Category Archives: Nuclear

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 →

News media finally reporting Fukushima leaking radioactive water into ocean

It’s not just a storage tank, either; radioactive water has been leaking
for more than two years, from the broken reactor buildings into groundwater and the Pacific Ocean.
It’s not just a local Japanese problem: Fukushima is here.

The cautious version, by Antoni Slodkowski and Mari Saito, Reuters, today,

Radioactive water seeping into Pacific from Fukushima is ’emergency,’ official says,

Highly radioactive water
seeping into the ocean from Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant
is creating an “emergency” that the operator is struggling to contain, an official from the country’s nuclear watchdog said Monday.



This contaminated groundwater has breached an underground barrier, is rising toward the surface and is exceeding legal limits of radioactive discharge, Shinji Kinjo, head of a Nuclear Regulatory Authority task force, told Reuters.

Countermeasures planned by Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) are only a temporary solution, he said.

VOA News, also today, admits leaks have been going on for more than two years
and nobody knows how to stop them,

Fukushima Operator Under Fire for Radioactive Leaks,



Rianne Teule, a nuclear campaigner for Greenpeace International,
says the issue is a serious environmental concern.

“Most of all it proves TEPCO is incapable of dealing with this
situation and that the Japanese authorities should really step in
and ensure that proper action is taken to stop the leaks,” said
Teule.

But it is not clear what other actions TEPCO could take at this
point. Former Nuclear power plant designer Masashi Goto worked on
several projects with TEPCO.

“The situation is already beyond what Tepco can handle,” said Goto.
“If Continue reading →

The Korean nuclear mafia: power companies, vendors, and testers


Document-forging Doosan was just the tip of the Korean nuclear corruption iceberg.

It’s different stateside, right?

San Onofre 2 and 3
Oh, wait:

U.S. NRC is refusing to supply Congress with safety documents
related to the closing of San Onofre.
But Plant Vogtle is much safer, right?
Southern Company CEO Tom Fanning told us so.
Of course, he also told us Kemper Coal would come in on budget, and now

SO is writing off $611 million after taxes.
But
that bad concrete pour, the misplaced reactor vessel, the leaking tritium;
those are all flukes, right?
Meanwhile, solar panels don’t leak tritium, and if you misplace one,
you only lose money, not risk lives.

By Choe Sang-Hun in NY Times yesterday,

Scandal in South Korea Over Nuclear Revelations,


Korean nuclear reactor
Weeks of revelations about the close ties between South Korea’s
nuclear power companies, their suppliers and testing companies have
led the prime minister to liken the industry to a mafia.

The scandal started after an anonymous tip in April prompted an
official investigation. Prosecutors have indicted some officials at
a testing company on charges of faking safety tests on parts for the
plants. Some officials at the state-financed company that designs
nuclear power plants were also indicted on charges of taking bribes
from testing company officials in return for accepting those
substandard parts.

Worse yet, Continue reading →

Nuclear an economic boon despite high costs –Tim Echols

Some of the “stuff” that happened before and after
GA PSC Tim Echols cheered nuclear Friday.

GA Public Service Commissioner Tim Echols wrote in the Athens Banner-Herald Friday

Echols: Nuclear power can be economic boon to Southeast,



Just when we thought nuclear power might be on a comeback, well,
stuff happened. Only time will tell if Georgia and South Carolina
can “jump-start” a nuclear renaissance. Let’s hope we
can, because low-cost base-load energy — the amount of
electricity available 24 hours a day — is a key to economic
growth.

Stuff like this happened: