CORE 9th Aug 2017, Respondents to NuGen’s Stage 2 Moorside public consultation which closed
one year ago will learn little from NuGen’s response to CORE’s open
letter to its CEO Tom Samson on 30th June.
Refusing to comment on some of CORE’s questions on the grounds that ‘they are commercial processes’,
NuGen has confirmed only that it intends to publish a Stage 2 interim
consultation report – ‘but this has been deferred to ensure that
changes which arise as a result of the reviews (an engineering and wider
strategic review) are appropriately reflected in the report, which will
reflect both the feedback that NuGen received and detail how NuGen will
take that feedback into account’.
CORE’s spokesman Martin Forwood commented today that “NuGen’s inability to level with consultees,
however uncertain Moorside’s prospects, reflects the extent of the
turmoil facing its project and makes a mockery of its claim that
‘openness and transparency about our plans is the key to building
trust”.
The Cayce-based utility has paid its top officials almost $21.4 million in annual performance-based bonuses over the past decade, according to The State newspaper’s review of the utility’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Some of those payouts were to reward the executives for accomplishments related to the construction of two nuclear reactors at the V.C. Summer site in Fairfield County, SCANA said in the filings.
Late last month, SCANA and the state-owned Santee Cooper utility said they were abandoning that project, citing construction delays and cost overruns that plagued the 9-year-old venture……
Operational excellence’
Last year, SCANA’s top five executives took home $3.3 million in performance-based pay, according to the federal filings. Nearly half of that went to SCANA chief executive officer and president Kevin Marsh, accounting for about a quarter of his $6.1 million in total compensation.
The filings do not say exactly how much of the $21.4 million in performance-based pay went to reward the executives for building the two nuclear reactors……
Top SCANA executives have been paid nearly $21.4 million in performance-based bonuses over the past decade. Some of that money was to reward the officials for their accomplishments in building two nuclear reactors in Fairfield County, a project the utility now says it will abandon. Here is how much the executives were paid each year.:…… http://www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/article166298442.html
Toshiba’s $8.8bn loss reignites fears over Cumbria nuclear project, Telegraph, 10 AUGUST 2017• The Japanese consortium behind the UK’s largest planned new nuclear project has unveiled an annual loss of almost $9bn (£6.9bn), underlining the stark risks of the Government’s high-cost nuclear ambitions.
Toshiba has delayed publishing its full-year results while teams of auditors pore over the financial damage wrought by the collapse of its US-based nuclear developer Westinghouse, before finally revealing the $8.8bn (£6.7bn) loss for 2016 three months later than planned.
The electronics giant has avoided crashing out of the Tokyo stock exchange for filing its accounts late, but its commitment to building the Moorside power plant in Cumbria remains in doubt.Toshiba is now the only investor propping up the Nugeneration consortium that plans to build the 3.8GW Moorside project, and the approved reactor design is Westinghouse-made.
The GMB union said the “fiasco” over Toshiba’s financial state “highlights the folly of allowing foreign companies to be in control of the UK’s critical future energy needs”…….
Delayed Toshiba earnings report reveals $8.8b in lossesByTech Wire Asia| 10th August 2017 |@techwireasiaAFTER several delays, Toshiba Corp. has finally released an audited earnings report, which revealed the company’s losses are valued at JPY965.7 billion (US$8.8 billion) for the 2016-2017 financial year ending March this year, reported Bloomberg.
Though a startling number, it should be noted those losses are comparable to the initial estimates by independent analysts who predicted Toshiba would lose an average of JPY977.4 billion (US$8.9 billion). Toshiba’s own outlook was far more bleak, with their own financial officials reporting they expected to lose JPY1.01 trillion (US$9.2 billion)…..
suspicions about the company’s opaque finances have resulted in slipping stock prices, a situation exacerbated by the bankruptcy of its Westinghouse nuclear business…..
The company is facing a possible delisting from the Tokyo Stock Exchange as a result of the manipulation of its account books. The matter is under investigation and if Toshiba fails to clean up its act and pull itself out of the red by next March, expulsion is almost a given…….http://techwireasia.com/2017/08/toshiba-earnings-report-huge-losses/#mMpeeOZFUAVImZpQ.97
Kempner: Georgia Power’s nuclear tower teeters; EMCs ‘concerned’By Matt Kempner – The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 6 Aug 17,
Our bumbling aspiration in Georgia to build more nuclear power is looking suspiciously like that wooden block game, Jenga.
You know, the one where you take turns pulling out a block at a time, hoping not to topple the teetering tower.
