Hitachi requests British PM’s support for nuclear plant construction, (Mainichi Japan)
LONDON (Kyodo)— Hitachi Ltd. on Thursday requested British Prime Minister Theresa May provide support for the company’s nuclear power plant construction operations in Britain amid swelling costs for a project in Wales, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Meeting with May at her office in London, Hitachi Chairman Hiroaki Nakanishi requested more support from the British government, including direct investment, the sources said. ……
In 2016, Japan and Britain signed a memorandum of understanding to closely cooperate in the nuclear field, a move that would help Japanese companies build nuclear reactors in Britain.
A coalition of business, consumer, labor and environmental groups have asked Gov. Phil Murphy to conditionally veto the nuclear subsidy bill that passed the New Jersey legislature last month.
The bill, which passed both houses of the Legislature and now sits on the governor’s desk, gives the Board of Public Utilities a set amount of time to examine the finances of the owners of nuclear power plants in the state. If the owners can show subsidies are needed to keep the plants open, they will receive $300 million a year from ratepayers.
Public Service Enterprise Group, which owns the Salem and Hope Creek nuclear power plants in Salem County, has said the plants will soon become unprofitable because of competition from cheaper natural gas plants.
The groups said S2313 “fails to strike a proper balance between utility consumers and the nuclear power industry, fails to protect New Jersey’s economy from unfair competition, is counter to the principles of open and transparent government and will compromise New Jersey’s clean energy future,” in a May 2 letter to the governor.
………The amount of subsidy is set in the legislation, and critics have questioned how lawmakers can know what level of subsidy is needed when they don’t have documentation of the companies’ financial status.
Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in Lacey Township, owned by Exelon Corp., is the oldest operating nuclear plant in the country and is set to permanently close in October.
The state’s remaining two nuclear power plants in operation are in Salem County and owned by Public Service Enterprise Group, the parent company of Public Service Gas & Electric. One is co-owned by Exelon.
The groups that signed the letter opposing the subsidies are AARP New Jersey, NJ Working Families Alliance, Health Professionals & Allied Employees, New Jersey Large Energy Users Coalition, NJ Citizen Action, the Main Street Alliance, Blue Wave NJ, NJ Policy Perspective, GreenFaith, Clean Water Action, Environment New Jersey, NJ Sierra Club, Koubiadis Anti-Poverty Network, UU Faith Action, Banking on New Jersey and the Chemistry Council of New Jersey.
They oppose the bill as written because the plant owners have not proven subsidies are needed and the amounts were “established behind closed doors by the interested parties and without ratepayer participation,” the letter said.
They want these changes in the legislation:
• Require nuclear power corporations to satisfy a burden of proof of financial distress rather than allowing considerations of “cost of capital,” “market risk” and assumed minimum returns on equity to determine whether a bailout is appropriate.
• Guarantee the full inclusion and participation of the state Division of Rate Counsel to protect ratepayers and avoid setting an anti-consumer precedent.
• Establish a process for an annual financial review, with ratepayer refunds as needed, of each nuclear plant receiving subsidies. S2013 could provide windfall profits to PSEG over a 10-year period or longer.
• Require a ten-year sunset provision similar to the ones includes in both the New York and Illinois Zero Emission Credit programs.
• Deduct from the subsidy any payments the plants may receive from PJM, FERC, DOE, RGGI or other entities for fuel diversity, baseload, reliability value or other things. S2313 does not ensure such deductions will be made.
• Credit back to ratepayers any financial gain to the plants or increases in market prices due to the pricing of carbon that result from the state rejoining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
• Include clawback provisions to protect consumers. The subsidies should not be irrevocable as the bill provides.
• Ensure that no state-funded subsidies are paid to out-of-state nuclear facilities owned by PSEG or Exelon, such as the Peach Bottom, Limerick or Three Mile Island facilities.
