Tag Archives: Plant Vogtle

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 →

More new nukes to stop: Vogtle, Summer, and 15 more

Although

TVA’s Bellefonte nuke will never come up,
others are still being built, including TVA’s own Watts Bar,
plus 19 more.


Document-forging Doosan-supplied
Vogtle 2 and 3 in Georgia and Summer 2 and 3 in South Carolina
are

the only four actually already issued combined licences (COL)
to build and operate.


But 15 other
proposed new reactors are

“Under Review”, and all the ones in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina are within 500 miles of here: Continue reading →

Birds stop cleanup work at closed Hanford plutonium plant

Birds nested using radioactive mud from WW II-era nuclear bomb production plant,


stopping attempts to clean up some of the worst leaking atomic waste,
much of which is liquid in leaking tanks near the Columbia River.
We have nuclear plants leaking radioactive tritium next to the Chattahoochee
and Altamaha Rivers, and radiation is detectible in the Savannah River
near Plant Vogtle.
How many radioactive solar panels or windmills have you heard of?



Annette Cary wrote for the Tri-City Herald yesterday,

Birds at Hanford vit plant spread contaminated waste,

Work stopped Wednesday morning at parts of the Hanford vitrification
plant after radioactive contamination was detected under a bird’s
nest, according to Bechtel National.

The contamination is suspected of coming from mud used for the nest,
which may have belonged to a swallow, said Bechtel spokesman Todd
Nelson. Only a small amount of contaminated soil was found, and the
contamination was at a low level.



Should workers believe that?

Continue reading →

Groundwater wall at Fukushima

Same design as Plant Hatch, which is

leaking radioactive tritium into our groundwater.
And

when contamination gets into the watershed
it doesn’t go away;
there’s not even an ocean at Hatch or Vogtle for it to disperse into.

Tsuyoshi Inajima and Yuji Okada wrote for Bloomberg News today,

Japan Orders Tepco to Build Underground Wall at Fukushima Plant



The Japanese government ordered Tokyo Electric Power Co. to build an
underground wall at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant to prevent
groundwater from flowing into basements of reactor buildings.

The government plans to set up a task force with Tokyo Electric,
construction companies and plant makers by the end of June to
discuss the details, Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry
Toshimitsu Motegi said today in Tokyo. He made the remarks at a
meeting with Naomi Hirose, the utility’s president, which was open
to reporters.

Tepco has struggled Continue reading →

No San Onofre nuke startup decision until June at least –NRC Chair



Two more victories for anti-nuke activists:
San Onofre restart decision pushed back at least until June,
and webcasts of California Public Utilities Commission hearings going on right now.

Abby Sewell reported for the L.A. Times yesterday,

Decision on San Onofre pushed back to June at the earliest,

The plant’s operator Southern California Edison had hoped at one
point to have one of the plant’s two units operating by summer, but
NRC Chairwoman Allison Macfarlane made it clear that will not
happen.

Macfarlane told reporters Tuesday after a speech, “You know, the
process is very complicated now. Almost every day it gets a little
more complicated…. Right now I can tell you a decision on restart
won’t happen until the end of June, certainly after the middle of
June.

“It may get pushed back later,” she said. “I don’t know.”

She didn’t say much about the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB)

decision to require NRC public hearings before any decision on
restarting San Onofre,
but she did say this:

Continue reading →

NRC tries to ignore hearing requirement for San Onofre nuke restart

Maybe the ASLB was referring to some other NRC that should hold public
hearings?


The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB) agreed with Friends
of the Earth (FOE) when it ruled that
restarting either San Onofre unit requires a full public hearing
like a trial, but the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) interprets
that as having nothing to do with its own staff decision process.
This is after the city of Los Angeles (and numerous other
southern California cities and the San Diego Unified School District)

said it didn’t want any
decision about restarting any San Onofre reactor/ without a full,
transparent, public decision process.
The L.A. Times says all this is creating “confusion”.
Just last week I heard Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers say confusion
was bad for business.
Maybe it will be bad not just for Southern California Edison and its
San Onofre nukes, but also for Georgia Power and Southern Company’s

19-month-late and billion-over-budget nuclear boondoggle at Plant Vogtle.

