Power struggle over EU nuclear safety
….In its suggested amendments, the EC has proposed mandatory stress tests for European nuclear facilities every six years and a set of criteria to ensure national regulators are truly independent from interference from the government or from the industry when they make decisions……
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS-Power-struggle-over-EU-nuclear-safety-1302145.html
13 February 2014
National regulators should remain responsible for nuclear safety in the European Union (EU), the nuclear industry has argued. The European Commission has proposed to increase its powers in a new safety directive.
European Nuclear Safety Regulators Group (ENSREG) chairman Gerald Hennenhöfer suggested that the commission does not have the experience to ensure and assess the safety of European nuclear power plants.
He was speaking at a public hearing in Brussels organised by the European Parliament on the amendments proposed last summer by the commission to the European Union (EU) nuclear safety directive, which would give the EC regulatory power regarding the safety of nuclear power plants in Europe.
“The new directive should take a goal-setting approach to strengthen the responsibility, the competence and the independence of national regulators.”
Jean-Pol Poncelet
Director general of Foratom
The commission would be able to take EU countries to court if they do not implement technical recommendations from mandatory peer reviews that would also be authorised by the revised directive. Hennenhöfer said the EC should not have the sole right to make such recommendations or decide if they have been flouted. “We can work together towards a peer review system and would be able to set up a new regulatory body in the future that would have the necessary expertise,” he said.
Director general of Foratom, the European nuclear trade body, Jean-Pol Poncelet agreed that national regulators should remain in charge of the safety of the nuclear facilities in their countries. “This responsibility cannot be shared or diluted without risking undermining their authority and consequently the effectiveness and credibility of the safety measures,” he said. “There is a risk for confusion and even double jeopardy if more than one regulator is involved.”
IAEA Delivers Final Report on Decommissioning Efforts at Fukushima Daiichi
…..The team also examined Japan’s efforts to monitor radiation condition in the marine environment, including seawater, sediments and biota, which were further discussed with officials of the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA)…..
http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/2014/decommissioning.html
13 February 2014
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) delivered a report on 12 February 2014 to the government of Japan describing the findings of a two-part review of the nation’s efforts to plan and implement the decommissioning of TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station (NPS).
At Japan’s request, the IAEA organized two expert teams to provide an independent review of Japan’s Mid-and-Long-Term Roadmap towards the Decommissioning of TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Units 1-4. The first team visited Japan from 15 to 22 April 2013 and the second from 25 November to 4 December 2013.
“Japan has established a good foundation to improve its strategy and to allocate the necessary resources to conduct the safe decommissioning of Fukushima Daiichi,” said team leader Juan Carlos Lentijo, IAEA Director of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology.” The situation, however, remains very complex, and there will continue to be challenging issues that must be resolved to ensure the plant’s long-term stability.”
The expert teams examined a wide variety of issues relating to decommissioning the power plant, including Tokyo Electric Power Company’s (TEPCO’s) efforts to remove fuel assemblies from Reactor Unit 4’s Spent Fuel Pool and to manage the growing volume of contaminated water at the site.
We’re one step closer to nuclear fusion but still miles away
……All things considered, the interest in nuclear fusion is alive and kicking despite progress being made at a necessarily tedious pace and at the cost of billions of dollars. After the laser facility at NIF came online in 2009, it set for itself a deadline of September 2012 by which to the ignition of a fusion reaction – and missed, prompting politicians to deprioritise the project and chop funding by $60 million. In the same year, on the other hand, Russia and China announced plans for two ‘superlaser’ facilities to replicate inertial fusion.
Once any of them achieves a sustainable fusion reaction, countries will quickly start designing power plants. Already, engineers at the Naval Research Laboratory, USA, are drawing up plans for a Fusion Test Facility that will let them experiment with nuclear fusion with an aim to generate electric power. Let’s then give ourselves till the end of this century, eh?….
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/blogs/blogs-the-copernican/article5685659.ece
The National Ignition Facility, USA, has breached an important milestone on the road to achieving sustainable nuclear fusion. On the other hand, it is a partial achievement because it hasn’t got everything right yet.
My favourite source of limitless energy lies in fiction, in Arthur Clarke’s The Songs of Distant Earth to be exact. In the book, Clarke describes a spaceship called ‘Magellan’ powered by zero-point energy, where energy is pulled out of nothing (or out of other dimensions – but since those dimensions are otherwise inaccessible, their existence would mean nothing to our dimension).