How many pieces can be pulled out before Georgia Power’s nuclear expansion at Plant Vogtle metaphorically collapses and takes with it billions of dollars in consumer money?
Some elected members of the Georgia Public Service Commission rushed to put distance between South Carolina’s project and the Vogtle one they green lighted and showered with love……..
PSC chairman Stan Wise pounded out a statement highlighting “the dissimilarities of these projects.”
A consultant for the Vogtle team concluded the project is “sufficiently similar to Summer Units 2 and 3 so that one could reasonably compare construction outcomes. This is proven by the fact that there are many similarities in the EPC contracts, generally the same primary plant equipment suppliers, similarities in construction milestone dates, similarities in construction contractors, and evidence that GPC and SCE&G have been and continue to collaborate on the design, construction, and training on these projects.”
Here’s a few more similarities: Both projects suffer soaring costs and stretched timetables. Also last week, Southern disclosed figures suggesting the total price of Vogtle may be close to double the original forecast. And the first juice won’t flow from a new reactor before February 2021 at the earliest, it said, more than a year later than the previous target.
There really are differences between the Georgia and South Carolina projects, though. One of the most important is that there are a bunch more players involved in — and at risk on — the Vogtle expansion.
And those are the blocks anyone wondering about the future of nuclear expansion in Georgia should be eyeballing. (Building nuclear plants is generally a group project to mitigate the massive risk. Because who would be so nutty as to try to do it on their own?)
Georgia Power is managing partner on Vogtle, with just under 50 percent of an ownership stake in the expansion. But also in the mix with almost a third of the ownership is Oglethorpe Power, which represents dozens of community electric membership corporations in Georgia. Most are at risk on this project, too.
The Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia, owned by bunches of small city power systems across the state, has nearly a quarter of the Vogtle ownership. And the city of Dalton has a small piece of the project.
Every one of those players has a different comfort (or fear) level on sticking with Vogtle. I suspect leaders of EMCs may be among the most nervous……..
Some other utilities limited their exposure to Vogtle early on.
MEAG, the body representing city utilities, sold rights (and cost responsibilities) for two-thirds of the project’s first 20 years of power to PowerSouth in Alabama and JEA in Jacksonville, Fla. That’s according to Marietta’s mayor, Steve “Thunder” (fun, right?) Tumlin, who is on MEAG’s board.
“We spread the risks,” he told me.
If the Vogtle expansion gets killed, “it would hurt, but not kill” the Marietta system, Tumlin said. Customer power bill rates might go up “a few percentage points.”
So far, he said, the consortium of Vogtle owners has “steadfastly stood together and is not panicking.” But they have to be convinced it makes sense to stick with the program.
Trump falls flat with climate change retreat, Markets, not politics, drive energy sector’s push to cut greenhouse gas emission Ft.com by: Ed Crooks, 7 Aug 17, US Industry and Energy Editor On Friday, the US state department submitted a notification to the UN that the administration intended to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement reached in 2015. The statement, confirming the decision that President Donald Trump announced in June, is at one level momentous. The world’s largest economy and second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases is quitting a deal that the governments of leading European countries have described as “a vital instrument for our planet”. In terms of the consequences for the global energy industry, however, its impact has so far been negligible.
Of course, the full implications have yet to play out. But in the nine weeks since Mr Trump announced that leaving the agreement would be “a reassertion of America’s sovereignty”, energy companies around the world have been making plans that suggest their views on the outlook have not changed in any significant way.
The most important reason for that is that moves towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions are going with the grain of energy markets, regardless of political decisions. The plunging costs of renewable power and electricity storage, the rise of electric cars, the availability of cheap gas for power generation, and the prospect of abundant supplies of oil, for a while at least, all point towards investment decisions that would curb emissions.
The comments from oil companies reporting earnings over recent weeks have provided a stark illustration of that point. For years, environmental groups have been raising concerns about stranded assets: projects that cannot be viable in a world where greenhouse gas emissions are constrained.
When they first started making that argument, with oil at about $100 per barrel, it was often a tough sell, says Andrew Grant of the Carbon Tracker Initiative, which has pioneered analysis in this area. Now, he adds, they are “pushing at an open door”.
The central idea is that in a world where fossil fuel consumption is curtailed to cut greenhouse gas emissions, investment in high-cost assets is likely to be wasted………..
