Tag Archives: Kewaunee

Alcohol, drugs, and broken nuke equipment

A broken cooling water pump at Fermi 2 yesterday plus 60% lost safety data today. Airflow and quality problems at Kewaunee and Three Mile Island. Drugs at Saint Lucie in Florida and alcohol at Nine Mile Point 1 in New York and at Braidwood in Illinois. And four workers injured at Callaway in Missouri. Apparently nuke employees can get terminated for off-site recreational drug use, but not for fires or broken equipment.

We’ve already seen the event about fire at Plant Vogtle. Here are more events in the NRC Current Event Notification Report for April 4, 2013 and also today, April 5, 2013,

Continue reading →

Renewable energy much needed in Georgia —John S. Quarterman

My op-ed in the VDT today; I’ve added links, plus some more after the op-ed.

Finally! Kewaunee, Calvert Cliffs, and now Crystal River permanently closing say it’s time for Georgia to stop wasting money on Southern Company’s already over-budget and increasingly-late nukes and get on with solar power and wind off the coast: for jobs, for energy independence, and for clean air and plenty of clean water.

February 2013:
Duke Energy is closing the Crystal River nuclear reactor (Tampa Bay Times, 6 Feb 2013), 160 miles south of us, because nobody wants to pay to fix it: 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” [Charlotte Business Journal, 11 Jan 2013].
November 2012:
NRC terminated Maryland’s Calvert Cliffs 3 (NRC 1 Nov 2012) after Constellation Energy dropped out because the cost “is too high and creates too much risk for Constellation” [Bloomberg 10 Oct 2010].
Continue reading →

Duke Energy is closing Crystal River nuclear reactor

Finally! The reactor only 160 miles from here that nobody wanted to pay to fix is closing for good: Duke is closing Crystal River. After Kewaunee and Crystal River closing, which one is next? San Onofre? The never-opened Vogtle 3 and 4?

Ivan Penn wrote for Tampa Bay Times today, Duke Energy announces closing of Crystal River nuclear power plant,

Duke Energy announced early Tuesday it will permanently close the Crystal River nuclear plant that has been shut down since late 2009.

The company said it is reviewing alternatives, including building a new natural gas plant, to replace the power produced by the nuclear facility.

Duke's four coal-fired plants will remain in service at the same Citrus County complex where the nuclear plant, known as CR3, is located.

How about they build offshore wind farms and solar farms instead, like TEPCO is doing near Fukushima? Those can be built on time and on budget, use no fuel, and cause no pollution. And how about rooftop solar for jobs and energy independence?

There's more in the article, including this:

Continue reading →

Failed concrete: the bane of nuclear reactors

Let’s not forget the failed concrete on which Plant Vogtle’s unprotected stranded reactor vessel is supposed to sit.

A week before the reactor vessel train wreck, news stories said concrete pouring was delayed due to “noncompliant rebar”. Thomas Clements elaborated for the Aiken Leader 14 January 2013, Vogtle AP1000 Nuclear Reactor Vessel Discovered Unprotected, Stranded in Savannah Port since December 15 Shipment Failure,

Due to chronic delays in the pouring of “nuclear concrete” for the basemat of the AP1000 units at Vogtle and VC Summer, it remains unknown when or if any reactor vessels can actually be placed into the excavated holes at the sites. A January 10 meeting of the NRC confirmed that another basemat-related “license amendment request” (LAR) was soon to be filed by SCE&G for its AP1000 project and that the target date for granting of the LAR was March 18. It appears that the Vogtle project has fallen behind the V.C. Summer project and no strategy for the filing of a similar and necessary LAR by Southern Company is known.

Concrete, the long-time bane of Seabrook Station and also what’s keeping Crystal River shut down because nobody wants to pay the billions of dollars it would take to fix it.

 

What say we call the whole thing off, like Dominion Power did with its existing Kewaunee nuke, and TEPCO and NRG did with their plans for new South Texas nukes.

 

Maybe it’s a sign that meanwhile Google has invested a billion dollars in wind and solar and gotten 2 gigawatts of power, almost as much as the 2.2 GW the two new Vogtle nukes were supposed to produce, except Google’s solar and wind projects are online on time, and for less than just the cost overruns at Vogtle.

The Georgia legislature is in session. You can contact your legislator or the PSC today about toppling Southern Company’s three-legged nuclear regulatory-capture stool and fixing that 1973 Territoriality Law so we can get on with solar and wind in Georgia, for jobs and energy independence, and oh by the way clean air and plenty of clean water.

-jsq

Centralized Nuclear Bad Investment?

A writer for Forbes spells out the question of nuclear investment: how can something that expensive, over-budget, late, and phenomenally risky be a good investment, especially when cheaper and faster energy sources are readily available?

Peter Kelly-Detwiler wrote for Forbes today, New Centralized Nuclear Plants: Still an Investment Worth Making?

Just a few years ago, the US nuclear renaissance seemed at hand. It probably shouldn’t have been. Cost overruns from Finland to France to the US were already becoming manifest, government guarantees were in doubt, and shale gas drillers were beginning to punch holes into the ground with abandon.

Then came Fukushima. The latter proved a somewhat astonishing reminder of forgotten lessons about nuclear power risks, unique to that technology: A failure of one power plant in an isolated location can create a contagion in countries far away, and even where somewhat different variants of that technology are in use. Just as Three Mile Island put the kaibosh on nuclear power in the US for decades, Fukushima appears to have done the same for Japan and Germany, at a minimum. It certainly did not help public opinion, and at a minimum, the effect of Fukushima will likely be to increase permitting and associated regulatory costs.

He goes into detail: they take too long (while gas and solar got cheaper), they’re extremely expensive to build and run, and they’re all-or-nothing investments.

I was going to compile this list of recent nuclear financial failures, but he saves us all the trouble:

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 →

Kewaunee nuke is shutting down; why are we building more at Vogtle?

Dominion Power is shutting down a nuke because it can’t compete economically. Why are we letting Georgia Power charge us up front and load us up with debt to build a nuke we already know can’t compete economically? After all, if it could, it wouldn’t need three-legged nuclear regulatory-capture stool that we the rate-payers and taxpayers are already paying on, instead of getting on with solar and wind power.

According to 22 October 2012 PR from Dominion Power:

Dominion (NYSE: D) today said it plans to close and decommission its Kewaunee Power Station in Carlton, Wis., after the company was unable to find a buyer for the 556-megawatt nuclear facility.

According to Dominion:

Kewaunee, Dominion’s fourth nuclear station, generates 556 megawatts of electricity from its single unit. That’s enough to meet the needs of 140,000 homes.

The station began commercial operation in 1974…

1974? That’s the same year as Plant Hatch Unit 1, on the Altamaha River 100 miles from here. (Hatch Unit 2 came online in 1978.) But the Hatch reactors were relicensed in 2002 extending their lifetimes 20 years out to 2034 and 2038, so they won’t be closing, right?

Well, maybe they could. Howard A. Learner wrote for JSOnline 30 October 2012, Market has spoken in Kewaunee shutdown,

Continue reading →