Regulators terminate Duke Energy’s Levy County nuclear licenses, Malena Carollo, Tampa Bay Times staff writer, 4 May 18
ST. PETERSBURG — Regulators have finally closed the books on the Levy County nuclear project that never was. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission terminated Duke Energy Florida’s licenses last week for the proposed nuclear reactors at the utility’s request — more than a decade after the project was first proposed.
“Southern Alliance for Clean Energy applauds Duke Energy Florida for formally terminating the licenses for the Levy site,” said Sara Barczak, regional advocacy director for the alliance, in a statement.
The action comes nine months after Duke announced it would no longer make customers pay for the nuclear facility. Duke customers had already paid $800 million on the plant that was never built. The St. Petersburg utility decided to shoulder the remaining $150 million for the project instead of passing it on to customers, saving rate payers about $2.50 on their monthly bills.
Instead of nuclear, the utility will turn its focus to solar and natural gas
We anticipate an increase in solar energy in Florida and have included plans for the addition of over 700 megawatts of solar capacity in the next 10 years,” Ana Gibbs, spokesperson for Duke, said in an email. …..Progress Energy had asked customers to pay up front for the facility, promising the plant would reduce energy costs down the line. But after nearly $1 billion was sunk into the nuclear project, it was never built. In 2013, the venture was canned.
Nuclear panel chair: ‘I remain adamantly opposed’ to Yucca Mountain Las Vegas Sun, By Sun Staff (contact) May 3, 2018
The chairman of the state interim legislative Committee on High-Level Radioactive Waste says he’ll continue to support a 2017 legislative resolution stating opposition to the proposed national nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.
“I remain adamantly opposed to the development of Yucca Mountain as a repository for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste, as well as the storage or disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste anywhere in the state of Nevada,” the chairman, Assemblyman Edgar Flores, D-Las Vegas, said in a statement. “I will continue to monitor the actions taken on the federal level to ensure that Nevadans’ voices are heard.” …..
Funding for the project was cut off during the Obama administration, but President Donald Trump signaled support for restarting the licensing process by including funding for it in his proposed budget last year. Congress rejected the funding, opting not to include it in the omnibus spending bill, so the project remains in limbo. However, opponents remain concerned that Trump and congressional delegates from other states that support Yucca Mountain will continue trying to revive it. https://lasvegassun.com/news/2018/may/03/nuclear-panel-chair-i-remain-adamantly-opposed-to/
Vote likely next week on bill to resume Yucca Mountain licensing process , By Gary Martin/Las Vegas Review-Journal, May 4, 2018, PAHRUMP— Legislation that would allow the Department of Energy to resume its license application process to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain could see a House vote this week — a prospect that was met Thursday with mixed reaction in Nevada.
A bill approved last year by the House Energy and Commerce Committee to jump-start the licensing process is being reviewed by the Rules Committee, and the legislation will move to the floor next week when Congress returns from a weeklong recess.
The legislation would streamline the process to open Yucca Mountain to store nuclear waste and address the stockpile of spent fuel being stored at power plants across the country……..
The legislation authorizes spending to restart the licensing process. The Senate blocked the spending last year.
Federal plans to store spent fuel rods and other nuclear waste have been met with stiff opposition in Nevada from most elected officials, except those from rural counties, including Nye County, where Yucca Mountain is located……
Gov. Brian Sandoval, a Republican, has vowed to spend millions in state money to stop the nuclear repository from opening. He is backed by most lawmakers in the state’s congressional delegation.
Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., said nothing has changed since the delegation testified against the bill last year.
“Bringing this legislation to the floor is nothing more than a show for the nuclear industry and its campaign cash recipients in Congress,” Titus said.
Rep. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., has filed legislation that would prohibit the DOE from taking any action to license Yucca Mountain as a nuclear repository until the federal government studies alternative uses for the Nevada site.
……..Sens. Dean Heller, R-Nev., and Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., have worked through the committee process to halt licensing of Yucca Mountain.
The Japanese conglomerate behind plans to build a new reactor at the Wylfa nuclear site in Wales is expected to call on the Government to take a direct stake in the new plant, or risk the £27bn project falling through.
