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Environmental Groups Call For Unified Voice Against Nuclear Waste In Mountain West

Environmental Groups Call For Unified Voice Against Nuclear Waste In Mountain West, Wyoming Public Media, By NOAH GLICK 1 AUG 19   Environmental activists are calling for a united voice in protesting the Department of Energy’s recent shipment of nuclear waste through our region.

Earlier this month, the Department of Energy sent a shipment of nuclear waste from Tennessee to southern Nevada. The shipment was incorrectly labeled as low-level waste, but it was actually mixed with waste that needs treatment before disposal. Nevada officials accused the agency of trying to sneak the material into the state illegally.

Now, environmental activists are calling for Utah Governor Gary Herbert to join Nevada and New Mexico’s governors in their fight against nuclear waste shipments…… https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/post/environmental-groups-call-unified-voice-against-nuclear-waste-mountain-west#stream/0

August 1, 2019 Posted by | opposition to nuclear, USA | Leave a comment

San Onofre’s nuclear waste: an intractable problem

But is interim storage really interim?……. the communities that give the OK to build an interim storage facility may end up having the waste stuck in their backyards for decades to come.
“Until there is an idea of a long-term repository,” said Maria Korsnick, CEO of the Nuclear Energy Institute, at a recent Senate hearing, “anybody that raises their hands for that consolidated interim storage [site] is, de facto, the long-term” site. 
Finding a repository for San Onofre plant’s nuclear waste is a difficult task L A Times, ROB NIKOLEWSKI
JULY 27, 2019, SAN DIEGO —   Earlier this month, Southern California Edison — the operators of the now-shuttered San Onofre nuclear power plant — resumed transferring heavy canisters filled with spent fuel assemblies from wet storage pools to a newly constructed dry storage facility on the plant’s premises. Continue reading →

July 29, 2019 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Problematic issue of cremation of radioactive bodies

A Dead Man Was Cremated in Arizona Without Anyone Realising He Was Radioactive, Science Alert PETER DOCKRILL, 28 JUL 2019

In 2017, a 69-year-old man with pancreatic cancer went to hospital with abnormally low blood pressure. Sadly, he died only two days later, and his remains were cremated.

What nobody at the hospital or the crematorium knew, was that this hadn’t been the man’s only recent trip to hospital. ust one day earlier, in fact, he had been injected with a radioactive compound at another hospital to treat his tumour – and when his mortal remains were incinerated, this radioactive and potentially dangerous dose of lutetium Lu 177 dotatate was still inside his body.

This alarming case, reported in a research letter published in February this year, illustrates the collateral risks potentially posed by on average 18.6 million nuclear medicine procedures involving radiopharmaceuticals performed in the US every year.

While rules regulate how these drugs are administered to living patients, the picture can become less clear when those patients die, thanks to a patchwork of different laws and standards in each state – not to mention situations like the 69-year-old man, whose radioactive status simply slipped through the cracks.

“Radiopharmaceuticals present a unique and often overlooked postmortem safety challenge,” researchers from the Mayo Clinic explained in a case note.

“Cremating an exposed patient volatilises the radiopharmaceutical, which can then be inhaled by workers (or released into the adjacent community) and result in greater exposure than from a living patient.”……..

Given more than half of all Americans eventually get cremated, postmortem management of individuals who receive radioactive drugs is an area the US health system needs to work on, the researchers say.

This includes better ways of evaluating radioactivity in deceased patients (prior to them being cremated), and also standardising ways of notifying crematoriums about their clients.

After all, nobody really has any idea how often this is happening.

As nuclear scientist Marco Kaltofen from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, who wasn’t involved with the research, told BuzzFeed News: “They only happened to catch this one case because normally they don’t look.”

The findings were reported in JAMA. https://www.sciencealert.com/a-dead-man-was-cremated-in-arizona-without-anyone-knowing-he-was-radioactive

July 29, 2019 Posted by | radiation, USA | Leave a comment

Self-regulation of nuclear power plants? What could possibly go wrong?

Editorial: Self-regulation of nuclear power plants? What could go wrong? St Louis Post Dispatch. 28 July 19, The idea of self-policing and minimizing government regulatory oversight worked so well for Boeing and its still-grounded 737 Max 8 jetliner fleet, the Trump administration now wants to expand those same powers to the nation’s aging nuclear power plants. What could possibly go wrong?

The industry insists that self-policing can work and that operators of the 90-plus nuclear plants across the country don’t need the kind of rigorous federal inspections that have been required annually or once every two years under previous administrations. Under plans now being contemplated, inspections would be reduced to as little as once every three years.

A Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff report, recently made public, recommends cutting back on nuclear reactor inspections to improve efficiency and save money. Competition in the energy-generating industry has grown much stiffer with the increased use of cheaper natural gas and renewable sources…….

Rare is the industry that welcomes heavy regulation and rigorous federal inspections. But history is rife with examples of how badly things can go wrong when the government steps back and allows companies in high-risk industries to police themselves.

