Tag Archives: Maryland

Georgia Power still too slow on solar in 20 year plan: PSC decides soon

Georgia Power tries to continue whistling in the fossil and nuclear fuel
dark while distributed solar power changes the world around it.
The Georgia Public Service Commission can decide differently,
and will decide next week, 11 July 2013.



Joshua Stewart
wrote 2 July 2013,

Decision Looms On Georgia Power Plan,

The state Public Service Commission votes next week on Georgia
Power’s 20-year plan, the road map for providing electricity to 2.4
million customers. That includes the mix of fuels the company will
use and the efforts the company undertakes to get customers to use
less energy. This happens every few years. But this time, Georgia
Power also wants to retire 16 coal- and oil-fired power-generating
units at six power plants.

This happens every few years. But this time, Georgia Power also
wants to retire 16 coal- and oil-fired power-generating units at six
power plants.

PSC Commissioner Lauren “Bubba” McDonald said at a
hearing in April that this version of Georgia Power’s plan “is
filled with the most-significant issues” of any Integrated Resources
Plan in the last decade.

And Georgia Power avoids actually facing many of those issues:

Continue reading →

Twice French GDP and soil contamination as big as France plus Germany: the real cost of a bad French nuclear accident

Sixty hurricane Katrinas or 112 Sandys is the cost
EDF, the French company

that wants to build a new nuke at Calvert Cliffs in Maryland,
avoided revealing through


“fabricated” reports that “very seriously underestimated the costs of” a potential serious nuclear accident in France.
The real cost would range from 0.76 trillion to 5.8 trillion euros ($1 trillion to $7.62 trillion dollars).
For comparison,
the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of France is about 2.11 trillion euros,
according to the World Bank.
So a Chernobyl- or Fukushima-style accident in France
would cost ⅓ to 2¾ times French GDP.
No country can afford that.

Not even the U.S., whose GDP is $14.99 trillion or $11.41 euros,
so such an accident, esp. if it happened in the densely populated eastern U.S.,
as for example in Maryland, could cost half the GDP of the United States.
That’s way beyond the

$68 billion cost of Hurricane Sandy or $125 billion for Hurricane Katrina.
One nuclear accident could cost more than twice the

$4 to $6 trillion for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined.

Wolf Richter wrote for Business Insider 14 March 2013,

French Nuclear Disaster Scenario Was So Bad The Government Kept It Secret,

Continue reading →

NRC to change foreign ownership so NRG and Toshiba can fire up South Texas Nuclear Project?

Not just

EDF and Calvert Cliffs
that would be enabled by

the current NRC rule-changing comment period.


In April

NRC denied a license to NRG and Toshiba Corp. (aka Nuclear Innovation North America, or NINA)
for two new reactors at the South Texas Project nuclear facility outside Bay City;
the same facility where STNP 2

http://www.l-a-k-e.org/blog/2013/01/fire-in-texas-nuclear-reactor.html
had a fire in January.
The reason for denial was the same as for EDF and Calvert Cliffs: Continue reading →

NRC to change nuke foreign ownership so EDF can fire up Calvert Cliffs?



The NRC “upheld” license denial for the Calvert Cliffs nuke
with its fingers crossed, the very same day
directing staff to look into changing the requirement
by which it just ruled.
A requirement against majority ownership by a foreign firm,
in this case


Électricité de France (EDF),
whose flagship Cattenom reactor

caught on fire a week ago with smoke seen from miles away;
two people died at Cattenom in February.
You can comment on NRC’s proposed changes to let EDF

fire up Calvert Cliffs

online or in person June 19th in Maryland.



The same day

the NRC upheld denial of a license, 11 March 2013,

the same Commission

“directed the staff to provide a fresh assessment on issues relating to FOCD including recommendations on any proposed modifications to guidance or practice on FOCD that may be warranted.”

And the issue with Calvert Cliffs was that very same
“foreign ownership, control, or domination (FOCD) of commercial nuclear power plants.”

This explains why Continue reading →

Georgia behind Maryland and Massachusetts in solar power


California and Texas ahead of Georgia in solar power, sure,
but Maryland and Massachusetts,
small and far to the north with less sun?
Does that seem right to you?