The last-ditch talks between Hitachi chairman Hiroaki Nakanishi and the prime minister were scheduled for the same day that fresh cracks in one of the UK’s oldest nuclear plants underlined the need for new investment in low-carbon power.
A string of power plants, including the faltering Hunterston nuclear plant, are set to close by 2025.
Hitachi’s 2.9 gigawatt nuclear project could help to fill the gap created by the closures, but the group is not willing to take on the full risk burden without the backing of other private investors and government involvement.
The conglomerate is planning to back away from the project entirely unless the UK agrees to help finance it or take a stake in the plant alongside investments from the Japanese government, according to local media reports.
The nuclear exit would be a major blow to the UK’s struggling ambitions to build a fleet of low-carbon, nuclear power plants to replace the ageing coal and nuclear plants.
EDF Energy said the new cracks in its 42-year old Hunterston reactor mean that the plant will be closed for much of 2018, meaning more expensive gas-fired power may be required to fill the gap in the UK’s power supplies this summer. Hunterston is scheduled to shut entirely by 2023.
Number 10 has remained tight-lipped over its negotiations with Hitachi, and a spokesman declined to comment on the latest talks.
Hannah Martin, of Greenpeace, said the “information blackout” is “unjustifiable” because of the high costs to be paid by energy users to support the projects.
“The public have a right to know what the government is planning to do with their money and why,” she said.
“Major Western economies are reducing their exposure to nuclear, so why is Britain doing the exact opposite? It would make no sense to waste yet more on expensive and outdated nuclear when technologies such as offshore wind can do the same job faster and cheaper,” Ms Martin added.
Times 2nd May 2018 , The boss of Hitachi is expected to meet the prime minister tomorrow in an
attempt to secure UK government investment in its proposed nuclear plant on
Anglesey. Hiroaki Nakanishi is scheduled to meet Theresa May as the clock
ticks on the company’s deadline to agree the outlines of a financial
support package by the middle of this year.
Hitachi, the Japanese conglomerate, has spent £2 billion so far on its Horizon venture, which is
developing plans for a new power station at Wylfa. It has threatened to
withdraw funding unless it receives assurances that financial support can
be agreed. The 2.9-gigawatt power station is due to start generating in the
mid-2020s, becoming Britain’s second new nuclear plant after the £19.6
billion Hinkley Point plant being built in Somerset. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/business/hitachi-seeks-to-clear-clouds-over-horizon-hpfk9gpjd
Scotsman 30th April 2018, The Scottish Government will this week face calls to hold a review into
concerns over nuclear weapons “convoys” travelling through towns and cities
in Scotland. The Greens have said the SNP government, which opposes nuclear
weapons, is responsible for community safety and emergency planning and
cannot dismiss the issue as being reserved to Westminster.
MSPs are preparing to debate the issue at Holyrood on Wednesday, where Green MSP
Mark Ruskell will call for a review.
Up to eight times a year, a convoy of heavy trucks containing weapon materials and nuclear warheads travels
between the Aldermaston and Burghfield atomic weapon plants in Berkshire to
the Royal Navy base at Coulport on Loch Long where the UK’s nuclear weapons
are stored. These trucks will often be carrying weapons materials for
maintenance or replacement. But a Freedom of Information request by Green
MSPs last year found that none of the relevant local authorities the trucks
pass through has conducted risk assessments in relation to the convoys. https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/greens-seek-review-of-nuclear-convoy-safety-1-4732236
Times 29th April 2018, New nuclear power plants are likely to blow their budgets and arrive late unless their designs are completed before construction starts, a report has warned. Ministers, wary of cost hikes and delays, are wrestling with how to financially support replacements for ageing coal-fired and nuclear plants across the UK.
Hitachi is trying to strike a deal with ministers to build a £10bn-plus plant at Wylfa on Anglesey, where taxpayers are likely to take a stake.