Boeing faces billions of dollars in losses after two of its 737 Max 8 jetliners crashed. The Federal Aviation Administration’s acting administrator, Daniel Elwell, acknowledged before Congress in May that the agency had cut back on staff inspections and relied on manufacturers like Boeing to conduct their own inspections.

After the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, Congress imposed heavy regulations on the offshore oil industry to prevent any repeat of the explosion that killed 11 and sent millions of barrels of oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico. The Trump administration is working to cut those regulations back so the industry can return to policing itself.

Likewise, the administration worked with Republicans in Congress to reverse banking-industry regulations imposed after the 2007-2008 financial-industry meltdown that prompted the Great Recession — again on the premise that the industry is better off self-regulating.

The record on self-policing doesn’t bode well. But as the saying goes, those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. https://www.stltoday.com/opinion/editorial/editorial-self-regulation-of-nuclear-power-plants-what-could-go/article_98f37d34-a229-5aac-a54b-0a36e75cdc9a.html

July 29, 2019 Posted by | safety, USA | Leave a comment

Nevadans say no to nuclear waste

Nevadans say no to nuclear waste,  https://lasvegassun.com/news/2019/jul/28/nevadans-say-no-to-nuclear-waste/  By Valentina Spatola, Henderson, Sunday, July 28, 2019

Brian Greenspun hit the nail on the head in his July 14 column “Why Yucca Mountain rattles us should be no surprise.”

Countless hours have been spent debating a shortsighted attempt to restart the nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain and, to put it simply and succinctly, Nevadans have said no, time and again, to becoming the nation’s nuclear waste dump.

The Trump administration and the president’s many enablers may not understand the meaning of the word no, but hopefully they hear this loud and clear: The families of Las Vegas do not want to store nuclear waste less than 100 miles from their homes.

The families of Nevada have been lied to repeatedly by people like Energy Secretary Rick Perry, whose department recently shipped nuclear waste into the state. This sort of ineptitude is inexcusable at any level of the federal government, but especially so when hazardous nuclear waste is being mishandled.

I urge Nevadans to thank Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen, as well as Gov. Steve Sisolak, for opposing the shipments and attempts to reopen Yucca Mountain. We should also support Rep. Steven Horsford’s call for Perry’s resignation.

July 29, 2019 Posted by | opposition to nuclear, USA | Leave a comment

How did Ohio’s nuclear industry get a $1.1billion bailout? -dark money did the job!

The Ohio legislation reads as if it were designed specifically to undermine the planet’s continued capacity to support a steady human population.

It even ends programs aimed at encouraging Ohio residents to reduce power consumption, through upgrades to appliances or heating and cooling systems

OHIO REPUBLICANS BALKED AT A NUCLEAR BAILOUT, SO THE INDUSTRY ELECTED NEW REPUBLICANS — AND WALKED AWAY WITH $1.1 BILLION The Intercept,   Ryan Grim,  , Akela Lacy  25 July 19  ON TUESDAY, a dark-money effort linked primarily to the Ohio nuclear industry delivered an audacious payoff, as a newly elected state legislature overcame years of opposition to shower a $1.1 billion bailout on two state nuclear plants.

Several dark-money groups spent millions to replace key Republican state legislators in the spring of 2018, followed by a furious lobbying campaign to make sure those new lawmakers elected a new House speaker — one who was amenable to the subsidy. The nuclear industry in Ohio has been on the brink of failure for several years, but previous legislatures had objected to a bailout, reading the writing on the wall: Nuclear power is neither a cost-effective solution for power nor an effective response to climate change, despite hopes for its success.

In April 2018, two nuclear plants, both owned by the electric utility FirstEnergy, filed for bankruptcy and have been threatening to cease operations if not bailed out. They were under increasing pressure to compete with cheaper alternatives, ranging from natural gas to wind and solar. The bankruptcy filings give a glimpse into the company’s political spending: more than $30 million from 2018-2019 on lobbying and campaigns in Ohio and Pennsylvania (where the company also sought a bailout, so far unsuccessfully).

The dark-money effort deployed a variety of vehicles that went by names like the Conservative Leadership Alliance and the Ohio Clean Energy Jobs Alliance. Murray Energy, a coal company, also gave heavily to current state House Speaker Larry Householder and his allied candidates, and the bailout from Ohio also includes subsidies to prop up failing coal plants in the state.

The payoff is extraordinary in degree Continue reading →

July 27, 2019 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Ohio takes a backward leap, as Ohio Governor Signs Coal and Nuclear Bailout at Expense of Renewable Energy

Ohio Governor Signs Coal and Nuclear Bailout at Expense of Renewable Energy

Opponents fear the law will send the growing wind and solar industry to neighboring states while Ohio homeowners are stuck boosting old, uneconomical power plants.  Inside Climate News. Dan Gearino, 26 July 19

In a year when several states have taken big steps to embrace a future that runs on renewable energy, Ohio is taking a leap in the opposite direction.