Clarke wasn’t entirely wrong – as usual – with his vision: using zero-point energy, or vacuum energy, is a scientifically viable possibility, albeit not in the way he’d imagine it. It requires tremendous advancements in technology to achieve. Perhaps he knew that, too: the novel is set in the late 40th century, a time by which humankind is likely to have at least fully understood how to produce more energy than is consumed in producing it.
In 2014, the only Earth-bound candidate (apart from Frank Wilczek’s time crystals) in a position to lay claim to this honour is nuclear fusion. This is a phenomenon already at work in the hearts of stars, but in laboratories on Earth, scientists are still grappling with getting minute details right so they can achieve sustainable nuclear fusion.
Blowing the fuse
On February 12, a team from the $1.2-billion National Ignition Facility (NIF), California, announced that they’d breached the first step: producing a fusion reaction that released more energy than it consumed, over experiments in September and November, 2013. Viewed against a historical backdrop that started in the early 1980s, this is a remarkable achievement. Viewed against a futuristic ‘frontdrop’, it pales in comparison to what should come next.
At NIF, scientists practice one of two known techniques to achieve nuclear fusion, at least if simulations based on theoretical models are to be believed: inertial containment. The principle is simple. Atoms of hydrogen are heavily compressed inside a very small capsule until they fuse together to form atoms of helium, releasing large amounts of energy. This is how a nuclear fusion reaction is triggered.
But in order to make it practicable, scientists have to make this reaction continue and sustain it. To get there, the reaction has to be controlled in such a way that more atoms of hydrogen and helium use some of the heat produced to compress themselves further, producing another fusion reaction, and so on. Beyond this stumbling block, needless to say, is the panacea to most energy problems conceivable by humankind.
Not exactly the reaction we’re looking for
Before we start speculating, however, it’s important to get some things right about the NIF achievement. For starters, they achieved “fusion fuel gains exceeding unity”, according to their paper. If fusion fuel gain is less than unity, then the amount of fuel produced divided by the amount of fuel consumed is a number less than 1. At unity, the value of the fraction is of course 1. Exceeding unity, therefore, means more fuel was produced than was consumed. The operative clause here is ‘fuel consumed’.
The folks at NIF used strong lasers pulsing for a few nanoseconds to deliver trillions of watts of energy to the contents of the capsule. However, not all the energy is consumed by the atoms but only a fraction. And if they have achieved fusion – which they have – it means the amount of energy produced by fusion was greater than the fraction they consumed, not greater than all the energy they were given. According to their paper published in Nature, the total energy delivered by the lasers was 1.9 megajoules while the reaction produced about 17 kilojoules.
As Omar Hurricane, the lead author of the published paper, told The Guardian, “We are finally, by harnessing these reactions, getting more energy out of that reaction than we put into the DT fuel.”
Even so, they were missing something here that’d make the process more efficient. This is where the history comes into play.
To get inertial containment right, scientists have to broadly look out for three things. First, the lasers have to be designed to perfectly deliver specific quantities of energy over carefully described intervals. Second, the lasers produce X-rays inside the capsule that then energise the atoms – the X-rays have to be as symmetrical as possible to act evenly. Third, the contents of the capsule have to be as spherically arranged as possible to minimise instability.
The contents being made to implode are a mixture of deuterium (D) and tritium (T) – both isotopes of hydrogen. They are coated as a fine patina on the insides of the capsule, which is made of gold. When laser pulses strike the gold, it emits X-rays that then driven the isotopes inward at such energy and speed (almost 1.12 million km/hr) that they are forced to fuse. Because the flux of X-rays can’t be possibly perfectly controlled, the focus was mostly on getting…
The perfect shot into the perfect capsule
Nuclear Hotseat #138: USS Reagan Sailors v. TEPCO Lawsuit Update w/Attny Charles Bonner
http://www.nuclearhotseat.com/blog/
DOWNLOAD HERE:
http://lhalevy.audioacrobat.com/download/04f9641a-1876-4dcc-ad04-8b373aef8633.mp3
INTERVIEW: Attorney Charles Bonner, representing USS Ronald Reagan sailors harmed by Fukushima radiation, with an update on their lawsuit against TEPCO. Now 79 named plaintiffs with cancers, tumors, blindness, wasting of limbs, internal bleeding and more face off w/power giant for medical expenses on behalf of 75,000 military personnel in Japan during the start of the Fukushima crisis.
