to Georgia Power’s leadership that we want to keep Georgia Jobs by investing in homegrown clean energy and energy efficiency to power our homes and businesses.

Send a message to Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers telling him to replace dirty coal with investments in homegrown clean energy and energy efficiency that can produce thousands of lasting Georgia jobs.

It’s a petition; details here.

Seth Gunning explained why in Sierra Club PR:

Continue reading →

Nukes economically hard to justify —GE CEO Immelt

The CEO of General Electric, the company that designed the reactors at Fukushima and Hatch 1 and 2, said nukes are economically hard to justify. And that was back in July, before the first new nukes permitted in 30 years, at Plant Vogtle on the Savannah River, slipped 15 months. What’s winning? Shale gas, temporarily, but that’s just a bump in the road on the way to wind and solar power.

Pilita Clark wrote for Financial Times 30 July 2012, Nuclear ‘hard to justify’, says GE chief,

Nuclear power is so expensive compared with other forms of energy that it has become “really hard” to justify, according to the chief executive of General Electric, one of the world’s largest suppliers of atomic equipment.

“It’s really a gas and wind world today,” said Jeff Immelt, referring to two sources of electricity he said most countries are shifting towards as natural gas becomes “permanently cheap”.

“When I talk to the guys who run the oil companies they say look, they’re finding more gas all the time. It’s just hard to justify nuclear, really hard. Gas is so cheap and at some point, really, economics rule,” Mr Immelt told the Financial Times in an interview in London at the weekend. “So I think some combination of gas, and either wind or solar … that’s where we see most countries around the world going.”

GE CEO Immelt may also want to talk to GE’s own research director Continue reading →

Putting conservation into conservatives —John S. Quarterman

My op-ed in the VDT today. -jsq

Gov. Deal (WABE, 14 Nov 2012) temporarily forgot that “conservative” includes conserving something, like Theodore Roosevelt and national parks, or when Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge which also administers Banks Lake, when Richard Nixon started the EPA, and when Jimmy Carter signed the Soil and Water Conservation Act. If Gov. Deal wants to call conservation “liberal”, I’m happy to be a liberal working for water for our state!

Georgia Water Coalition’s Dirty Dozen

listed the biggest boondoggle of all as #11: the nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle suck up more water from the Savannah River than all local agriculture and almost as much as the city of Savannah.

If the new Plant Vogtle nukes are ever completed, all four will use more water than Savannah. In 2009 the legislature approved and Gov. Deal signed a law letting Georgia Power charge its customers in advance for building that boondoggle, to the tune of about $1.5 billion so far!

Let’s not forget

Continue reading →

Substandard fire protection at nuclear Plant Hatch?

Does Hatch nuclear Unit 1 have substandard fire protection, like many reactors built before 1975? Protection against fires that the NRC says cause about half the core damage risk, such as at Fukushima, which is the same design as Hatch?

According to Simplyfy.org 2 Jan 2012, Fire Risk At Older Japan Reactors Shows Potential Worldwide Problem,

The [Japanese Nuclear Regulatory Authority] NRA announced recently that reactors built before 1975 likely have sub standard fire protection designs. This includes having important cables coated in fire resistant insulation, isolating and protecting cables and creating barriers to prevent fires from spreading to other areas of critical equipment.

Source: The Mainichi, 1 Jan 2013, Over 10 nuclear plants in Japan have flawed fire-prevention equipment: sources.

What else was built before 1975? Plant Hatch Unit 1 “Operating License: Issued – 10/13/1974”, according to the U.S. NRC. 100 miles from here, and the same design as Fukushima.

DOE also instituted upgrades and changes to their reactor facilities which included facility modifications as a result of Browns Ferry fire. Private sector nuclear power reactors in the US are not all fully up to the newer rules. The NRC has issued a number of exemptions that watchdog groups have criticized as being unsafe. Browns Ferry still does not meet the NRC fire rules for cables. 47 of 52 reactors in the US still do not comply with the 1980 fire regulations.

Plant Hatch is privately owned and operated. Has it been upgraded? Continue reading →

Carbon bubble? Solar and wind erode coal, gas, and biomass credit quality —Moody’s

In Europe it’s already happening: solar and wind are causing bond-rater Moody’s to warn of downgrades of energy companies that depend on heat from burning coal, gas, or biomass. Moody’s earlier even warned the Bank of England of a potential carbon bubble developing. If combustion energy plants are affected like this, the credit effects will be even bigger on even-more-expensive nuclear plants, which Moody’s called a bet-the-farm risk way back in 2009.

James Murray wrote for businessGreen 6 Nov 2012, Moody’s: Renewables boom poses credit risk for coal and gas power plants: Credit ratings agency warns increases in renewable power have had ‘a profound negative impact’ on the competitiveness of thermal generation companies,

“Large increases in renewables have had a profound negative impact on power prices and the competitiveness of thermal generation companies in Europe,” said Scott Phillips, an assistant vice president and analyst at Moody’s Infrastructure Finance Group, in a statement.