Abby Sewell wrote for the L.A. Times yesterday 7:24 PM,

San Onofre ruling creates confusion,

Continue reading →

Look at Southern Company’s safety performance –SO CEO Fanning


SO CEO Fanning on Fukushima
At

last year’s
Southern Company Stockholder Meeting,

Southern Company CEO Thomas A. Fanning said
about the U.S. nuclear industry and

Southern Company’s safety performance:

And if you look at our performance, we absolutely meet the standards
that our customers expect and frankly deserve.
So let’s start there.



Since then SO has

not managed to pour the concrete base correctly at Plant Vogtle
and

not managed to get a reactor vessel from Savannah port to the site.
Also

existing Vogtle Unit 1 had a fire
while Unit 2 was shut down for almost all of March 2013.
The two Plant Hatch reactors, same design as Fukushima,
so far as we know

still have substandard fire protection
and has a chronic problem of

radioactive tritium leaking into groundwater.
Tritium,

even the smallest amounts of which can have negative health effects.
And what gets into the watershed

spreads in the watershed.
The U.S. nuclear industry in general has problems with

alcohol, drugs, and broken equipment.
But

back to SO CEO Fanning about Fukushima: Continue reading →

Bloomberg links MS Kemper Coal cost overruns to GA Plant Vogtle nukes


Betty Liu of Bloomberg quizzes Thomas A. Fanning of Southern Company
Bloomberg has

video of Southern Company CEO Thomas A. Fanning trying to explain away

how cost overruns at SO’s nuclear Plant Vogtle in Georgia are
linked to cost overruns SO’s coal Plant Kemper in Mississippi.

Betty Liu: This project along with the Vogtle project…
has some investors wondering maybe Southern Company has
stretched itself too thin, with these two major projects you’ve got under way….

Fanning: In fact, the Vogtle project is going beautifully.
We have delayed the in-service date by a year, but….

That’s funny, GA PSC and the AJC say Continue reading →

Poor Southern Company: losing money on Kemper Coal in Mississippi



Apparently $1.88 billion wasn’t enough for
Southern Company to charge the ratepayers
of Mississippi Power enough for their “clean coal” plant.
“Escalating costs”: kind of like

SO’s new nukes at Plant Vogtle?
Southern Company CEO Fanning says “I know people will try and link
those, but they are not at all even similar.”
What do you think?

Kristi Swartz wrote for the AJC 24 April 2103,

Miss. power plant costs hurt Southern Co. profit,

Continue reading →

How can we get Georgia to move ahead in solar power?



If we

can’t expect Georgia Power or Southern Company to change their tune about solar power,
what can we do?
Legislate and raise public pressure, while getting on with installing what
solar power we can.



Maybe it’s time to pass something like

HB 267 that would limit Georgia Power’s profits on

that 19-month-late and $1 billion over budget nuclear boondoggle at Plant Vogtle.
Instead of pouring more money down that broken concrete pit on the Savannah River,
we need something like

GA SB 51, The Georgia Cogeneration and Distributed Generation Act,
to fix

Georgia’s special solar financing problem,
the antique 1973 Territorial Electric Service Act.
That’s the 40-year-old antiquated law that SO CEO Thomas A. Fanning says
“we need to protect”.
Maybe SO does, for Fanning’s
huge raises in compensation.
Georgia Power and SO are not only defending that antique law,
they’re preventing
a Georgia Renewable Portfolio Standard (REPS) by stopping passage of bills like
HB 503.
Georgia Power, SO, and super-lobby ALEC

systematically oppose renewable energy standards.


They do this so successfully there are no REPS in Southern Company (SO)’s
service territory, nor in most of SO’s surrounding
“Competitive Generation Opportunities” states.
One of the few exceptions is North Carolina, and

a bill was introduced there to eliminate NC’s REPS.

Maybe it’s even time to do something about

Georgia Power’s 11% guaranteed profit.
Isn’t Georgia Power supposed to be a utility operating for the good of
Georgians?
Why does it get a guaranteed profit to pass on to Southern Company
shareholder dividends and SO executive bonuses?



Georgia Power and even Southern Company could suddenly flip for solar power
like
Austin Energy did in 2003
and Cobb EMC did in 2012.
But that probably won’t happen without a lot of public pressure,
legal requirements by the Georgia legislature or PSC,
or a shareholder revolt.
So let’s start with

the public pressure….

-jsq