NUMNUTZ OF THE WEEK: A lying professor claims you can eat 32 grams of plutonium… and not get sick! And TEPCO has solicited Fukushima clean-up suggestions from experts around the world. 200 ideas being vetted… and implementation not expected or possible between 2020. Just in time for the Olympics?
PLUS:
- Eight more children diagnosed with thyroid cancer in Fukushima while medical “experts” claim it has nothing to do w/Fukushima;
- TEPCO admits their radiation data is “wildly wrong” as new sources of radiation leaks keep showing up;
- Tokyo gets Abe-baby’s hand-picked pro-nuke misogynist Masuzoe as their new governor because anti-nuke vote got split;
- Hawaii getting hit hard with ongoing radiation, starts to discover how long it’s been going on (HINT: longer than they’ve known);
- California kayakers report Fukushima radiation on their boat bottoms;
- Teen cancer cluster in LA suburb calls in Erin Brockovich, who needs to realize they’re just ten miles from the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, site of a 1959 nuclear meltdown and the largest radiation release in US history;
- Imminent influx of radioactive Pacific water from Fukushima will leave radwaste residue on west coast beaches;
- RadCAST radiation “weather report” with Mimi German.
- …and more!
Radioactive Waste 55 – Illegal Nuclear Waste Dumping in England 1
….Here we have a government agency, the U.K. Ministry of Defense, breaking rules about nuclear waste safety at a government waste repository, Driggs. It is bad enough when unscrupulous companies conspire to with the Mafia illegally dump nuclear waste as I covered in recent posts. But when government agencies are mishandling nuclear waste, where is the public supposed to turn to rectify the situation?….
http://nucleotidings.com/article/radioactive-waste-55-illegal-nuclear-waste-dumping-england-1
By phoenix | 2/11/14
Yesterday, I blogged about illegal dumping of radioactive waste in a national nuclear repository in France. Continuing my focus on illegal radioactive waste dumping, today’s blog is about illegal dumping in the United Kingdom. The UK Ministry of Defense has shipped waste from nuclear submarines based at Devenport in Plymouth to Driggs in Cumbria on the west coast of England for decades. Recently the Observer newspaper learned and reported that since 1990, the waste being shipped to Driggs from Devenport has been exceeding the strict safety limits set by UK law for radioactivity.
Driggs is a repository for low-level radioactive waste that was operated by British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL), a company owned by the U.K. government. BNFL was founded in 1971. It made nuclear fuel, ran nuclear reactors, generated and sold electricity, reprocessed and managed spent nuclear fuel and decommissioned nuclear power plants. In 2005, it transferred all the nuclear sites it managed, including Driggs, to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. By 2009, BNFL had sold off all of its operation divisions and it was announced in 2010 that it would be abolished. BNFL had been repeatedly criticized for poor record keeping and management of nuclear sites including Driggs.
UK – Bradwell-on-Sea nuclear plans : Fears nuclear liquid discharge could pollute famous oysters
….“We are against the process. There’s just not enough information about the impact the process might have and we need to give the oysters every chance we can.”
He has been backed by Sarah Allison, a marine officer at Essex Wildlife Trust, who said she was “seriously concerned” about the discharge plans…..
Ross Bentley Wednesday, February 12, 201
Plans to pour nuclear effluent into an Essex estuary could pollute the region’s famous oysters, a fisherman and wildlife expert have warned.
As part of the decommissioning procedure for the nuclear power station at Bradwell-on-Sea, near Maldon, a process known as fuel element dissolution (FED) is set to take place. It involves dissolving metal that was used to hold fuel rods in acid to reduce and capture radioactive material before discharging the liquid by-product into the sea at the Blackwater Estuary.
The process is due to start next month but West Mersea oyster fisherman, Richard Haward, who fishes the estuary and owns the well-known fishmongers The Company Shed, fears too little is known about the potential impact the effluent could have on the fragile population of native oysters that inhabit the area. In December, the estuary was designated a Marine Conservation Zone (MCZ) by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) to protect the oysters, which have been farmed there since Roman times.
However, both Magnox, which operates the plant at Bradwell, and the Environment Agency say the liquid discharges will be within safe limits.
