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Uncertain fate of Diablo Canyon nuclear facility , and the whole nuclear industry

nukes-sad-Nuclear power’s last chance in California?, San Diego Union Tribune  The industry hopes for a new look, opponents still dug in  By Rob Nikolewski  . June 4, 2016  

The Diablo Canyon nuclear facility near San Luis Obispo is the only nuclear energy plant left in California…………..its fate is uncertain. The license for the plant’s first unit expires in 2024 and the second unit’s license comes up in 2025. And while PG&E can apply for a 20-year extension through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the utility’s officials have been coy about whether it will look for extensions.
A shutdown would leave the state with no public utility-run nuclear power plants, another punch to an industry looking to keep its aging fleet intact while at the same time competing against subsidized solar and wind power and low-priced natural gas-fired facilities.

For critics who have long insisted that nuclear power is inherently dangerous and too expensive, the prospect of delivering a death blow to Diablo is something to relish.

“Two nuclear plants are down in California and we’re working on a third,” said Kathryn Phillips, director of Sierra Club California, referring to the shuttering of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in early 2012 and the Rancho Seco plant near Sacramento in 1989……

“They try to get people to take a look at them ‘one more time’ just about every other year,” said Phillips. “We don’t consider (nuclear power) as a clean source of energy.”

Nuclear down, natural gas up…….

Nuclear’s critics say the solution is boosting the storage of renewable sources like wind and solar.

The California Public Utilities Commission requires the state’s big three investor-owned utilities to add 1.3 gigawatts of energy storage to their grids by the end of the decade.

“The storage industry is just booming,” said Phillips, adding that greater energy efficiency and conservation can replace nuclear. “You can get to a point where you don’t need to create new, giant energy plants, new, big gas plants or new, big nuclear plants.”

Nuclear’s cost conundrum  Constructing a nuclear plant is an expensive proposition. So is upgrading existing plants to meet current regulations.

For example, Diablo Canyon sucks in billions of gallons of seawater for its cooling system. Estimates to retrofit the plant to meet state rules implemented after Diablo Canyon was built range anywherefrom $1.6 billion to $14 billion.

“You cannot afford nuclear plants,” said Rochelle Becker, executive director of the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility, based in San Luis Obispo, not far from Diablo Canyon. “If you look at the cost overruns from any new nuclear plant … they are billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule.”

In Georgia, two brand new Westinghouse reactors being built at the Vogtle Generating Plant by Southern Co. were estimated to cost $14 billion.

In regulatory filings last year, Southern Co. announced another round of construction delays that included cost increases of at least $720 million…….By some estimates, Vogtle’s final price tag could be $3 billion over budget and three years behind schedule.

The industry is trying to blunt criticism about costs by pointing to the growing — but still nascent — sector that concentrates on small, modular reactors, or SMRs, that can be transported by truck or rail…..

However, SMRs across the country are still in the design phase.

Waste issues won’t go away

A nagging issue remains: what to do with spent fuel.

With the federal government scrapping the proposed nuclear waste facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, spent fuel is being stored at various sites across the country on an indefinite basis.

 According to a state law passed in 1976, new nuclear plants in California can only be built if the California Energy Commission determines the federal government can sufficiently deal with reprocessing fuel rods and has found a permanent disposal site for high-level nuclear waste.

On a practical level, the 1976 law has resulted in a moratorium on building nuclear plants in the state. No new facilities have been built in almost 40 years.

Exemptions were made for existing plants but with Yucca Mountain off the table, sites like Diablo Canyon and San Onofre have had to keep their waste on site, prompting worries and protests. The decommissioned plant at Rancho Seco stores 22 metric tons of uranium, costing $5 million a year.

“We may never be able to move these,” said Gary Headrick, co-founder of San Clemente Green, said in a March public meeting about the 3.6 million pounds of nuclear waste stored in casks at San Onofre.

“These canisters could start leaking before you could even get it out of here,” said Donna Gilmore, who writes a website sharply critical of San Onofre’s management……..http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2016/jun/04/calfiornia-nuclear-future/

June 6, 2016 Posted by | general | Leave a comment

Outlandish claims being made about ‘Hitler’s Secret Nuclear Bombs’

Nazi History Hunters Say Hitler’s Secret Nuclear Bombs Lie Under Thuringian Forest NBC News by ANDY ECKARDT, 5 June 16  ARNSTADT, Germany — They hunt for jewels and gold, the long-hidden plunder of Nazi lore. Now hobby historians in Germany believe they have an urgent case of potentially catastrophic proportions — secret nuclear bombs.

Deep inside the Thuringian Forest, 70-year-old Peter Lohr and two friends have been scanning the surface with “earth radar” and “geomagnetic” technology after one of Lohr’s companions found Allied aerial surveillance photos of what they believe is a Nazi storage facility.

