nuclear-news

Columbia Nuclear Generating Station – cheaper to just shut it down?

Numbers Debate Rages Over Northwest Nuclear Plant KUOW.ORG, By ANNA KING, 20 Dec 13, There’s a new debate raging over the Northwest’s only commercial nuclear power plant. But it’s not about safety or how to dispose of nuclear waste.

This debate about the Columbia Generating Station in southeast Washington focuses on dollars and cents. A new report raises questions about whether the plant pencils out for the region…….

The heart of the debate: Would it be more expensive to continue running the nearly 30-year-old nuclear power plant or to shut it down in the next few years?

A shifting energy market

“We could go out today, pick up the phone, call a market participant and get a better price than what we’re seeing in the Energy Northwest 10 year plan,” says Robert McCullough, a long-time energy and policy expert.

His new report was commissioned by the Washington and Oregon branches of Physicians for Social Responsibility. It’s an anti-nuclear group. But McCullough says he had total editorial control over his findings. He says his numbers show that closing the Columbia Generating Station would save $1.7 billion over 17 years.

One reason: cheap, domestic natural gas has dramatically shifted the energy market…….McCullough isn’t proposing to shut down the nuclear plant right away. Instead he says, next time it needs an expensive maintenance upgrade it would be cheaper to buy that same power on the market……..

Larry Makovich, the lead researcher on the study says, “It is not realistic to think that you can continue to just pay for the fuel and operating cost of power plants, and that you can do that long-run and never have to pay for the costs associated with building the power plant and putting it in place.”……

Physicians for Social Responsibility says Energy Northwest isn’t counting the emissions created by obtaining and transporting its nuclear fuel. And with that added in it doesn’t make the Columbia Generating Station carbon free……..http://kuow.org/post/numbers-debate-rages-over-northwest-nuclear-plant

December 21, 2013 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, USA