Mr Haward said: “The population of native oysters is much lower than it has been traditionally and the MCZ was set up to help the population grow. If nothing is done now the population could fall beyond a level where they could recover,”
OLYMPIA, Wash. – Senate OKs task force to study nuclear power
http://www.sfgate.com/news/science/article/Senate-OKs-task-force-to-study-nuclear-power-5228477.php
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) — The Senate has passed a measure that would create a taskforce to study the possibility of using nuclear energy in the state in the future.
The measure passed on a 34-15 vote Wednesday and heads to the House for consideration. The bill creates a task force that would meet up to four times and would consider environmental benefits and costs, including the storage and disposal of any nuclear waste. The task force would have to present its findings and recommendations to the Legislature by Dec. 1.
The bill’s sponsor, Republican Sen. Doug Ericksen, says that new technology exists and should be considered so that the state could incorporate new energy options. Opponents expressed concerns over safety, citing previous nuclear disasters around the world.
OT? The Day We Fought Back – Did you miss it?
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/02/day-we-fought-back
The late Internet activist Aaron Swartz famously said, when describing how the Internet defeated the SOPA blacklist bill, that: “We won this fight because everyone made themselves the hero of their own story. Everyone took it as their job to save this crucial freedom.”
February 11, 2014—The Day We Fought Back. We started something.
Of course, the battle didn’t begin today. The groups that organized this action have long been pushing hard for real surveillance reform. But we knew that the time was ripe—that the Snowden leaks, unrelenting media pressure, grassroots activism, and even pressure from within Congress—were creating a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to give the public—worldwide—the chance to voice its opposition to mass spying. We knew that 6,000+ websites were committing to stand with us in a global day of action, that dozens of advocacy organizations worldwide would fight with us. What we didn’t know was how big today’s stand against mass spying would be.
In one day, over 71,000 concerned Americans picked up the phone and told their Congress to rein in the NSA. Far more sent emails to their members of Congress. Around the world over 200,000 put their name to a set of founding principles against suspicionless surveillance: by the NSA, by their own governments, by anyone who dares to violate our human rights.
We’ve done more in this single day to pressure the U.S. Congress to reform surveillance law than what months or even years of lobbying to date have accomplished.
We’ve demonstrated our strength. We’ve shown those who want to watch us that the whole world is watching them.
This was a community-driven protest created by advocacy groups and everyday Internet users who wanted to defend the Internet from the creeping shadow of surveillance. Tech companies helped amplify their voices. Users worldwide were bolstered by the support of giants like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, reddit, Automattic, Thoughtworks, Namecheap, Hover and many others. In dozens of countries, activists united their forces, forming new powerful coalitions and new legal campaigns.
This day of action tapped into the creativity and diversity of the Internet. Advocates for press freedom described how surveillance chills freedom of expression. International human rights organizations articulated how unrestrained, illegal surveillance violates human rights. Tech companies demanded privacy rights for their users. Lawmakers stood with their constituents in demanding an end to mass surveillance. And worldwide, there were people holding events large and small to show that they would no longer tolerate suspicionless surveillance.
We also saw great news coverage of our protests, from The Guardian to the Washington Post to PBS and many others, ensuring people around the world learned about the protests.
Of course, the battle isn’t over. In some ways it’s just beginning. We’ve proven to lawmakers that we are powerful, united yet diverse, and that we are going to use everything within our means to combat surveillance abuses. But defending freedom online is a marathon, not a sprint. We’ll need to show them, day after day, that we won’t compromise or accept reforms that fall short. And we’ll continue to make every day a day we fight back against mass surveillance—in the courts, in the legislature, and on the Internet.
The late Internet activist Aaron Swartz famously said, when describing how the Internet defeated the SOPA blacklist bill, that: “We won this fight because everyone made themselves the hero of their own story. Everyone took it as their job to save this crucial freedom.”
Aaron’s legacy of fighting for a technological world that supports, rather than undermines, human rights inspired us today. Together, the hundreds of thousands of us that took action in the last twenty four hours, can live up to that legacy. Today, we began to win.
12m and 8m long cracks on concrete base of 2 tank areas / Tepco doesn’t mention the possibility of land subsidence
Posted by Mochizuki on February 12th, 2014
2 of the long cracks were found on the base concrete of the tank areas.
Those cracks are 12m and 8m long, found in 2 tank areas. Those tank areas are next to each other.
The concrete base is to stop leaked contaminated water leak to the ground. Tepco removed the soil around the tank areas for the possible past leakage of contaminated water.