Researchers at Energy Technologies Institute found that most high-cost projects had started construction with incomplete designs, whereas work on low-cost plants had begun only once design and planning had been finalised.
TOKYO — Hitachi will ask the U.K. government to take a direct stake in the company that is to build and operate a nuclear power plant in Wales which is now 100% owned by the Japanese industrial company. Hitachi expects the U.K. government will invite private British companies to participate and hopes to reduce its own stake to less than 50%.
Nikkei has learned that Hitachi Chairman Hiroaki Nakanishi will shortly travel to the U.K. to discuss the ownership issue and other project terms with British Prime Minister Theresa May.
Hitachi has recently concluded that the risk of proceeding with the Anglesey project, at an estimated cost of more than 3 trillion yen ($27.5 billion), is too great to manage on its own as a private company. It plans to withdraw from the project if restructuring negotiations fall through. Such a move would have significant repercussions for nuclear power policy for both Britain and Japan.
Hitachi acquired complete ownership of the U.K.’s Horizon Nuclear Power in 2012 for 89 billion yen as part of its plan to expand its nuclear business from Japan to foreign markets. It has spent about 200 billion yen preparing for Horizon’s first project, the construction of a plant on the Isle of Anglesey in Wales.
Hitachi hopes to lower its stake in Horizon to less than 50% before construction begins at Anglesey. It has requested that the British government take a direct stake in Horizon and then invite local enterprises to invest.
In response to Hitachi’s concerns, the British government earlier this month proposed that U.K. interests and Japanese public and private interests join with Hitachi to move Anglesey forward. The three sets of shareholders would each put 300 billion yen into the project, giving each a one-third stake. According to sources, the company and the Japanese government see it as too risky for Japanese interests to retain a majority shareholding and hope that British interests will acquire a controlling stake.
London has been leery up to now of taking a direct stake in any new nuclear construction. Hitachi will likely seek in direct talks a commitment to U.K. government investment as well as to additional support that may be necessary to sustain the operation.
Other key project terms also remain unsettled, including the degree to which London would guarantee the 2 trillion yen in loans Hitachi sees as needed to finance the Anglesey development and the price to be paid to Hitachi for the electricity from the plant. London’s proposed price is 20% lower than what Hitachi has requested. The Japanese government plans to guarantee the project’s loans.
The U.K. in December approved the design of the reactor that Hitachi plans to use in Anglesey. The project is now in its final pre-construction phase. The company has targeted to begin construction next year.
With its domestic nuclear industry still crippled by the legacy of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident, Japan has been eager to promote nuclear exports. The drive for overseas orders however has struggled as many governments reconsider nuclear power’s merits.
On the 32nd anniversary of the most destructive man-caused disasters in history, the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in northern Ukraine, Sputnik discussed the liquidation of nuclear incidents throughout the world with Majia H. Nadesan, Risk Innovation Fellow in the Graduate Faculty of Hugh Downs.
Sputnik: In your view, how do politics affect such disasters as the Fukushima incident?
Majia H. Nadesan: Politics is an inevitable dimension of social life. Unfortunately, consolidated political power over critical decision-making can have catastrophic consequences, particularly when decision-makers are driven by singular logics that are intolerant of dissent.
We see in the case of nuclear energy how centralization of decision making power legitimized by symbolic appeals to national and economic security have produced never-ending catastrophes, illustrated best by Hanford in the US, Chernobyl in the Ukraine, Mayak in Russia, and Fukushima Daiichi in Japan.
Each of these catastrophes poisons air, soil, and water as toxic radionuclides migrate, bio-accumulate, and bio-magnify in biological life.
Although no authority will deny the hazards of radioactive activity and the challenges of nuclear waste management, the institutionally vested logic of nuclear, what Gabrielle Hecht referred to as “nuclearity,” routinely seeks to contain and trivialize representations of radiation risk. We saw this tendency toward trivialization in the WHO’s rush during the early stages of the Fukushima Daiichi disaster to declare no long-term health risks.
