Tag Archives: Valdosta

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 →

Valdosta Fire Department Responds to Chemical Fire with Support of Mutual Aid

Lowndes County has no press release about today’s Perma-Fix fire, but as promised VDT has pictures and video, and here’s City of Valdosta PR, Valdosta Fire Department Responds to Chemical Fire with Support of Mutual Aid,

The City of Valdosta Fire Department responded to a chemical explosion on August 14 at PermaFix Environmental Services, located at 1622 James Rodgers Circle. The call came in at 2:22 p.m. and within minutes more than 40 firefighters and other first responders were on scene. The fire was under control by 4:30 p.m. with the assistance of the Lowndes County Fire Department and the Moody Air Force Base Fire Department. Also responding with aid were the Valdosta Police Department, Lowndes County Sheriff’s office, the Georgia State Patrol and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Due to the nature of the chemicals at the facility, the area was evacuated within a one-mile radius. At least three injuries have been reported, but no fatalities are known at this time.

The fire is under investigation. An update will be provided when more information is available.

-jsq

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 →

Perma-Fix on fire

Update 4:18 PM 14 August 2013: Lowndes County Sheriff, Police, Fire and EMS on the web (thanks Carolyn). They just said Moody is bringing a truck down to help.
Perma-Fix of South Georgia, located in the Gil Harbin Industrial Park, is apparently on fire, according to the VDT, Update: Explosions blast local Industrial Park, Covering the sky

Updated 3:06 p.m.: Explosions continue from Perma-Fix at the Gil Harbin Industrial Park. Times staff at the scene reports that the industrial park is being shut down. Emergency personnel are attempting to turn off gas mains at the site, according to preliminary reports.

No injuries reported at this time.

It’s good nobody has been injured; let’s hope it stays that way.

Gretchen took these pictures of the smoke from the County Extension office four miles away on US 84 East.

Zoomed in Oh, my, this could be ugly Continue reading →

Nelson Hill waivers by staff @ LCC 2013-08-13

Before tonight’s vote on Moody Housing on Val Del Road, maybe somebody should review these administrative waivers from county staff for Nelson Hill, one for the minimum lot size, and the other for setbacks for the lots along the “lake”. I haven’t yet found who waived the requirement for condominiums, or for their fronts to be staggered, or for them to be at least 1800 square feet, or the traffic calming measures, or how all this fits the submitted site plans, nor for that matter what happened to the gate or guards or the road connecting to Grove Point. Maybe you can find those things in the materials about Nelson Hill received in response to an Open Records Request. If staff can waive all these things without any of them coming up again for a vote before the elected Commission in a public hearing, why do we have the elected Commissioners vote in the first place?

Here’s a waiver for lot setbacks next to the pond by Joe Pritchard “In my official capacity as County Manager”, 22 September 2009, for AAW-2009-06.

Here’s a waiver for minimum lot sizes by Jason Davenport, County Planner, 18 July 2011, for AAW-2011-16:

Good afternoon. Based on recent questions from multiple parties regarding Nelson Hill we thought it best to respond in writing to all. For us the question is “Will the County require a minimum lot size in Nelson Hill?” and our answer is Continue reading →

What happened at Nelson Hill on Val Del Road? @ LCC 2013-08-12

Staff promises evaporated, many of 13 conditions voted by elected Commissioners didn’t get implemented: what happened at Nelson Hill, the subdivision County Planner Jason Davenport referred to as the neighborhood on Val Del Road for REZ-2013-09 Moody Housing? Well, it has a reputation, as someone nearby said in opposing another development:

And we’re certainly not interested in what they built out on Val Del Road.

What happened at Nelson Hill?

As Gretchen Quarterman mentioned to the Planning Commission, there were supposed to be condominiums and a gated community there, but:

if you go out to Nelson Hill now you don’t find anything resembling a gated condominium community; you find ticky-tacky houses where they cut down the swamp.

So what was supposed to be there? In the Minutes for the Work Session of 12 February 2007 condominiums are mentioned: Continue reading →

Videos: Moody, Moody, acre, water, and SPLOST VI @ LCC 2013-08-12 @ LCC 2013-08-12

The “SPLOST VII Agreement” has been drafted among the county and the local cities, but it isn’t quite done yet, you can’t see what they’re still considering, and there was no mention of any public hearings. A local engineering firm is apparently going to get two no-bid contracts, one for the Alapaha Water Treatment Plant and one for the county’s Land Application Site. A local attorney represented both a bond refinancing and Moody Housing. Many renewal contracts were presented, and the long-running juvenile justice item saw some progress. They ended with an Executive Session but didn’t say what for. Chummy lot, those Commissioners and staff and attorneys and engineers.

Here’s the agenda, with links to the videos and a few notes, including a few links to related posts.

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, AUGUST 12, 2013, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, AUGUST 13, 2013, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street – 2nd Floor
  1. Call to Order
  2. Invocation

    That’s only in the Regular Session, which is 5:30 PM Tuesday 13 August 2013.

  3. Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag

    That’s only in the Regular Session, which is 5:30 PM Tuesday 13 August 2013.

  4. Minutes for Approval

    Chairman Bill Slaughter said: “Please take a look at those before tomorrow night.”

    Continue reading →

REZ-2013-09 Moody Housing, Val Del Rd @ LCC 2013-08-12

County Planner Jason Davenport said the proposed Moody Family Housing was “in the Nelson Hill neighborhood”, and there were at least 30 pages of updates, but the County Clerk wouldn’t show them to LAKE without an Open Records Request, which hadn’t yet been satisfied at the end of the day. Commissioners had some questions about acreage and traffic, some of which were answered by the ubiquitous Attorney Bill Holland, and others of which were not answered very well by County Engineer Mike Fletcher, at this morning’s Work Session of the Lowndes County Commission.

6.b. REZ-2013-09 Moody Housing, Val Del Rd R-1 to Residential PD, LC Water & Sewer, ~64 acres

Davenport said:

As of last Friday we did receive an updated site plan as well as some elevations from the applicants to let us know exactly what the houses would look like, what they’re anticipating. The site plan did have four changes and I’ll hand these out to you in just one minute. We added some notes about the uses. We wanted to make them show us where their proposed signage was and we wanted to make them clarify who would be maintaining the open space and the green space….

He passed those updates out, but the County Clerk refused to supply copies for LAKE without an Open Records Request. Gretchen filed an ORR, but if the county takes the statutory three days, we won’t get copies, nor will you, before the Commission votes tomorrow evening..

Here’s Part 1 of 2: Continue reading →

Dump CCA and other private prison stocks now –smart analysts

If business is so good, why did CCA lose two contracts for new prisons in Georgia last year when neither the state nor the feds had enough prisoners to fill them? And why was the private prison in Ocilla nearly sold at auction? Why this year was Gladiator School closed and two other CCA prisons cancelled? And all that was before U.S. DoJ announced today it will “avoid charging certain low-level and nonviolent drug offenders with crimes that carry mandatory minimums”.

Ed Arnold wrote for Memphis Business Journal 23 July 2013, Corrections Corp. of America debunks Anonymous report,

As reported on Monday, the computer hacking collective known as Anonymous Analytics published a blog warning investors that a declining prison population and reforms designed to reduce incarceration rates in the U.S. point to shrinking revenue for Corrections Corporation of America (NYSE: CXW) going forward.

CCA flatly denied the Anonymous Analytics conclusions in a statement.

CCA apparently didn’t dare link to the actual report. Anonymous Analytics wrote 9 July 2013, Corrections Corporation of America: The Dismantling of a National Disgrace, Continue reading →