nuclear-news

The nuclear plant at Fort Calhoun is simply too expensive to run when compared to other, cheaper forms of power, the Omaha Public Power District’s chief executive said Thursday. So it needs to shut down by the end of the year, he said.

OPPD President and Chief Executive Tim Burke told the utility’s board of directors that it no longer makes financial sense to continue operations at Fort Calhoun, which is the smallest nuclear power plant in the United States. The site for the plant was purchased in 1965.

The board will reconvene on June 16 to make a decision on Burke’s recommendation.

Closing the plant would mean lower overhead costs when it comes to complying with federal nuclear regulations and other expenses — including the $20 million a year OPPD pays an outside firm to run the plant. That firm, Exelon, has run Fort Calhoun since 2013 after OPPD was rapped hard by federal regulators for serious safety lapses; the plant was shut from mid-2011 until December 2013 as the utility dealt with Missouri River flooding and correcting violations of federal nuclear safety rules.

Shutting the plant permanently would move the utility away from relatively expensive-to-generate nuclear energy in an era of low-priced natural gas and an increasing reliance on wind power.

The recommendation to shut the plant comes with a guarantee, Burke said: Ratepayers won’t see a general rate increase until at least 2022 because of the savings from shuttering Fort Calhoun.

“You have to say enough is enough and curb the costs,” OPPD board member Tom Barrett said. “That’s the cold, hard facts of this business.”

The costs of nuclear generation put it at a disadvantage to wind and natural gas, according to the federal Energy Information Administration. The EIA in June of last year reported the total costs per megawatt-hour for a new nuclear plant to be about $95. In comparison, the cheapest natural gas-fired generation is about $75 or less per megawatt-hour and wind generation is about $74 per megawatt-hour…….

John Keeley, a spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry advocate, said the Fort Calhoun situation is an example of the vulnerability of similar nuclear plants to market conditions — mainly, the sources of energy that, at the moment, can produce electricity more cheaply, like natural gas and wind. (Five nuclear plants have closed in the past few years; two others are set to close.)…….

OPPD ratepayer Mark Welsch, who attended Thursday’s meeting, commended the utility’s management team and board for taking up the issue. Welsch is the head of the Omaha chapter of the advocacy group Nebraskans for Peace. He said the utility should be tilting toward renewable sources of energy, like wind.

“I’m very proud to be a customer-owner of OPPD right now,” he said. “The board is taking a hard look at a very hard potential decision it will have to make.”

If the board follows through on the recommendation, OPPD’s wind and renewable generation will make up 49 percent of its energy portfolio by 2020, up from 38 percent that is currently forecast.

OPPD’s relationship with renewables grew in 2014 when the utility approved a long-term generation plan that included the phase-out some of its coal-burning units, conversion of others to natural gas and the addition of 400 megawatts of wind power from a massive wind farm near O’Neill, Nebraska.

Under the plan presented Thursday, those plans would remain intact, but Burke said the most economically viable course is one that does not include nuclear power and effectively ends more than 40 years of nuclear generation…….

Decommissioning can take 10 years under a process known as Decon, under which a plant is dismantled and contaminated materials are either decontaminated or removed. In a deferred dismantling process known as Safstor, facilities are maintained for a period of up to 60 years and radioactivity decays to a safe level.

OPPD in its 2015 annual report estimated that the costs to decommission Fort Calhoun would be about $884 million. The utility has socked away about $373 million for those costs.

The board will take 30 days to consider management’s proposal, during which time it will field concerns and suggestions from stakeholders and ratepayers…………. Contact the writer: 402-444-1534, cole.epley@owh.com    http://www.omaha.com/money/oppd-s-fort-calhoun-nuclear-plant-has-become-too-expensive/article_f8b86658-184e-11e6-b852-8f5144170b67.html