HOW RADIOACTIVE UKRAINE IS BRINGING IN THE TOURISTS, FINANCIAL REVIEW AUG 4 2017 A by Cheryl L. Reed
The button that could have started a nuclear holocaust is grey – not red.
I learned this after climbing into a nuclear rocket command silo, 12 floors below ground, and sitting in the same green chair at the same yellow metal console at which former Soviet officers once presided.
Here, they practised entering secret codes into their grey keyboards, pushing the launch button and turning a key – all within seven seconds – to fire up to 10 ballistic missiles. The officers never knew what day their practice codes might become real, nor did they know their targets.
This base in Pervomaysk, Ukraine – about a four-hour drive from Kiev – once had 86 intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of destroying cities in Europe and the United States. Though the nuclear warheads have been removed, the command silo with much of its equipment, giant trucks that carried the rockets to the base and an empty silo were preserved so that people could see what had been secretly going on at nuclear missile bases in the former Soviet Union.
Tourists go to Paris to marvel at the majesty of the Eiffel Tower, to Rome to stroll the cobbled streets of the Vatican, to Moscow to behold the magnificent domes of Red Square. And while Ukraine has its own plethora of domed cathedrals, including monasteries with underground caves, thousands of tourists are trekking to this country for a uniquely Soviet experience.
Here, they stand outside an exploded nuclear reactor at Chernobyl and rifle through the remains of a nearby abandoned city – Geiger counter in hand. In Chernobyl’s shadow, they marvel at the giant “Moscow Eye”, an anti-ballistic-missile detector that rises 50 storeys high and looks like a giant roller coaster.
Every day, a handful of travel companies ferry mostly foreigners to Chernobyl’s 30-kilometre “exclusion zone”. In 2016, Solo East Travel hauled 7500 people there, up from only one trip in 2000………
The museum tour guides are all former Soviet officers who once worked at the missile base. Ours, Gennadiy Fil’, once manned the nuclear controls. When American tourists dallied, snapping photos of the rockets above ground, he barked, “Ledz go!”
Then he darted through a heavy door of a squat building, down a series of winding stairs and through an underground tunnel, navigating by memory through the narrow, 150-metre-long passageway to the control centre in a silo. The narrow cylinder is suspended from the ground – theoretically, to withstand the shock of a counter-attack…….
No moral objections
Fil’, 55, said he never knew when he would be ordered to input real codes. It was his job, he said, shrugging. He said he had no moral objections to pushing the button. Launching nuclear missiles was a “political decision”, something that people on top of the ground decided, not him……..
In 1994, three years after Ukraine became independent, it joined the Non-Proliferation Treaty and agreed to dismantle its 1900 Soviet missiles. At the time, Ukraine boasted the world’s third-largest stockpile of nuclear warheads after Russia and the United States. Ukraine shipped its nuclear warheads to Russia and dismantled its silos, often blowing them up or filling them with cement. The control silo at Pervomaysk was the only one spared – so it could become a museum. The 46th Rocket Division, part of the 43rd Rocket Army, was disbanded in 2001……..
Nuclear ghost town
The city of Pripyat was once a secret Soviet city, closed to anyone but workers of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor and their families. Now the city, an hour-and-a-half drive from Kiev, is a nuclear ghost town. Forty-nine thousand people were forced to evacuate the day after Chernobyl’s Reactor No.4 exploded on April 26, 1986.
Nearly all the first responders and soldiers died from radiation poisoning while trying to contain the graphite fire and the radioactive particles spewing from the destroyed reactor, explained Bodnarchuk, our tour guide. Officially, only 31 firemen and soldiers were killed. But some believe that the disaster claimed at least 10,000 lives as wind carried radioactive material into Belarus and Northern Europe.
Even though critics have said that the designs of Chernobyl are outmoded and inherently unsafe, Russia reportedly is still using 11 similar nuclear reactors.
Today, visitors can stand across the street from the damaged reactor at Chernobyl, which recently was covered by a huge, $US2.3 billion shield. But the highlight of the tour is, by far, the crumbling city of Pripyat. Though tour operators are warned to stay out of Pripyat’s buildings, tourists routinely stomp through the city, including the hospital where dying first responders were taken……..
driving through the red forest near the Chernobyl reactor – where the radiation burned up all the trees, which were then bulldozed and buried. Our Geiger counters went crazy as we drove through the new-growth forest, registering 26 sieverts per hour.
