{"id":4757,"date":"2013-07-18T08:05:42","date_gmt":"2013-07-18T12:05:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=4757"},"modified":"2013-07-18T08:03:41","modified_gmt":"2013-07-18T12:03:41","slug":"monticello-nuke-down-5-12-months-and-267-million-over-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/07\/monticello-nuke-down-5-12-months-and-267-million-over-budget.html","title":{"rendered":"Monticello nuke down 5 1\/2 months and $267 million over budget"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\n83% cost overrun on a 12% power upgrade, but no worries!\r\n\r\n\"Monticello<\/a>\r\nThe nuke operator will pass that through to the customers.\r\nDuke had the good sense to shut down\r\n\r\nCrystal River<\/a>.\r\nMaybe we should stop the new nukes at Plant Vogtle,\r\nwhich have already run up more than twice the cost overruns of Monticello,\r\nbefore they\r\n\r\ncost us even more<\/a> for power we could get much faster\r\nand on-budget\r\n\r\nthrough solar<\/a> or wind energy.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nKatherine Tweed wrote for IEEE Spectrum 16 July 2013,\r\n\r\nMinnesota Nuclear Plant Upgrade Is $267 Million Over Budget<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nAfter being shut down for four months, Minnesota’s Monticello\r\nnuclear power plant will restart this week with an additional 71\r\nmegawatts of capacity, a 12 percent power uprate. The increased\r\ncosts, however, will far outstrip the additional percentage of power\r\nproduction.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThe project, which included maintenance, upgrades and the uprate,\r\nwas budgeted at $320 million. But Monticello has cost overruns of\r\nabout 83 percent, or $267 million, according to the\r\n\r\nMinneapolis Star Tribune<\/a>.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThe plant’s owner, Xcel Energy, has not released the final cost to\r\nthe public, claiming that the figures are trade secrets. But state\r\nregulators do know the costs, which will be passed on to Xcel’s\r\ncustomers. The company told the Star Tribune it would release\r\ndetails on the cost and why the project went so over budget in the\r\nfuture.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nCustomers have to pay for these “trade secrets” and tax-funded\r\nregulators know them but won’t tell the public.\r\nDoes that seem right to you?\r\n

\r\n

\r\nMonticello is hardly the first nuclear power plant to suffer a\r\nmassive cost increase. In three southern U.S. states, Florida,\r\nGeorgia, and South Carolina, customers are paying billions for\r\nreactors that aren’t yet producing power, according to Mark Cooper\r\nof the\r\n\r\nVermont Law School Institute for Energy and the Environment<\/a>.\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nAnd elsewhere in Georgia,\r\n\r\nSouthern Company reportedly spent at least $737 million<\/a>\r\nmore than it originally slated for two new nuclear\r\nreactors it is adding to a facility along the Savannah River.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nMonticello is an old plant,\r\n\r\nlicensed by the NRC September 1970<\/a>.\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nIt’s currently owned by Northern States Power Company — Minnesota\r\n(according to NRC), which is apparently\r\n\r\nnow part<\/a>\r\nof\r\n\r\nXcel Energy<\/a>,\r\n

\r\nAbout three miles northwest of Monticello, Minn., and 40 miles northwest of the Twin Cities on the banks of the Mississippi River.\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nThey always are on the banks of a river, lake, or ocean for cooling water.\r\nDo we want these overly-expensive white elephants\r\n\r\nsucking up our water<\/a>\r\nthat we need for drinking, agriculture, and fish?\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThe IEEE Spectrum article concluded:\r\n

\r\n

\r\nStill, natural gas can’t be the whole answer for Xcel Energy. A 2007\r\nMinnesota law requires it to produce\r\n\r\n31.5 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020<\/a>.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nHow about if we do that in Georgia!\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"83% cost overrun on a 12% power upgrade, but no worries! The nuke operator will pass that through to the customers. Duke had the good sense to shut down Crystal River. Maybe we should stop the new nukes at Plant Vogtle, which have already run up more than twice the cost overruns of Monticello, before […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[14,18,104],"tags":[701,8704,8701,8708,8702,12,6683,3036,360,8737,107,108,6682],"class_list":["post-4757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-georgia-power","category-nuclear","tag-crystal-river","tag-economy","tag-georgia","tag-georgia-power","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-minneapolis","tag-minnesota","tag-monticello","tag-nuclear","tag-plant-vogtle","tag-southern-company","tag-xcel-energy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-1eJ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4757"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4760,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4757\/revisions\/4760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}