It is relatively easy to contain and trivialize representations of radiation risk because effects for all but the most extreme exposures are protracted and do not manifest equivalently across exposed populations because of variations across exposure forms and conditions and the contingencies of biological vulnerabilities. Most troubling, the transgenerational genetic and epigenetic effects of elevated exposure to chemically toxic and radioactive elements are studied least frequently of all and yet may pose the greatest risk to biological life.
Containment and trivialization of radiation risk are foundational to the symbolic logic of nuclear security, yet blind us to the hazards we’ve engineered into our infrastructures, as observed by Ulrich Beck.
Sputnik: What measures need to be taken to prevent these catastrophes from happening?
Majia H. Nadesan: Efforts to redress catastrophic risks must first and foremost acknowledge the scope and severity of hazards. Powerful governmental and corporate organizations vested in the nuclear industry and its symbolic logic of national security are often unwilling to take this first step and so we see efforts in the US to extend the operations of antiquated reactors and in Japan efforts to return Fukushima refugees to areas with still-elevated radiation levels.
Failure to acknowledge infrastructural hazards across the nuclear supply, utilization, and waste cycles promises more disasters and each one will contribute to the genotoxic load of radionuclides circulating and concentrating in the biological life upon which we depend.
Sputnik: What are your thoughts on the way the previous catastrophes were handled?
Majia H. Nadesan: It is quite instructive to compare how Chernobyl was managed as compared to Fukushima. There is little doubt that the Soviet deployment of hundreds of thousands of liquidators was on a scale that has not yet been surpassed. The Soviets also set the exposure level at a fraction (5 millisieverts) of the up-to-twenty millisieverts of annualized exposure now allowed by Japan’s government. However, many observers note that the autocratic nature of the Soviet system and the availability of space for relocating refugees contributed to the more aggressive mitigation and evacuation in Chernobyl as compared to Japan.
Containment and trivialization of radiation risk are foundational to the symbolic logic of nuclear security, yet blind us to the hazards we’ve engineered into our infrastructures, as observed by Ulrich Beck.
Sputnik: What measures need to be taken to prevent these catastrophes from happening?
Majia H. Nadesan: Efforts to redress catastrophic risks must first and foremost acknowledge the scope and severity of hazards. Powerful governmental and corporate organizations vested in the nuclear industry and its symbolic logic of national security are often unwilling to take this first step and so we see efforts in the US to extend the operations of antiquated reactors and in Japan efforts to return Fukushima refugees to areas with still-elevated radiation levels.
Failure to acknowledge infrastructural hazards across the nuclear supply, utilization, and waste cycles promises more disasters and each one will contribute to the genotoxic load of radionuclides circulating and concentrating in the biological life upon which we depend.
Sputnik: What are your thoughts on the way the previous catastrophes were handled?
Majia H. Nadesan: It is quite instructive to compare how Chernobyl was managed as compared to Fukushima. There is little doubt that the Soviet deployment of hundreds of thousands of liquidators was on a scale that has not yet been surpassed. The Soviets also set the exposure level at a fraction (5 millisieverts) of the up-to-twenty millisieverts of annualized exposure now allowed by Japan’s government. However, many observers note that the autocratic nature of the Soviet system and the availability of space for relocating refugees contributed to the more aggressive mitigation and evacuation in Chernobyl as compared to Japan.
suspect that although the incidents of severe accidents will increase, the public will hear less about these accidents. Driven by the logic of adaptation, governments across the globe are re-thinking allowable exposure levels. In addition to increasing exposures standards, governments may censor or otherwise limit access to data on measured pollutants. For example, we see in the US how the EPA’s Radnet System shutdown monitors and limited access to beta data in the months and years following the Fukushima disaster. The public’s right to know appears to be faltering.
Since radiation detection requires access to specialized equipment, controlling perceptions of radiation risk may be easier to achieve than controlling actual exposures.
Whitehaven News 26th April 2018 , Search to find nuclear waste storage site is ‘flawed’, Cumbria council chiefs claim. Cash incentives are being offered to communities that step forward to host an underground waste bunker.