Our guide tried to calm fears about our exposure to radiation by assuring us that any high levels on our body would be detected by the machines we had to pass through on the way out of Chernobyl’s exclusion zone. Those machines – old Soviet steel contraptions that look like retro airport metal detectors – hardly inspire confidence……..http://www.afr.com/lifestyle/travel/how-radioactive-ukraine-is-bringing-in-the-tourists-20170729-gxlk6k
In Sweltering South, Climate Change Is Now a Workplace Hazard Workers laboring outdoors in southern states are wrestling with the personal and political consequences of a worsening environment, NYT, By YAMICHE ALCINDORAUG. 3, 2017, GALVESTON, Tex. — Adolfo Guerra, a landscaper in this port city on the Gulf of Mexico, remembers panicking as his co-worker vomited and convulsed after hours of mowing lawns in stifling heat. Other workers rushed to cover him with ice, and the man recovered.
But for Mr. Guerra, 24, who spends nine hours a day six days a week doing yard work, the episode was a reminder of the dangers that exist for outdoor workers as the planet warms.
“I think about the climate every day,” Mr. Guerra said, “because every day we work, and every day it feels like it’s getting hotter.”……
to Robert D. Bullard, a professor at Texas Southern University who some call the “father of environmental justice,” the industrial revival that Mr. Trump has promised could come with some serious downsides for an already warming planet. Professor Bullard is trying to bring that message to working-class Americans like Mr. Guerra, and to environmental organizations that have, in his mind, been more focused on struggling animals than poor humans, who have been disproportionately harmed by increasing temperatures, worsening storms and rising sea levels.
“For too long, a lot of the climate change and global warming arguments have been looking at melting ice and polar bears and not at the human suffering side of it,” Professor Bullard said. “They are still pushing out the polar bear as the icon for climate change. The icon should be a kid who is suffering from the negative impacts of climate change and increased air pollution, or a family where rising water is endangering their lives.”
The “environmental justice movement” has, in fact, caught on with major environmental groups, but it has far to go before it begins moving the dial in the nation’s politics. Professor Bullard envisions the recruits for his movement coming not only from the liberal college towns of the Northeast and Midwest, but also from the sweltering working-class communities in the Sun Belt, which he sees as the front line of the nation’s environmental wars.
Residents of working-class communities in the Sun Belt often cannot afford to move or evacuate during weather disasters. They may work outside, and they may struggle to cover their air-conditioning bills. Pollution in their communities leads to health problems that are compounded by the refusal of most Sun Belt state governments to expand Medicaid access under the Affordable Care Act…….. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/03/us/politics/climate-change-trump-working-poor-activists.html
IF SCE&G AND Santee Cooper were free-market businesses, they’d probably be out of business in the wake of South Carolina’s nuclear meltdown. Or they’d have new management. Or they would have abandoned their nuclear reactors years ago — if they had ever started building them.
If SCE&G were even just a regular regulated monopoly — one that didn’t have the Legislature’s blessing to charge ratepayers $1.4 billion, and keep charging us even more, for electricity we will never receive — it probably would have walked away from the project much sooner. Or, like every other regulated monopoly in the nation without such legislative protection, never started it.
But state law reduced SCE&G’s risk and made it financially and psychologically easier for the company to pursue a high-risk plan to build the nation’s first new nuclear reactors in decades. And state law allowed Santee Cooper to join the venture without even the modicum of oversight that SCE&G had.
Santee Cooper is not regulated by the Public Service Commission, and its management answers to a politically appointed board whose members cannot be removed unless they break the law. Both conditions need to change. The governor should be able to remove his appointees for any or no reason, and the utility should be subject to the same regulation as privately owned utilities. And serious questions need to be asked about whether President Lonnie Carter deserves to be the highest-paid person in state government — or even remain employed.
What to do about the laws that govern SCE&G is less clear — and figuring that out needs to be the focus of legislators when they begin hearings later this month on how a $14 billion nuclear-construction project fell apart after both companies’ ratepayers sank more than $2 billion into it.