According to the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA),

Georgia should be number 5.
Georgia should be moving up the rankings as fast as any state except
maybe Arizona or Colorado, according to

an Arizona State University study of two years ago that said
Georgia was third among state that would
benefit from solar deployment through generating and exporting energy to other states.
The U.S. as a whole

keeps installing far more solar power each year,
but Georgia Power and Southern Company keep holding Georgia back.



It’s great that Valdosta will soon get

2 more megawatts of local solar power.
But while we’re waiting for Georgia Power to slowly get around to doling out

277 megawatts over several years,

New Jersey has 1,000 megawatts already installed.


Georgia is #22, behind #21 Connecticut.
Why do we let that continue?

-jsq

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 →

NRC says it’s “never been a practice” to show licensee documents to the public



After

Kendra Ulrich of Friends of the Earth asked
about some licensee documents related to last week’s
NRC hearing in faraway Maryland on restarting California’s
San Onofre nuclear reactor,
NRC’s
David Beaulieu expanded on NRC’s refusal to divulge the documents.

Here’s

the video:


Video by Myla Reson at NRC, Maryland, 18 December 2012.



You can hear him say it’s “never been a practice” to let the public
see licensee documents. But if they’re being used in making a license
decision, why doesn’t that make them public documents accessible by the
public? Oh, right “it’s very complex” but “it’s a yes or no question”
and “I will assess”, he says. It’s good to be king!

I wonder if the public had some assurance of
transparency maybe the NRC wouldn’t get

so many FOIA requests?

Remember, this is the same NRC that gave

100-mile-from-here same-design-as-Fukushima
Plant Hatch
a

20 year license extension,
and the same NRC

that gave Plant Vogtle a clean bill of health
at a public meeting two days before Unit 1 shut down,
and the same NRC that could stop the new nukes there

even if the GA PSC won’t.

What if we deployed solar power instead, on budget and on time?

-jsq

NRC doesn’t publish nuclear licensing documents


Kendra Ulrich of FOE at NRC
Did you know the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
doesn’t publish nuclear licensee documents?
Hear them say it on this video of Tuesday’s NRC “public meeting” in Maryland
about restarting the San Onofre reactor in California.
This is the same NRC

that gave Plant Vogtle a clean bill of health
at a public meeting two days before Unit 1 shut down,
and the same NRC that could stop the new nukes there

even if the GA PSC won’t.

Plant Hatch
This same NRC recertified Plant Hatch on the Altamaha in Georgia,
extending the original 40 year design lifespan

of Unit 1 from 2014 to 2034
and

of Unit 2 from 2018 to 2038.
But don’t worry; if you’re farther than 10 miles from
Hatch,

you’re outside the evacuation zone, so you must be safe, right?
Just study the licensing documents to see; oh, wait!

Kendra Ulrich of Friends of the Earth asked the NRC some simple questions
that stumped the Commissioners and staff.
She wondered when the public could expect to see a
a 50-59 analysis California Edison had done about
restarting San Onofre.
Dave Beaulieu, NRC Generic Communications Branch,
said it was a “licensee document, licensee documents are not made public.”
He did say NRC would release its own inspection results.
She asked again, and Rick Daniel, NRC meeting facilitator
suggested she submit written questions.
Beauleiu summarized:

“At the end of the day, licensee documents are not made public;
that’s the answer.”

So what would be the point of her submitting questions when
she was just told they won’t make the answers public?

Ulrich continued by asking why NRC was considering going ahead
on the basis of experimental data that has never been used before
and that has not been made public.
Remember this is about a nuclear reactor that was shut down because
it was leaking.
That question sure caused some passing of the buck and pretending
not to understand the question by everybody in the room
who should have been able to answer the question.

Here’s

the video:


Video by Myla Reson, 18 December 2012, Maryland.

Continue reading →

Change the Atomic Energy Act? How about change the Georgia Electric Territorial Act?

In reaction to

the NRC denying a nuclear permit for Calvert Cliffs,


some nuclear backers suggest

changing the
Atomic Energy Act of 1954 to permit majority foreign ownership
of nuclear reactors.
What will they suggest next?
Asking Iran to invest in U.S. nukes?