Whatever happens to international climate policy in the aftermath of Mr Trump’s decision, unless some other shock comes along to shake the industry out of its current mindset, downward pressure on costs and caution on investment decisions are likely to remain the prevailing rules. https://www.ft.com/content/2f687cfe-7abb-11e7-9108-edda0bcbc928
Guru Focus, PR Newswire, ATLANTA, Aug. 4, 2017 Georgia Power expects to complete its comprehensive schedule and cost-to-complete assessment, as well as cancellation cost assessment, for the Vogtle nuclear expansion by the end of the month. The final recommendation is expected to be filed with the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) as part of the 17th Vogtle Construction Monitoring (VCM) Report. Once submitted, Georgia Power will work with the Georgia PSC to determine the best path forward for customers…….
Construction work continues at the Vogtle nuclear expansion under a new service agreement with Westinghouse while Georgia Power’s assessments, as well as assessments by Oglethorpe Power, MEAG Power and Dalton Utilities, are finalized…….
Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements Certain information contained in this communication is forward-looking information based on current expectations and plans that involve risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking information includes, among other things, statements concerning estimated cost and schedule information for Plant Vogtle Units 3 and 4 and other future actions related to Plant Vogtle Units 3 and 4. Georgia Power cautions that there are certain factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking information that has been provided. ……..
Editor’s note: How’s this for one sentence? could be a record?
The following factors, in addition to those discussed in Georgia Power’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2016, and subsequent securities filings, could cause actual results to differ materially from management expectations as suggested by such forward-looking information: the results of Westinghouse’s bankruptcy filing and the impact of any inability or other failure of Toshiba to perform its obligations under its guarantee, including any effect on the construction of Plant Vogtle Units 3 and 4; state and federal rate regulations and the impact of pending and future rate cases and negotiations; the impact of recent and future federal and state regulatory changes, as well as changes in application of existing laws and regulations; current and future litigation, regulatory investigations, proceedings, or inquiries; available sources and costs of fuels; effects of inflation; the ability to control costs and avoid cost overruns during the development construction and operation of facilities, which include the development and construction of generating facilities with designs that have not been finalized or previously constructed; the ability to construct facilities in accordance with the requirements of permits and licenses, to satisfy any environmental performance standards and the requirements of tax credits and other incentives, and to integrate facilities into the Southern Company system upon completion of construction; advances in technology; legal proceedings and regulatory approvals and actions related to Plant Vogtle Units 3 and 4, including Georgia Public Service Commission approvals and Nuclear Regulatory Commission actions; interest rate fluctuations and financial market conditions and the results of financing efforts; changes in The Southern Company’s or Georgia Power’s credit ratings, including impacts on interest rates, access to capital markets, and collateral requirements; the impacts of any sovereign financial issues, including impacts on interest rates, access to capital markets, impacts on foreign currency exchange rates, counterparty performance, and the economy in general, as well as potential impacts on the benefits of U.S. Department of Energy loan guarantees; and the effect of accounting pronouncements issued periodically by standard setting bodies. Georgia Power expressly disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking information. https://www.gurufocus.com/news/549936/georgia-power-to-finalize-vogtle-assessments-by-end-of-august
* Kuwait sovereign wealth fund to take 86 pct loss on Areva
* KIA declined French offer to buy stakes in NewCo, Areva NP
* World’s biggest SWF to stay away from nuclear investment
By Geert De Clercq, PARIS, Aug 4 (Reuters) – Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA) will sell its nearly five percent stake in Areva to the French state as the nuclear group is delisted and will stay away from nuclear investments for now, sources familiar with the situation told Reuters.
Kuwait’s sovereign wealth fund, one of the world’s biggest, paid 600 million euros ($712 million) for its 4.82 percent stake stake in 2010, but since then Areva’s stock has plunged as its equity has been wiped out by years of losses.
Following a state-funded 4.5 billion euro rescue and restructuring of Areva, the French state will pay 4.5 euros per share for KIA’s 18.46 million shares, or about 83 million euros, representing an 86 percent loss for the fund.
When it decided to buy the Areva stake nearly seven years ago, Kuwait was one of several Gulf countries considering developing nuclear power to meet demand for electricity and water desalination.
Two sources with direct knowledge of the situation told Reuters that the French state had proposed that KIA take equity stakes in nuclear fuel group Areva NewCo and reactor building unit Areva NP, which will both be spun off from the legacy Areva SA in which KIA is the main minority shareholder.
“A proposal was made to KIA but they have not followed up. KIA has no further development projects in nuclear,” a source close to Areva told Reuters.
The source said that as main minority shareholder after the French state – which directly and indirectly owns nearly 89 percent of Areva SA – KIA was kept informed about the restructuring but had no interest in taking part in it in any way and will sell its shares to the French state.
Prior to the delisting of Areva SA, the state has launched a buyout offer that runs from Aug. 1 to 14.