A NEW search to find a community willing to host an underground nuclear waste storage bunker is based on ‘fundamentally flawed’ government policy, council officials in Cumbria have said.
The nationwide scheme to identify a location for a £12 billion geological disposal facility buried at least 200 metres below the surface was relaunched by the government in January and is expected to take
20 years to secure. It promises incentives including £1m per year for five
years for the five communities that volunteer to be on the shortlist – with
£2.5m a year for the two that go forward to the testing stage, which would
see deep boreholes dug underground.
But experts within Cumbria County Council have instead called for more clarity on how the high level waste -the majority of which is currently kept in storage vessels in west Cumbria
– will be kept safe if a suitable location is not identified within the time frame.
They also state the right of willing communities to withdraw from the process is not clear enough within the proposal.
The authority’s official response, expected to be adopted by members of its cabinet
committee in Carlisle today, states: “The county council believes the
policy on which this consultation is based is fundamentally flawed.
As state help fades for 2 nuclear plants, will Trump attempt rescue? Lancaster Online, 24 Apr 18, AD CRABLE | Staff Writer
With two nuclear plants in Pennsylvania now inching closer to the point of no return, it appears there is little political will for a financial life preserver on the legislative level.
“A bailout, subsidy-type approach that we’ve seen in New York, Illinois, now New Jersey — I’ve not been satisfied that is politically viable here in Pennsylvania,” state Sen. Ryan Aument said last Tuesday.
Aument spoke after a hearing with beleaguered utility leaders called by the House-Senate Nuclear Energy Caucus that the Landisville Republican helped form to come to the aid of nuclear plants. He was not available for additional comment Monday.
……..Exelon has said that without federal or state help, its Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Dauphin County will close in September 2019, idling more than 600 workers.
FirstEnergy Corp, which recently filed for bankruptcy, recently announced that without relief it would close its Beaver Valley nuclear plant near Pittsburgh in 2021, as well as two nuclear plants in Ohio.
……. Appeals to feds
FirstEnergy Corp. has taken the drastic step of asking the U.S. Department of Energy to declare an energy emergency to ensure profits for nuclear and coal plants.
DOE has indicated it is cool to such a move.
In January, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission rejected a DOE proposal to approve rules to subsidize nuclear and coal plants to keep the nation’s power supply “reliable and resilient.”
But the Trump administration reportedly is considering a new initiative to make good on the president’s campaign pledge to protect the coal and nuclear power industries.
Bloomberg is reporting that President Trump is considering coming to the aid of struggling coal and nuclear by invoking a Cold War-era federal law that gives a president sweeping authority to nationalize the energy sector to make sure it is available in times of war or after a disaster.
The Defense Production Act was passed under the Truman administration and was used then to cap wages and impose price controls on the steel industry.
The White House Press Office did not respond to a request for comment.
At the Nuclear Caucus hearing in Harrisburg last week, representatives from Exelon, FirstEnergy and Talen Energy said that the federal government is not likely to act in time to save the nuclear plants, and they appealed for Pennsylvania legislators to act as several other states have.
Dave Toke’s Blog 20th April 2018,This week’s story about problems with pipe welding at the French nuclear
plant being built at Flamanville could spell the end for the Hinkley C
nuclear project.
Treasury backed loan guarantees to build Hinkley C have
been linked to a target date for commissioning of the Flamanville plant of
the end of 2020. Yet the current target date of completion by the end of
2019 has been thrown in doubt by the freshly announced problems.
The main focus of attention of this problem for Hinkley has simply been that the
design of the Flamanville plant – the European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) –
is the same as that to be built at Hinkley C and that the engineering
problems bode ill for the British scheme.
That is right, but it is rather worse than this. The commercial issue is that if the French plant is not
commercially operating by the end of 2020 then it seems the Treasury will
not be able to give loan guarantees for the scheme.