There is a possibility that land subsidence caused the long cracks, but Tepco didn’t mention the possibility and only announced they will cover the concrete base with urethane coating.
http://www.tepco.co.jp/nu/fukushima-np/handouts/2014/images/handouts_140212_05-j.pdf
http://www.tepco.co.jp/tepconews/library/movie-01j.html
http://photo.tepco.co.jp/date/2014/201402-j/140212-01j.html
Iori Mochizuki
#Nuclear Japan: Nuclear Regulation Authority Agrees That Ooi Nuclear Power Plant Does Not Have Active Faults
11 February 2014
http://ex-skf.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/nuclear-japan-nuclear-regulation.html
It’s Nuclear Regulation Authority’s turn to be bullish on nuclear power plants in Japan awaiting NRA’s approval to restart, now that the Tokyo gubernatorial election ended with the result interpreted as great endorsement of Prime Minister Abe’s policies across the board.
NRA accepted the conclusion of the experts that the fractured zones inside the Ooi Nuclear Power Plant compound are not active faults.
All set to restart, then.
From Jiji Tsushin (2/12/2014):
「活動せず」報告書を了承＝大飯原発の敷地内断層－規制委
NRA accepted the report that fractured zones at Ooi Nuclear Power Plant are not “active faults”
関西電力大飯原発（福井県おおい町）敷地内の破砕帯（断層）が活断層である疑いを指摘されていた問題で、原子力規制委員会は１２日、「将来活動する可能性のある断層などには該当しない」とする専門家調査団の報告書を了承した。
Fractured zones inside KEPCO’s Ooi Nuclear Power Plant (Ooi-cho, Fukui Prefecture) compound have been suspected to be active faults. However, on February 12, 2014, Nuclear Regulation Authority accepted the report by a group of experts whose conclusion is that “they are not faults that may become active in the future”.
Ooi Nuclear Power Plant in Fukui Prefecture is accessible through a tunnel. In a severe accident after a big earthquake and tsunami, the only way to access the plant is by boat, if the tunnel collapses. Even then, if the plant harbor is destroyed by tsunami, oh well. It is not supposed to happen, and therefore it won’t happen.
The experts investigating on behalf of NRA did two surveys of the site to determine whether the fractured zones were active faults. The first survey was inconclusive, with most experts saying they were active faults. Clearly that changed in the second survey.
In case of a severe accident, the emergency response headquarters at Ooi Nuclear Power Plant will be a small spare room next to the central control room. There was no objection at all from NRA to this arrangement.
Again, the Tokyo gubernatorial election was supposed to be a mere provincial election (which was not, as revealed after the election by the compliant media), and the nuclear issues were supposed to be of little significance (which were total opposite, as revealed after the election by the compliant media).
There’s no stopping the Abe administration now.
(… unless another swarm of jellyfish clogs water intakes…)
‘Wading Through The Waters Of Fukushima Daiichi
- uploaded: Feb 12, 2014
To learn more about Fukushima from James Corbett visit:
http://www.corbettreport.com/
http://fukushimaupdate.com/
Foreigners afraid of living near Fukushima after crisis
A non-profit group’s interviews with expats who lived in Fukushima Prefecture at the time the nuclear catastrophe broke out in March 2011 determined that over two-thirds of them have left for their home countries or moved elsewhere in Japan.
http://voiceofrussia.com/2014_02_13/Foreigners-afraid-of-living-near-Fukushima-after-crisis-9548/
13 February 2014
The Fukushima International Association’s survey also showed that foreigners were worried by differences in domestic and foreign media coverage and that most of them relied on TV more than radio because of language barriers.
According to the prefectural authorities, up to 164,200 people had moved by May 2012, which accounts for 8% of the overall population of 2mln.
Of the 100 foreigners who took part in the survey, 53 knew that the prefecture hosted nuclear power plants before the earthquake on 11 March 2011 and tsunami that triggered the disaster.
At the end of 2010, 11,190 foreigners lived in the prefecture. Over 60% of them were either Chinese or Filipino. The number had dropped to 9,489 by the end of June 2013.
Foreigners who were given survey questionnaires pointed out that Japanese newspapers were slower in providing information than the foreign media.
Many foreigners had problems with understanding the situation even when they watched TV. They were at a loss why Japanese politicians appeared on the screen on a daily basis with a serious look in the faces. They were worried because they did not know where the nuclear plant was located and how dangerous radiation was.