Areva’s uranium mining and nuclear fuel activities have been spun off as Areva NewCo, while its nuclear reactor unit Areva NP is being sold to state-owned utility EDF. Japan’s MHI will buy minority stakes in both units.
The restructuring leaves legacy Areva SA, once the vanguard of France’s nuclear export drive, as an empty shell with mainly the liabilities related to the troubled Olkiluoto 3 nuclear newbuild project in Finland.
It’s Official: Nuclear Power Can’t Compete With Renewables, EcoWatch, By Paul Brown, 4 Aug 17
The nuclear revival the global industry has been hoping for took another hammer blow this week when two reactors under construction in South Carolina were abandoned, only 40 percent complete.
The plan had been to build two Westinghouse AP1000 pressurized water reactors to lead the nuclear revival in the U.S., but cost overruns and delays dogged the project and will have the opposite effect. This is a further humiliation for Westinghouse, the U.S. nuclear giant that earlier this year filed for bankruptcy because of the costs associated with this new design. Hopes that a new generation of reactors could be built in the U.S. and sold to the rest of the world rested on the success of this project, and it has spectacularly failed.
By this week, construction had already cost $9 billion, almost the entire original budget, with years of building still to go. The reactors were originally scheduled to begin producing power in 2018, but this had been put back to 2021. Cost overruns had meant the final cost could be $25 billion. Around 5,000 construction workers have lost their jobs.
Changing context
The two owners of the project who had taken control after the Westinghouse bankruptcy, South Carolina Electric & Gas and Santee Cooper, announced they would halt construction rather than saddle customers with additional costs……..
Nuclear power did find favor in some quarters in the U.S. because it was regarded as a low carbon source of electricity. But President Trump is trying to dismantle legislation that would have helped the industry get credit for this.
The repercussions of the decision to abandon the building of the South Carolina reactors will be felt across the Atlantic in the UK, where three reactors of the same design were due to be built in Cumbria in the northwest of England. NuGen, the UK company that planned to build them, is, like Westinghouse, a subsidiary of the Japanese giant Toshiba. It was already reviewing its plans to build them before this week’s news broke.
Officially this is still the position, but it seems unlikely that the company would gamble on trying to build reactors of a design that could not be completed successfully in the U.S.
All big nuclear companies have new designs being constructed on home turf. Their plan has been to demonstrate how well they work and then export them. But this is currently not working anywhere, most spectacularly in Europe, where the French giant EDF is in deep trouble with its flagship design, the even larger 1,600 megawatt pressurized water reactor.
Although the British Government still supports the project, it has already been questioned by the UK National Audit Office, which polices government finances. The NAO said consumers will be paying far too much for the electricity even if the project is finished on time, which on the industry’s past record seems extremely unlikely.
With renewables providing more and more cheap power in Europe and across the world, it seems unlikely that any of the new generation of large nuclear plants will ever be able to compete.
Phase-out planned
Japan, still suffering from the after effects of the Fukushima disaster of 2011, is unlikely to be able to resuscitate its nuclear industry, and South Korea, with arguably the most successful nuclear construction record, has a new government which wants to phase out the industry.
Only China and Russia, where what is really happening in their nuclear industries is a closely guarded secret, remain as likely exporters of new nuclear stations.
Both countries offer to supply fuel to countries which buy their reactor models. As well as building them, they offer as part of the package to get rid of the spent fuel and waste, so any country that buys nuclear power from China and Russia is effectively tied to them for a generation or more.
So for Russia and China, selling nuclear power stations is a political decision to extend their influence rather than an economic one—and it could be an expensive option for all concerned. From a purely economic perspective, however, it appears the nuclear industry is reaching the end of the road. https://www.ecowatch.com/westinghouse-nuclear-2469123144.html
Vermont Law School’s Cooper on demise of VC Summer: Nuclear power is uneconomic, http://www.vermontbiz.com/news/2017/august/04/vermont-law-schools-cooper-demise-vc-summer-nuclear-power-uneconomic, Vermont Business Magazine 4 Aug 17, The abandonment this week of the VC Summer nuclear project in South Carolina heralds the likely demise of “new” nuclear in the United States (including the Vogtle project in Georgia and North Anna 3 in Virginia) and also should put an end to state or federal bailouts for the failing nuclear industry, according to four experts who held a media briefing Thursday, sponsored by NIRS, the Nuclear Information and Resource Service.
Nuclear economist Dr Mark Cooper, senior fellow for economic analysis, Institute for Energy and the Environment at Vermont Law School, said the V.C. Summer shutdown should lead to a similar step at the Vogtle project in Georgia and to a renewed focus on renewable energy.