Steve Skutnik wrote for http://theenergycollective.com 5 September 2012,

A cost-free way to open up nuclear investment,

If this seems entirely backward in a world of global production and
investment, that’s because it is. The current regulation is an


artifact of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, which first authorized
private ownership of nuclear facilities. (Prior to this—per
the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, all nuclear technology was considered
a state secret, during the short time in which the U.S. enjoyed a
monopoly on the technology.)

Is there any real compelling reason for restrictions on foreign
ownership and investment in nuclear facilities to exist at a time
when the U.S. holding a monopoly on the technology has long since
passed? Issues of safety here of course are irrelevant—the
facilities would be licensed and regulated by the NRC, just as any
other nuclear facility is now. About the only salient objection is
the political one—i.e., the implications of a foreign entity
maintaining controlling ownership in key infrastructure. (Although
it’s hard to see anyone getting particularly upset about the
reverse—U.S. entities owning a controlling stake in
infrastructure in other nations.)

Yeah, sure, strict regulation
will deal with that, just like it prevents fracking from setting
drinking water on fire, or BP from poisoning the Gulf.
The new NRC head is

maybe well-meaning,
but it’s the same NRC

that gave Vogtle 1 a clean bill just before it had to shut down
and the same NRC that’s ignoring

cancer in Shell Bluff.

Oh, by the way, the article gets to the main point eventually:

Continue reading →

NRC rejects nuke permit for EDF in Maryland

French nuclear operator Électricité de France (EDF)



was denied a license last week for the proposed Calvert Cliffs
nuclear reactor in Maryland, because the
Atomic Energy Act of 1954 prohibits majority foreign ownership
of nuclear plants.
EDF now has 60 days to find a U.S. partner, or give up the project.
Who could the possible suitors be?
Hint: think southeast.

The handwriting was on the wall two years ago when
Constellation Energy pulled out of the project.
Jim Polson and Alan Katz wrote for Bloomberg 10 October 2010,

Constellation Drops Nuclear Plant, Denting EDF’s U.S. Plans,

Constellation Energy Group Inc. pulled out of negotiations on a $7.5


billion loan guarantee to build a nuclear reactor in Maryland with
Electricite de France SA, potentially damaging the French utility’s
U.S. expansion plans and the companies’ partnership.

The cost of the U.S. government loan guarantee that the companies’
joint venture, UniStar Nuclear Energy, would need to build the
Calvert Cliffs 3 reactor is too high and creates too much risk for
Constellation, the Baltimore-based utility said in a statement
yesterday. The statement said the next step is up to EDF. Enlarge
image U.S. Deputy Energy Secretary Daniel Poneman

In a letter Oct. 8 to Daniel Poneman, deputy secretary of the U.S.
Department of Energy, Constellation said it received a government
estimate that the venture would have to pay about $880 million to
the U.S. Treasury for the loan guarantee, “dramatically out of
line with both our own independent assessments and of what the
figure should reasonably be.”

Constellation’s decision may make it more likely that the U.S.
utility will exercise a put option forcing EDF to buy as much as $2
billion of Constellation’s non-nuclear power plants, said Ingo
Becker, head of utilities sector research at Kepler Capital Markets.

“EDF very clearly said if they exercise the put, this thing is
over,” Becker said. “Constellation may have just turned
around the calendar and pulled out of the new build before
exercising the put, anticipating EDF’s reaction.”

In a letter Oct. 8 to Daniel Poneman, deputy secretary of the U.S.
Department of Energy, Constellation said it received a government
estimate that the venture would have to pay about $880 million to
the U.S. Treasury for the loan guarantee, “dramatically out of
line with both our own independent assessments and of what the
figure should reasonably be.”

Meanwhile, Southern Company

is still trying to reduce what it has to pay for its
$8.3 billion federal loan guarantee.

Back in Maryland, the news got worse for the nuke last year.
EDF

asked for the state’s help,
but didn’t get the answer it wanted.
Scott Dance wrote for Baltimore Business Journal 16 December 2011,

EDF: Constellation-Exelon settlement hurts Maryland nuclear industry,

Continue reading →