Was the whole concept of that law flawed? Are we guaranteeing irresponsible decision-making when we allow a regulated monopoly to charge customers up front for nuclear and coal-fired production facilities, and keep charging them even after the project is abandoned? Or would that mechanism, which is intended to reduce interest costs, make sense if the utility had to put more of its investors’ money at risk?
What about the Public Service Commission? Did commissioners have enough room to turn down any of the nine rate increases they approved for SCE&G? The law allows them to reject increases if there has been “a material and adverse deviation from the approved schedules, estimates, and projections” — which certainly happened here — but only if the utility was “imprudent” in failing to anticipate or avoid the changes.
If the commission didn’t have enough authority to reject rate increases, that needs changing. If there was enough authority but commissioners failed to use it, then perhaps it’s the commissioners who need changing.
Or did legislators — who elect commissioners to the well-paid political posts — make it too clear that they were not to reject rate increases? If so, we need to change how commissioners are selected. (Yes, legislators would need to change as well, but that’s up to voters.)
The Office of Regulatory Staff is supposed to conduct “on-going monitoring” of nuclear construction projects and “review and audit” rate requests, hiring outside experts as needed. Did it have the authority it needed to protect the public? If not, that needs changing. (The law that created that office, by the way, requires it to protect the “public interest,” which includes “preservation of the financial integrity of the state’s public utilities and continued investment in and maintenance of utility facilities.”)
If the office has sufficient authority, did it do its job but get overruled by the PSC? If not, then perhaps that staff needs changing, and perhaps the way it’s selected. The executive director is nominated by a legislative committee and technically appointed by the governor, sort of like magistrates.
What happens when SCE&G builds the new capacity that nuclear reactors will not provide? If it builds a natural gas plant, it won’t be allowed to charge ratepayers for construction unless or until the plant produces electricity. But should SCE&G ever be allowed to charge us for a facility that replaces an abandoned facility we’ve already paid $1.4 billion toward?
And what about the whole idea of monopolies? I doubt we’ve reached the point where small carbon-based or alternative-energy plants can provide everyone in the state access to electricity, which we’d need before we could switch to a free-market system. But a lot of people believe that time is coming. If lawmakers are going to spend a lot of mental energy on our state’s energy future, they ought to start thinking about how we get to that place, and what we do once we’re there.
Finally, a question legislators will avoid if we let them: Should a monopoly be allowed to make campaign donations to the legislators who have the power not only to revoke its monopoly status but also to shield it even more from the consequences of its decisions? And if so, how on earth do you justify that?
Ms. Scoppe writes editorials and columns for The State. Reach her at cscoppe@thestate.com or (803) 771-8571 or follow her on Twitter or like her on Facebook @CindiScoppe.
Legislators call for refunds from nuke projecthttp://counton2.com/2017/08/03/legislators-call-for-refunds-from-nuke-project/ By Associated Press, August 3, 2017, COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina legislators want to bar SCE&G from continuing to collect money for a now-scuttled multibillion-dollar nuclear power project customers have been paying for since 2009.
A bipartisan group of legislators announced Wednesday the creation of an Energy Caucus that will work to overhaul how utility requests are reviewed.
South Carolina Electric & Gas and state-owned Santee Cooper decided Monday to abandon construction of two nuclear reactors. A project accounts for 18 percent of SCE&G’s residential electric bills. Utility executives said Tuesday none will get refunded. They are seeking permission from state regulators to recoup an additional $5 billion over 60 years.
Legislators created the system allowing that to happen in 2007.
But Energy Caucus members say the utility’s request should be rejected, and customers should be refunded.
South Carolina Electric and Gas Co. and partner Santee Cooper abandoned work on two new nuclear reactors this week, not because of public protests, but because the only way to pay for them was to overcharge customers or bankrupt both companies.
The decision comes after the main contractor, Westinghouse, has completed a third of the work at the V.C. Sumner Nuclear Station. Of course, the project has already bankrupted Westinghouse due to missed deadlines and costs spiraling out of control. Westinghouse parent Toshiba Corp. had to pay $2.7 billion to get out of it’s contract.