Cooper said: “The message for Vogtle is simple, nuclear power is uneconomic. It will take massive federal, state and vendor subsidies to be completed and the cost of power will still be two to three times the cost of power from alternatives. The capital cost of renewables is between one-eighth and one quarter the cost of VC Summer. Even adjusted for load factors, nuclear power is two to three times more costly then the alternatives.”
Peter Bradford, former Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Commissioner, past chair of the New York and Maine state utility regulatory commissions, said that “new” reactor construction financed in advance from ratepayers in states like Virginia (home to Dominion’s proposed North Anna 3 reactor) are V.C. Summer-like debacles waiting to happen.
Bradford said: “The primary lessons for Georgia, Virginia, and other states, from the South Carolinacancellations (as well as Levy County in Florida and Kemper in Mississippi) is that laws and regulatory decisions placing economic risks on customers instead of the investors and lenders who should properly bear them are a disastrous mistake. Freed of responsibility for the consequences of their mistakes, utility executives too often plunge into ill-advised schemes to pad their rate bases (and individual compensation) when they should be managing competitive processes designed to select the most cost-effective alternative.”
After a surge of state bailouts for nuclear in 2016 in New York and Illinois, the industry has failed in 2017 in Ohio, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The push in Ohio faltered in the face of extensive public criticism and was relegated in Connecticut to a study report by the state’s governor. In Pennsylvania and New Jersey, bailout backers were unable to even get promised legislation introduced.
A federal bailout for the nuclear industry would come at staggering cost. If based on the New Yorkmodel, the cost to consumers would be $150 billion to $275 billion, depending on whether the subsidies applied to all reactors, or just those that are determined to be unprofitable. (The latter may seem like a common-sense outcome, but Exelon crafted bailout legislation in Illinois that allows it to be paid even if energy prices rise.) If a federal bailout were based on a new and expanded nuclear production tax credit, as a Department of Energy advisory committee recommended last year (at $27/MWh), the cost to taxpayers would be nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars: $228 billion, according to calculations by the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS).
NIRS Executive Director Tim Judson said: “Nuclear power is failing despite the fact that it is already heavily subsidized. Canceling the Summer reactors proves that the industry has no future, but it only tells half the story. Nuclear generators are pushing for billions of dollars in subsidies and bailouts for their aging reactors, and those efforts are mostly failing, as well. Hoped-for momentum from 2016 bailouts in New York and Illinois did not materialize, as state legislatures rejected nuclear subsidy bills this year. With renewable energy now surpassing nuclear by widening margins, it’s clear that subsidizing nuclear is an expensive way to slow down the growth of clean, safe, affordable, job-creating energy sources.”
Even if there is no new federal bailout for nuclear, taxpayers could still end up on the hook for billions of dollars if the Vogtle project goes belly up. Ryan Alexander, president, Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonprofit and nonpartisan taxpayer advocacy group, said: “The VC Summer project relied on the same problematic reactor designs and contractor, the recently bankrupt Westinghouse Corporation, as Southern Company’s Plant Vogtle. Westinghouse’s AP1000 design was being used in both VC Summer and Vogtle. Both projects have experienced multiple delays and significant cost overruns. Westinghouse’s recent bankruptcy pushed both projects further into turmoil. Unlike VC Summer, Vogtle managed to win themselves more than $8 billion in taxpayer-backed loan guarantees. So while federal taxpayers should and must watch any efforts to contribute to the bailout of the state of South Carolina and the players involved in the VC Summers project, billions in tax dollars are already at risk with the Vogtle project. It seems clearer than ever that the writing is on the wall for taxpayers. We’ve said it for 8 years: These massive nuclear reactor projects were doomed from the start, and taxpayer money should not be risked on them.”
Where does the industry go from here? The V.C. Summer project collapse means that any remaining illusions about a resurgence of nuclear power in the United States is now dead.
As Bradford explained: “In fact, there never was an actual ‘nuclear renaissance’, just the 31 paper applications on file at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by early 2009. Now nearly all but two are cancelled, leaving a trail of economic waste in their wake. The intent of the renaissance dream was to show that new reactor designs and an expedited licensing process from which the public was largely excluded would produce reactors that could be completed ‘on time and on budget’ as well as at competitive costs. The expectation was that private financing, without subsidy from customers and taxpayers, would then become available to nuclear power. That dream is now in ruins. The Westinghouse bankruptcy and subsequent events in South Carolina make the lessons so clear that even the most ardent nuclear propagandists probably can no longer shout them down.”
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.