Voice of Russia
Blast ruined the inside of containment vessel at Fukushima Daichi 4
http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0001027724
The Yomiuri Shimbun
Yomiuri Shimbun reporters look at the inside of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant’s No. 4 reactor building on Wednesday.
6:11 am, February 13, 2014
The Yomiuri Shimbun Almost three years after the outbreak of the nuclear crisis following the Great East Japan Earthquake, debris and wreckage remain scattered at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
Reporters from The Yomiuri Shimbun visited the crippled plant Wednesday, accompanied by TEPCO employees.
On the top floor of the plant’s No. 4 reactor building, a crane was moving to remove spent nuclear fuel from a storage pool. On the lower floors, debris and wreckage were scattered.
A hydrogen explosion, which is believed to have taken place outside the reactor, destroyed a door attached to the containment vessel as well as walls and pipes inside the vessel.
UNSCEARが被曝による健康被害はなかったという報告を出そうとしている！ UNSCEAR is going to publish a report that says there is no health hazards after the Fukushima disaster!
拡散してください！(特に国連の方と日本の憂慮する市民の方々)
Please dissemiante!
ベルギー代表も怒った9月発表のUNSCEAR報告 Even Belgian delegates got mad at the upcoming UNSCEAR report http://vogelgarten.blogspot.de/2013/08/unscear.html(Japanese)
The UNSCEAR Report downplays the Effects of radiation after the Fukushima accident, which infuriated even the Belgian government delegate.
このままでは、日本では事故直後から出ている健康被害、そして先日発表された44人の甲状腺と疑いのことも、なかったことにされてしまいます。
If nothing done, all the health hazards observed since the onset of the Fukushima accident and the recent news of 44 thyroid cancers and suspected cases would be totally ignored.
これを訴えられるのは、日本人しかいません。
Only Japanese can respond to this!
英語ができない？
You say you cannot write English?
関係ありません！今はグーグル翻訳だってあるのです。
Nonsense! You can use google translation!
グーグル翻訳でいいからメールを、以下のUNSCEAR担当者に！Please write a mail to UNSCEAR person below,
We need to tell the UN many Japanese are watching!!!
Contact address: Ms. Jaya…
View original post 158 more words
MEAG creating three subsidiaries for Vogtle nuclear funding
The arguments in the complaint, along with general opposition to nuclear plants, include claims that Georgia Power does not really need the federal funding or the project, as well as that the project is not needed since some of the electricity would be sold outside the state as part of the MEAG proposals.
http://www.griffindailynews.com/news/article_d639dc1e-910b-11e3-bcdd-001a4bcf6878.html
The Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia (MEAG) is asking the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to allow it to create up to three wholly owned subsidiaries to help MEAG fund the expansion of the Vogtle nuclear power plant.
The expansion, adding reactors 3 and 4, has already been approved, with MEAG as one of the licensed co-owners, along with Southern Nuclear Operating Company, Georgia Power Company, Oglethorpe Power Corporation and the City of Dalton. MEAG owns 22.7 percent, Oglethorp Power owns 30 percent, City of Dalton owns 1.6 percent and Georgia Power owns the rest.
Southern Nuclear Operating Company operates Vogtle and is making the request, which would allow MEAG to create the three subsidiaries, dividing up MEAG’s 22.7 percent share of the electricity generated by the two new reactors.
The cities of Griffin, Barnesville, Thomaston and Jackson are among the 48 cities and one county across the state that make up MEAG. The request is being made “To facilitate proposed additional, independent financing for one or more of these projects, some or all of MEAG Power’s 22.7 percent undivided ownership interest in VEGP (Vogtle Electric Generating Plant) Units 3 and 4 must be transferred to one or more wholly-owned special purpose entities,” each to still be owned by MEAG, and each named after the already approved projects, M, J and P.
According MEAG Senior Project Manager Paul Warfel, Griffin, Barnesville and Thomaston are part of Projects M, J and P and Jackson is a part of Projects J and P only. Warfel said the request “makes a technical change in the ownership structure for MEAG, but functionally, does not change the agreement that was previously in place with our participants.”
For each of the three projects, MEAG Power has entered into long term “cost passthrough” contracts with the counterparties or offtakers, who are entitled to their proportionate share of any electricity produced by Vogtle Units 3 and 4 and are obligated to pay for their proportionate share of the costs of constructing and operating those units, including funding for decommissioning.
1 This Month
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
of the week–London Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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