The project was supposed to cost only $5.1 billion, but to actually finish the work would have cost $11.4 billion. By abandoning work, the utilities said they will save about $7 billion in charges they would have had to pass on to customers.
That leaves only one new nuclear project under construction in Georgia, where Westinghouse has also gone over budget and missed deadlines. Georgia Power says it has taken over construction of the two new reactors at the Vogtle plant through Southern Nuclear.
Georgia power officials are reviewing the timeline and estimating the cost for completing the two new reactors, which if finished would be the first in the U.S. in 30 years. Costs, though, are not as important to Georgia Power because it sells power in a regulated market. Georgia Power started charging customers for the reactors as soon as construction began.
By comparison, Texas has a competitive market, where power plants only make money when they produce electricity. Customers here don’t finance new plants for mega-corporations the way they do in Georgia, and that saves Texans money.
Once Georgia Power completes it’s review of the Vogtle reactors, company leaders will likely have a hard time justifying the increased cost to regulators. Because even if the reactors were not over-budget already, the all-in cost of the power generated by that plant is far higher than alternative sources.
Natural gas and wind from Texas are far cheaper, and new natural gas pipelines and two proposed direct current transmission projects will easily deliver cheap power to South Carolina and Georgia well below the cost of the new reactors.
Even existing nuclear power plants have a hard time competing with cheap natural gas and renewable energy, which is why all of them are begging for subsidies or a carbon tax that will reward the plants for not producing carbon dioxide.
President Donald Trump has promised to boost nuclear power, but he has yet to roll out a plan. So far he has talked about doing away with the Clean Power Plan and has rejected a carbon tax, both of which are vital for nuclear power’s future.
What the nuclear industry really needs is new technology. Scientists are working on smaller reactors that are less dangerous, but none of them are ready for commercial deployment.
There could be a future for nuclear power in the United States, but only if the technology can compete on cost with renewable sources and natural gas. That is the real challenge for the nuclear power industry.
Nuclear energy leaders need to spend less time lobbying for government handouts for out-dated, expensive technology and focus on innovation. The coal industry thought they could win through manipulating politicians, and we all know how that ended up.
China’s nuclear export ambitions run into friction https://www.ft.com/content/84c25750-75da-11e7-90c0-90a9d1bc9691 by: Matthew Cottee , 3 Aug 17,China is using infrastructure exports to build strategic relationships with a range of countries in Asia, eastern Europe, the Middle East and Latin America. As part of its One Belt One Road (OBOR) policy, Beijing has pledged more money than went into the postwar Marshall plan on high-speed rail schemes around the world in an effort to secure diplomatic allies and develop new markets. The economic and diplomatic impact of its massive investment, however, remains questionable.
By providing technology, Beijing seeks to develop alliances with key states in a variety of regions. It aims to provide long-term contracts to construct, operate, maintain, provide fuel, train staff, and develop infrastructure while establishing links to high-level government representatives. But will nuclear exports prove any more influential and successful than high-speed rail?
The combined cost of cancelled rail projects equates to roughly a third of the estimated $143bn in total planned investment for projects involving Chinese contractors. As the FT highlights, some of the cancellations are the result of factors beyond China’s control, such as civil war in Libya. Other cases have been caused by a lack of transparency on the part of Chinese companies, the inability of recipients to manage large amounts of debt, and alternative models of government that delay decision making. Factors beyond Beijing’s control may also influence the success of its nuclear export strategy. Global interest in nuclear energy is experiencing a lull, prompting valid questions about China’s decision to invest in such technology as a long-term export market. Environmental consciousness is one reason for reducing reliance on nuclear energy. Political decisions in South Korea and France — two key proponents of nuclear energy — highlight this evolving trend. In Seoul, President Moon Jae-in has decided to phase out domestic electricity production from nuclear power plants. Nicolas Hulot, France’s minister of ecological and social transition, has also mooted efforts to cut the share of nuclear in its energy mix to 50 per cent by 2025, as required by a 2015 law.