According to the analyst Professor Steve Thomas, the rules agreed between the European
Commission and the British Government stipulate that ”until Flamanville 3
was in commercial service, there would be a cap on the guaranteed loans
effectively meaning funding would be primarily through equity’. http://realfeed-intariffs.blogspot.co.uk/2018/04/problems-with-french-nuclear-plant.html
White House reportedly exploring wartime rule to help coal, nuclear, Ars Technica,President has used Act’s powers before for space industry.MEGAN GEUSS–According to reports from Bloomberg and E&E News, the Trump Administration has been exploring another way to help coal and nuclear generators: the Defense Production Act of 1950.
The Act was passed under President Truman. Motivated by the Korean War, it allows the president broad authority to boost US industries that are considered a priority for national security. On Thursday, E&E News cited sources that said “an interagency process is underway” at the White House to examine possible application of the act to the energy industry. The goal would be to give some form of preference to coal and nuclear plants that are struggling to compete with cheap natural gas.
Third time’s the charm?
This appears to be the third attempt to use policy to keep coal and nuclear operators afloat. The main focus is coal generators, which Trump promised to rescue during his campaign. Although Trump’s campaign rhetoric often blamed environmental regulations, the problem has been economic more than regulatory; cheap natural gas has been the biggest threat to coal and nuclear.
In office, the Trump Administration has tried a number of arguments to justify intervening in electricity markets to the benefit of coal and nuclear. In early 2017, Energy Secretary Rick Perry released a memo calling for a study of “baseload energy” in the US, meaning power that could be delivered consistently around the clock. Although the memo never explicitly targeted renewable energy, Perry wrote that Obama-era policies had unfairly threatened coal-burning plants and had therefore threatened the existence of continuous and reliable energy in the US.
But the study that resulted from Perry’s memo bucked the political message, instead asserting that the decline in coal has resulted from the US’ boom in natural gas.
Undeterred, Perry used the study to justify a proposed rule that would have required grid managers to compensate coal and nuclear generation over and above current electricity prices. The proposal was based on the idea that these sources of generation could keep 90 days of fuel onsite in case of an emergency, whereas natural gas cannot in most cases. (This 90-day logic turned out to be specious when Hurricane Harvey flooded out coal piles in Houston, causing at least two coal-burning units in the area to have to switch to burning natural gas.)
However, Perry’s proposed rule could not go into effect without approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). In January, FERC denied Perry’s proposed rule, saying that the Department of Energy (DOE) never showed that current pricing mechanisms for coal and nuclear power were “unjust and unreasonable.”
Section 202(c)
Since FERC’s January action, the Trump Administration has been looking at other legal means to boost the flagging coal industry, according to E&E News. One potential avenue was proposed in late March by a power company called FirstEnergy, which petitioned the DOE to use Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act to mandate that its coal and nuclear generators stay open despite their financial issues. However, Section 202(c) is generally reserved for emergencies, like natural disasters or California’s 2001 energy crisis.
Section 202(c) was not used at all between 2008 and 2017. In 2017, the DOE invoked Section 202(c) twice: once to keep a generator open temporarily while another came online, and once to permit limited use of two coal-fired units in Virginia during periods of high demand.
Secretary Perry expressed his willingness to consider a Section 202(c) action for coal and nuclear plants at a hearing held by the US House of Representatives Subcommittee on Energy last week. But staff within the DOE haven’t been inclined to use emergency powers to solve an economic situation.
…….The Defense Production ActIf the DOE decides not to invoke Section 202(c), the president may turn to the Defense Production Act. According to a 2014 summary report (PDF) from the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the act would allow the president to “demand priority for defense-related products,” “provide incentives to develop, modernize, and expand defense productive capacity,” and establish “a voluntary reserve of trained private sector executives available for emergency federal employment,” among other powers
……..Using the Act to protect coal and nuclear facilities would almost certainly be more controversial, as the link between national defense and keeping uneconomic coal generators running is not well-established.
It’s unclear exactly how the Administration would institute protection for coal or nuclear generators under the Defense Production Act.