“What did the Nazis really do here? There are so many unanswered questions,” said 67-year-old Walter Boegenhold, a local resident interested in military history who has heard stories about Hitler’s secret projects in the region since his teenage years.

The team’s initial surface scans produced colorful images of what appears to be bomb-shaped metal housing, which led Lohr and Boegenhold to partner with explosive ordnance disposal expert Ralf Ehmann, 60.

“After conducting geomagnetic scans and carefully looking at all the images, I believe that we have Fat Man bombs buried below the surface,” Ehmann told NBC News.

“Fat Man” was the name for the plutonium bomb dropped by U.S. planes on the Japanese city of Nagasaki in 1945. Ehmann believes a similar nuclear bomb was developed by the Nazis.

Local authorities, however, think that’s hogwash……….

the nuke hunters of Thuringia have vowed not to give up. They recently presented their findings in a formal letter to the governor of the eastern German state. http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/nazi-loot-hunters-say-hitler-s-secret-nuclear-bombs-lie-n583186

June 6, 2016 Posted by | general | Leave a comment

Macau environmentalists warn on dangers for Taishan nuclear power plant

ENVIRONMENTALIST RAISES RED FLAGS ON NUCLEAR PLANT Macao Daily Times , MAY 31, 2016 – Sammie Lun, chairman of Green Environment Protection Association of Macau, is concerned about safety issues surrounding the upcoming Taishan nuclear power plant. The plant, located approximately 80 kilometers west of Macau, is currently under construction and has been surrounded by controversies….

Lun told the Times “I am personally totally against nuclear power plants.” Furthermore, he added that he maintains his opposition to the plant simply because of the pollution risks that are known to come  with all nuclear power plants. “Even if the nuclear power plant is clean, if problems arise, they will be catastrophic, pollution will exist forever,” said Lun…..

GOV’T REQUESTS INFORMATIONThe government issued a statement yesterday indicating that it has requested from the Guangdong Provincial Government more information regarding the Taishan nuclear power plant. Macau’s security authorities have also requested more information from Guangdong’s Emergency Management Office. The statement mentions that the MSAR has a set of emergency response measures to cope with any possible nuclear incident in neighboring areas.http://macaudailytimes.com.mo/environmentalist-raises-red-flags-nuclear-plant.html

June 6, 2016 Posted by | China, safety | Leave a comment

Energy storage favours the renewable revolution, not outdated nuclear power

“…….Berkeley Energy Professor Daniel Kammen ably defended energy storage, ……. Energy storage is cost competitive already in some markets—unlike new nuclear, Kammen said, and its price is dropping on a steeper curve than the dramatic reductions seen in solar costs. Storage will be more effective in the decentralized energy grid that’s emerging, he continued, than nuclear could be.

“The dramatic ramp up in solar resulted in the dramatic realization that a diverse, decentralized system can provide the same critical features that we think about with a baseload highly centralized system,” said Kammen. “Not tomorrow, but in the time frame that we need it, it’s absolutely there.”….

Ball summarized: ”So the argument is that rather than having yesterday’s no-carbon technology, which is a very centralized big generation technology, you think the world now has tomorrow’s no-carbon technology, which looks like a ballet of lots of different sources ready to go.”

In addition to batteries, compressed air storage is cost competitive, Kammen said, and flywheel storage can deliver power in sub-milliseconds. And in time, electric cars, buses and other vehicles will be used as a storage resource, he said. That’s a strategy China is pursuing and that Kammen has suggested the rest of the world consider, not in the next five years, but a bit later as these technologies develop and proliferate.

Meanwhile, small modular nuclear reactors won’t be ready in time to meet the grid’s needs, he said, and conventional reactors are too expensive.

“If you want to bet on a robust-basic-research to an applied-research-deployment category,” Kammen said, “that far favors the storage revolution than it does the nuclear revolution.”…… Silicon Valley Energy Summit , Forbes 5 June 16

June 6, 2016 Posted by | energy storage, USA | Leave a comment

Finland’s Fennovoima nuclear station dependent on Russia for all the finance

“……the extraordinary problems at Olkiluoto have cast doubts over Finland’s ability to manage such projects, while Fennovoima was hit by a farcical hunt for European investors for Hanhikivi.

And all of that is not counting the furore surrounding the participation of Rosatom, the Russian state-controlled nuclear company. As well as providing the reactor and serving as the main shareholder in Fennovoima, Rosatom is also supplying all the finance and the atomic fuel.

Worries about Russian involvement almost brought down the previous Finnish coalition government. The Green party left the administration, accusing its former partners, some of whom are still in power, of pursuing a policy of “Finlandisation” — an extremely loaded term locally meaning the accommodation of Russian views in Finnish policy. …..

The deal is also of huge importance to Rosatom and its international ambitions to play a leading role in any revival of nuclear power outside the former Soviet Union…..”  Finland raises its bet on nuclear power, Ft.com 5 June 16 

June 6, 2016 Posted by | Finland, marketing, Russia | Leave a comment

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