The significant costs of nuclear energy mirror the issues highlighted by rail projects. Many existing nuclear projects are dependent on Chinese financing; China’s Exim Bank is bankrolling 82 per cent of the cost of Pakistan’s new reactors and is thought to be contributing to the construction of reactors in Romania alongside the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. In November 2015, China National Nuclear Corporation invested $4.7bn in Argentina’s Nucleoelectrica. In the UK, China is to provide 33 per cent of the estimated £20bn for the Hinkley Point C project. In exchange, Beijing has been promised the opportunity to build its indigenously developed nuclear technology in Essex. The open question is whether such investment will eventually pay off. The current leader in the nuclear export market, Russia’s Rosatom, is reportedly shifting focus to hydropower and wind turbines rather than its usual reactor business. Speaking at the ‘Technoprom-2017’ conference in Novosibirsk, the deputy general director of Rosatom, Vyacheslav Pershukov, suggested that the export market for nuclear reactors has been exhausted.
The various setbacks to traditional nuclear energy providers, namely Areva, Toshiba and Westinghouse, suggest that market competition is dwindling. South Korea’s proposed diversification away from nuclear will also have significant ramifications for its nuclear export industry, given the key role government support plays in getting contracts agreed. Time will tell whether these developments represent an opportunity or a forewarning for China’s grand nuclear ambitions. Beijing is committed to sustained development of nuclear energy domestically but will hope that the nuclear vision remains bright in the untapped international markets with which it has signed exploratory agreements. As long-time proponents of nuclear are questioning its future role, and seasoned nuclear exporters are seeking to diversify, however, China’s nuclear efforts could be destined to go down the same track as its high-speed rail strategy. Dr Matthew Cottee is research associate, Non-Proliferation and Nuclear Policy Programme at the International Institute for Strategic Studies
BY SAMMY FRETWELL, sfretwell@thestate.com, AUGUST 02,2017COLUMBIA, SC Even though SCE&G won’t finish a multi-billion dollar nuclear expansion project in Fairfield County, customers will continue paying about one-fifth of their monthly power bills for the work.
Rates that customers now are charged for the project already are in the company’s rate base and “will remain so moving forward,’’ SCE&G spokesman Eric Boomhower said in an email Wednesday night.
The company has hit customers with nine power bill increases to finance the project in less than a decade.
SCE&G abandoned the nuclear project this week, but under a 2007 state law, can continue charging customers for the work unless the state Public Service Commission says otherwise.
Collectively, SCE&G and partner Santee Cooper have spent about $9 billion for the reactor project. As an investor owned-utility, SCE&G will seek to recover its share of the amount it has already spent, which was about $5 billion.
Customers of SCE&G have paid about $1.4 billion as a result of company rate increases to fund the two new reactors at the V.C. Summer plant northwest of Columbia. They’re paying, on average, about 18 percent of their monthly power bills for the nuclear work.
Officials with the state Office of Regulatory Staff said they don’t expect the state Public Service Commission to change any rates this year for the SCE&G project in Jenkinsville…… http://www.thestate.com/news/state/article165119542.html
Tests show Hanford workers inhaled radioactive plutonium, Susannah Frame, KING 5 August 03, 2017On June 8 approximately 350 Hanford workers were ordered to “take cover” after alarms designed to detect elevated levels of airborne radioactive contamination went off. It was quickly determined that radioactive particles had been swept out of a containment zone at the plutonium finishing plant (PFP) demolition site. The work is considered the most hazardous demolition project on the entire nuclear reservation.
At the time Hanford officials called the safety measure “precautionary.” Officials from the U.S. Dept. of Energy, which owns Hanford, and the contractor in charge of the demolition, CH2M Hill, downplayed the seriousness of the event with statements including, it appeared “workers were not at risk”, “(the alarm went off) in an area where contamination is expected” and there was “no evidence radioactive particles had been inhaled” by anyone.
The KING 5 Investigators have discovered those statements are incorrect. An internal CH2M Hill email sent to their employees on July 21 was obtained by KING. It states that 301 (test kits) have been issued to employees and of the first 65 workers tested, a “small number of employees” showed positive results for “internal exposures” (by radioactive plutonium).
Sources tell KING the “small number of employees” is twelve. Twelve people out of 65 is 20 percent. Still outstanding are 236 tests. A communication specialist with CH2M Hill sent a statement that more positive results are expected. “We expect additional positive results because analytical tests like a bioassay can detect radiological contamination at levels far lower than what field monitoring can detect,” said Destry Henderson of CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Company.