“What were once considered stable companies have seen their business models severely disrupted and we expect steadily rising levels of renewable energy output to further affect European utilities’ creditworthiness.”

And not just rising, rising increasingly Continue reading →

Net zero school in Bowling Green KY

Why stop with solar Lowndes High or VHS? Why not have all our elementary and middle schools generate more solar electricity than they use, and change their power bills into profits to help pay for education? A school in Bowling Green, Kentucky is already doing that.

Chuck Mason wrote for bgdailynews.com 22 December 2012, ‘Net-zero’ school pays off,

The district received a check for $37,227.31 this year. The Tennessee Valley Authority paid the school district for electricity it generated. The school district doesn’t have a power plant, per se, like the utility company. But it does have an energy producer, the first “net-zero” school in the nation: Richardsville Elementary School.

The check is tangible evidence that net-zero pays for itself and then some.

“It has exceeded expectations. We’re seeing a savings of millions of dollars in energy costs,” state Rep. Jim DeCesare, R-Bowling Green, said of the net-zero schools concept developing across the nation.

This is the same Bowling Green, Kentucky that has fast Internet access. Maybe that’s another reason the Chamber might want to consider comparing Bowling Green and Warren County to here.

-jsq

Solar cars and charging stations: who wouldn’t?

Tired of Southern Company CEO Fanning’s maybe “next decade” for solar power? Tired of Georgia Power’s Bowers trying to push solar off for fifty years? Let’s hear from somebody who takes on big tasks and gets them done: Elon Musk, who’s already built a rocket that is resupplying the International Space Station, and who is also building all-electric cars.

Carl Hoffman wrote for Smithsonian magazine December 2012, Elon Musk, the Rocket Man With a Sweet Ride

When he’s not launching rockets, Musk is disrupting the notoriously obdurate automobile industry (see National Treasure, p. 42). While industry giants like Chevrolet and Nissan and Toyota were dithering with electric-gasoline hybrids, this upstart kid said he would design and manufacture an all-electric car that would travel hundreds of miles on a single charge. The Tesla Roadster hit the streets in 2008 with a range of 200 miles, and the far more functional Model S, starting at $57,000, was introduced in June. It’s the world’s first all-electric car that does everything my old gasoline version does, only better. The high-end model travels 300 miles on a single charge, leaps from zero to 60 in 5.5 seconds, slows from 60 to a dead stop in 105 feet, can seat up to five, has room for mulch bags and golf clubs, handles like a race car and its battery comes with an eight-year, 100,000-mile warranty. If you charged it via solar panels, it would run off the sun. One hundred a week are being produced in a former Toyota factory in Fremont, California, and nearly 13,000 people have put deposits on them….

And since that story: Continue reading →

2012 solar deployments driven by Moore’s Law price reductions

Moore's Law in solar Watts/$100 Moore’s Law for solar is about decreasing price per Watt, or more Watts per dollar. Here’s an example of a common confusion, to think it’s about efficiency:

“The curve will obviously become asymptotic at some point, ie,. the rate of improvement will flatten out, so we end up with a sort of squashed “S” shape curve, because you can’t get more than 100% efficiency — 36 watts/m2 or so.”

And indeed efficiency probably will flatten out soon. But it’s not solar efficiency that’s improving by Moore’s Law: it’s price per watt. That can keep improving for a long time.

Here’s an example of decreasing price. Scott Detrow wrote for NPR 23 December 2012, Forget Fracking: 2012 Was A Powerful Year For Renewables,

Rhone Resch “Just to give you perspective,” Resh said, “in Washington, D.C., where I live, when I installed solar on my house six years ago, the average install cost was about $14 a watt. Today it’s about $4 a watt.”

Here’s another comparison, this one just for solar panels. KC 170 solar panels, purchased 2005 In 2005 the first set of solar panels we got cost $670 each and produced 170 Watts DC each, or $4.94/Watt. In 2011 our second set of solar panels cost $562 each for 235 Watts DC each, or $2.39/Watt. That’s more than 50% price decrease for solar panels in six years. (I can’t compare inverters or support structures directly, because those were sized so differently, but those have also come down in price, helping lower the overall install cost).

Yearprice /Wattprice /panelWatts /panel Dimens.square inchesWatts /100 sq in. Model
2005 $4.94 $670 170W 50×39″ 1950 8.7 KC 170
2011 $2.39 $562 235W 39.1×64.6″ 2525 9.3 Sharp ND 235 QCJ
2012 $1.32 $310 235W 39.1×64.6″ 2525 9.3 Sharp ND 235 QCJ

Meanwhile, the Watts per surface area hardly changed, from about Continue reading →