Tag Archives: Plant Vogtle

Test program meeting at Plant Vogtle –NRC and Southern Company 9 October 2013



Safety at Plant Vogtle, this Wednesday, with call-in number, by
NRC and Georgia Power’s parent the Southern Company.
One hour from 1 to 2PM is the public part, then 3 more hours closed
“because the staff has determined that the
information is proprietary in nature.”
Why is nuclear testing affecting public safety proprietary?

It’s at Vogtle Training Center,
9034 River Road,
Waynesboro, GA 30830, which is

on the corner of the Plant Vogtle site.
Do you get a tour of the construction if you appear in person?
Here’s what it looks like in
Georgia Power’s

Vogtle 3 and 4 Construction Photos
September 2013, and on

google maps:


View Larger Map

Here’s

the NRC meeting announcement: Continue reading →

Former Japanese PM Koizumi calls for zero nukes

Current PM Shinzo Abe was his chosen successor, and now
Junichiro Koizumi (prime minister 2001-2006) calls on Abe
to end nukes in Japan. Why?
“A large majority of the population now
understands that nuclear energy is the most expensive form of power
generation.”
For sure here in Georgia,

with Georgia Power charging through the nose for power customers aren’t
even receiving
while

trying to hike the price of solar power, too.
Let’s end Plant Vogtle and get on with renewable solar inland and wind off the coast.

Wolf Richter wrote for Zerohedge 4 October 2013,

The End Of Nuclear Energy In Japan?



And on August 26, his words made it into the Mainichi Shimbun. If he
were an active politician, he’d want “to convince lawmakers to
move in the direction of zero nuclear plants,” he said. Now
would be the ideal time to move that direction. All 50 nuclear
reactors were off line. All opposition parties favored zero nuclear
power. It could be done “as long as the prime minister made
the decision” — putting the onus squarely on his former
protégé. And nuclear politics in Japan haven’t been the same
since.

The next blast came on September 24 at a forum in Tokyo. He talked
about his trip to Finland in August. The purpose was to inspect the
Onkalo spent-fuel repository. He was accompanied by Continue reading →

GA PSC abdicates cost oversight for new nukes at Plant Vogtle

Finish it and then send we the taxpayers and ratepayers a bill?
What kind of deal is that?
So Southern Company already
dodged a Fitch downgrade by delaying
a decision, and now GA PSC wants to put it off for years more.
That also delays solar deployment in Georgia, putting us still farther behind.

Ray Henry wrote for AP yesterday,

Ga. approves deal on nuclear plant costs,



A debate over the rising cost of building a nuclear power plant in
Georgia will be delayed for years under an agreement approved
Tuesday by Georgia’s utility regulators.

The elected members of Georgia’s Public Service Commission
unanimously approved a deal that will put off a decision on whether
Georgia Power can raise its budget for building two more nuclear
reactors at Plant Vogtle (VOH’-gohl) until the first of those
reactors is finished. An independent state monitor has estimated the
first reactor will be finished in January 2018 at the earliest.

Regulators will continue monitoring company spending but will not
make a decision on raising the bottom line budget figure.

So GA PSC will keep watching costs run over budget but will do nothing
about it.

Oh, wait, it’s actually worse: Continue reading →

Entergy shutting down Vermont Yankee nuke: tenth down or never to be built in past year

As Entergy

has been preparing to do for some time,
it’s down forever for Vermont Yankee.
That’s at least ten (10) down forever
(Vermont Yankee,
Kewaunee,
Crystal River 3,
San Onofre 2 and 3)
or never to be built
(Calvert Cliffs 3,

South Texas Nuclear Project 3 and 4,
Bellefonte,
and

Levy County)
in the past year.
How many will it take before Southern Company (or more likely GA PSC
or even the Georgia legislature)
realizes

new nukes make no financial sense
and terminates the Plant Vogtle 3 and 4 boondoggle on the Savannah River?

Entergy blamed Vermont Yankee on shale gas, but you ain’t seen nothing yet, as

Moore’s Law for solar really kicks in.
Next one to go: I say
Entergy’s often-down Pilgrim 1 in Massachusetts;
everything Entergy said about Vermont Yankee applies in spades to Pilgrim 1.
Or maybe

ten-times-down-this-year Palisades.
Or bouncy man-killer

Arkansas Nuclear One.
So many to choose from!

Entergy PR on Market Watch today,

Entergy to Close, Decommission Vermont Yankee
–Decision driven by sustained low power prices, high cost structure and wholesale electricity market design flaws for Vermont Yankee plant –Focus to remain on safety during remaining operation and after shutdown,

NEW ORLEANS, Aug. 27, 2013 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — Entergy


Corporation ETR -0.21% today said it plans to close and decommission
its Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station in Vernon, Vt. The station
is expected to cease power production after its current fuel cycle
and move to safe shutdown in the fourth quarter of 2014. The station
will remain under the oversight of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
throughout the decommissioning process.

“This was an agonizing decision and Continue reading →

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:

This system isn’t supported


Not supported

Joining a session from this computer’s OS or web browser isn’t supported.


Please view the GoToWebinar system requirements.


Questions?


Contact Global Customer Support or tweet to us @gotowebinar.

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 →

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 →