Several veteran Hanford workers were surprised by the number of people with internal contamination from a single event.
“I’ve worked there for 27 years and I’ve never seen this many people contaminated internally,” said one employee with radiation expertise who did not want to be identified………
Hanford workers said they are not concerned about the small dose of radiation detected, but about the contamination inside the body from plutonium. All radiation is not created equal.Radiation from an x-ray, air flight or a microwave are different and far less dangerous types than the kind emitted by plutonium inside the body. Unlike x-rays, air travel or microwaves, plutonium emits alpha radiation, which is the most destructive type to inhale or ingest.
“Alpha particles damage or destroy DNA and can cause cancer,” said Kaltofen.
“If I get a chest x-ray or CT scan, that’s a different type of radiation,” said Dr. Erica Liebelt, Medical and Executive Director of the Washington Poison Center. “These people’s risk could be quite low because that number was very very small. (But) you have concerns about (alpha) radiation disrupting the cells and causing genetic disruption in the cells and cellular damage. And that’s what causes the increased risk for cancers in three organs: lungs, liver, and bone,” said Liebelt, who is also a board certified toxicologist……http://www.king5.com/news/local/hanford/tests-show-hanford-workers-inhaled-radioactive-plutonium/461574180
Reuters 31st July 2017, Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) will buy a 19.5 percent stake in nuclear reactor builder Areva New NP as part of the sale of the Areva unit to utility EDF, MHI said in a statement.
In Cumbria 2nd Aug 2017, Toshiba, the owner of the company with plans for a £10bn Cumbrian nuclear new build, has been demoted to the second tier of the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
The Japanese giant- which has taken full control of NuGen, which is behind proposals for a power station at Moorside, near Sellafield – has also seen its share price drop following the move. It will no longer feature in the Nikkei 225 index of Japan’s top public companies also faces the prospect of being delisted from the stock exchange altogether.
U.S. Nuclear Comeback Stalls as Two Reactors Are Abandoned, NYT 31 July 17 By BRAD PLUMER JULY 31, 2017, In a major blow to the future of nuclear power in the United States, two South Carolina utilities said on Monday that they would abandon two unfinished nuclear reactors in the state, putting an end to a project that was once expected to showcase advanced nuclear technology but has since been plagued by delays and cost overruns.
Fate of U.S. Nuclear Now Hinges on One Utility in Georgia,Bloomberg, By Jim Polson
August 2, 2017
Nuclear revival rests with Southern after Scana scraps project
Regulator urges Southern to make final decision by year-end
With a multibillion-dollar nuclear project in South Carolina dead, the fate of America’s nuclear renaissance now rests on one utility: Southern Co. Scana Corp. dropped plans for two reactors Monday, leaving the two that Southern is building at the Vogtle plant in Georgia as the only ones under construction in the U.S. And even they are under threat: The utility had to take over management of the project from its bankrupt contractor Westinghouse Electric Co., and the plant is still years behind schedule and billions over budget. Now it must decide whether to finish them.
Southern calling it quits could prove to be the final nail in the coffin for the long-awaited U.S. nuclear renaissance that has failed to materialize in the aftermath of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear accident. In 2012, Southern and Scana became the first companies to gain approval to build U.S. reactors in more than 30 years — only to find themselves in troubling times for the industry.
Climate News Network 30th July 2017, Shares in major oil and gas companies are expected to plunge in value in
the next three to five years because of climate change-related financial
risks, meaning more investors will spurn fossil fuels.
This is the verdict of British asset managers who control billions of pounds of investments in
stock markets.
It could have serious consequences for many thousands of
people whose pension funds have invested in these companies, as well as
many institutions and charities which rely on dividends for their income,
according to a report by the Climate Change Collaboration (CCC), a group of
four UK charitable trusts. http://climatenewsnetwork.net/more-investors-will-spurn-fossil-fuels/
Public deserves truth about nuclear bailout http://www.timesunion.com/opinion/article/Commentary-Public-deserves-truth-about-nuclear-11717763.php, By Blair Horner, July 29, 2017
It’s been one year since Gov. Andrew Cuomo quietly foisted an estimated $7.6 billion electric utility rate hike on the people of New York to bail out three aging, upstate nuclear power plants. Since then, we’ve learned a lot about how bad that deal was, but we still don’t know much about how the administration cooked it up.
Here’s what we know: The deal is the result of an astonishingly secretive process. True, some hearings were held, but on a proposed bailout ranging from $59 million to $660 million. After the process wrapped up, the administration jacked up the price into the billions, without any meaningful public process to debate its merits.
The Cuomo administration didn’t release an estimate for the entire cost of the 12-year plan, so the independent Public Utility Law Project crunched the numbers and found it could be as much as $7.6 billion. That stunning transfer of wealth to the single corporation owning the plants may well be the largest in New York’s history.
The first two years of the bailout are estimated to cost ratepayers $964,900,000, an average of more than $1.3 million per day.
Since the bailout hit utility bills on April 1, New Yorkers have paid nearly $163 million extra to prop up these plants. That’s a huge amount of money in a state like New York, already burdened with some of the highest utility rates in the country, and where 800,000 ratepayers are behind on their utility bills.
Included in that $163 million is close to $10 million in extra charges being footed by Niagara Mohawk residential ratepayers, based on the PULP analysis.
No one with a utility bill is immune. School districts, hospitals, businesses and municipalities are now grappling with higher utility rates because of a deal that was hammered out with virtually no public input.
Albany County, for example, is slated to pay up to $225,543 more per year for the bailout. Albany’s school district may pay up to $87,552 more per year and Albany Medical Center up to $537,843 per year.
Despite the massive scale of the bailout, New Yorkers still don’t know what alternatives the Cuomo administration considered to meet our energy needs. But there are clearly other paths to study. For example, the analysis released this month by energy expert Amory Lovins, which criticizes the growing trend toward subsidizing costly, uneconomical nuclear power plants.
Lovins, once named one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People, found that bailouts like the kind New York just implemented could be avoided by closing unprofitable nuclear plants and reinvesting their operating costs into energy efficiency, such as better insulation, windows, and appliances.
Because energy efficiency reduces demand and is so much cheaper per kWh than the energy produced by a nuclear plant, it could replace the power generated by the nuclear plant and replace some of the power generated by coal or gas, all for the same price as one kWh of nuclear energy.
Lovins’ independent analysis contradicts the Cuomo administration’s assertions that the bailout is the only way New York can reduce carbon emissions and meet its energy needs.
To “celebrate” the one-year anniversary of the bailout, let’s hope the administration finally conducts a comprehensive public review of all the alternatives to spending billions to keep old, unprofitable nuclear power plants running.
It’s not too late to reverse course and invest in 21st-century, clean, efficient power sources. New York ratepayers deserve to have their money bankroll job-creating technologies that help attack the problem of energy pollution, not kick the can 12 years down the road.
Blair Horner is executive director the New York Public Interest Research Group.
Guarantee may not be enough to save troubled V.C. Summer nuclear project, Jul 27, 2017, John Downey,Charlotte Business JournalToshiba Corp. has agreed to pay S.C. Electric & Gas and Santee Cooper almost $2.2 billion in guarantees for their spending on the V.C. Summer Nuclear Station expansion.
But that will not be enough to cover the expected increase in costs for completing the troubled project, the two utilities say. So while observers call the settlement encouraging, there are deepening questions about whether it will be economically feasible to finish the expansion.
That decision — which now appears to involve a more-than-$16-billion question — could come as early as next week…….
it is also clear that the costs to complete the project are going to be very high. The joint statements says “the additional cost to complete both units … will materially exceed prior (Westinghouse) estimates as well as the anticipated guarantee settlement payments from Toshiba.”
If the price is beyond the $14 billion estimate in 2015 and the $2.2 billion in the guarantees, it puts the total cost north of $16 billion.
In order for the companies to decide to complete the project, they will need to determine that it would cost more to abandon the project now and build an alternative power plant (or plants) to replace the electricity that would have been produced by Summer.
The joint statement also notes that the utilities stand to lose an important tax break — which makes a $2 billion difference in costs to customers —if the projects are not completed by Jan. 1, 2021.
nuclear-news 