The Ohio legislature passed a measure Tuesday that cuts renewable energy and energy efficiency programs while adding subsidies for nuclear and coal-fired power plants—a policy cocktail that opponents say is backward-looking and harmful to the economy, consumers and the environment.

Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, signed the bill into law within hours.

Opponents were unable to match the political power of FirstEnergy Solutions, the owner of the state’s two nuclear plants, and its allies.

While much of the debate was about nuclear power, the law may end up functioning as more of a coal bailout.

On Friday, FirstEnergy Solutions said it had decided to cancel plans to close the W.H. Sammis coal-fired power plant, an eastern Ohio plant that has been described as a “super-polluter.” The plant, previously scheduled to shut down in 2022, is not covered by the bailout law, but the windfall from the state money is improving the company’s finances enough to make moves unrelated to the nuclear plants.

The new law is in line with Ohio’s recent history of hostility to renewable energy, while also making the state an outlier as several other states have increased their support for renewable energy, including plans to move to 100 percent carbon-free or renewable electricity, most recently in Maine and New York.

“This is one of the worst pieces of energy related legislation we’ve seen,” said Dan Sawmiller, Ohio energy policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

His group was one of many across the business and political spectrum that fought the bill, a rare moment in which environmental advocates such as the Sierra Club were on the same side as the American Petroleum Institute.

“We are bailing out a corporation, a failing corporation,” while harming the growing wind and solar industries, said Rep. Casey Weinstein, a Democrat.

He said the legislation would steer solar and wind investment away from Ohio and toward neighboring states such as Michigan. Other states, including South Carolina and Georgia, are being much more forward thinking about renewable energy.

The Ohio Senate passed the bill 19-12 last week, but the House put off its vote until Tuesday because several lawmakers were absent and the bill would not have passed without them.

DeWine’s office went so far as to approve the use of state aircraft to pick up two lawmakers from a conference in Chicago so they would be in Columbus for the Tuesday vote, though that flight plan was eventually canceled  when the lawmakers determined they could drive back…….

FirstEnergy Solutions, which is in bankruptcy protection, had said its nuclear plants were not profitable enough to continue to operate and would need to close in 2020 and 2021 unless they received more support—about $150 million per year. However, the company has not provided the public with evidence of the plants’ financial condition.

The bailout is indirectly helping the Sammis coal plant. Last month, FirstEnergy Solutions CEO John Judge spoke at a public forum in Steubenville, Ohio, about the connection between the nuclear aid, which at that point had not become law, and the old coal-fired plant that his company had intended to shut down………

Victory for FirstEnergy, Politician It Supported

The new law is a victory for House Speaker Larry Householder, a Republican who rose to his position in January by ousting the incumbent Republican. He made it a top priority to pass nuclear plant subsidies, following a 2018 campaign cycle in which FirstEnergy—the Akron-based utility that until recently owned FirstEnergy Solutions—spent heavily to support him.

This support included donations to Republican primary candidates who had pledged to back Householder’s bid for speaker and have been leading supporters of the bill……..

The new law will add two new monthly fees to utility bills across the state. Households will pay up to $1.50 per month to help keep uncompetitive coal plants running, plus up to 85 cents per month into a fund that will provide tens of millions of dollars to support the nuclear plants (businesses would pay more on both charges).

Cuts to Efficiency, Renewable Energy Programs   Much of the opposition to the bill stemmed from lawmakers’ decisions to help pay for the subsidies by reducing charges for programs that support renewable energy and energy efficiency—programs that reduce greenhouse gases and help to lower customers’ power bills.

Under the law DeWine signed, utilities will now only be required to get 8.5 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by the end of 2026—down from a target of 12.5 percent. At one point, a version of the bill would have eliminated the renewable energy standard entirely. Ohio’s renewable energy standard is already modest compared to most states.

The new law also freezes annual increases in energy efficiency standards at the end of 2020, meaning utilities will no longer need to operate programs that help customers reduce their energy use. Consumer advocates say the cuts to energy efficiency are especially harmful because the programs lead to savings that exceed their costs. The net savings were $5.1 billion from 2009 to 2017.

As the bill moved toward passing, opponents spoke about next steps, including how to make this an issue in 2020 legislative elections and the possibility of sponsoring a statewide referendum to overturn the future law.

Bill Siderewicz, president of Clean Energy Future, a company that has developed natural gas power plants in Ohio, has hinted at a referendum. He opposes the bill because he thinks it gives nuclear plants an advantage over natural gas.

“The simple answer is that poll after poll shows that voters are AGAINST utilities’ BAILOUTS in Ohio!!!” he wrote in an email before the Senate vote.  https://insideclimatenews.org/news/23072019/ohio-coal-nuclear-bailout-law-signed-cuts-renewable-energy-efficiency-programs-governor-dewine

July 27, 2019 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Climate change’s impacts on the nuclear industry – wildfires shut down parts of Idaho nuclear research site

Idaho nuclear research site shuts down some operations because of wildfire
The public has not been threatened as the 90,000-acre blaze burns near the Idaho National Laboratory, NBC News, July 24, 2019, By Phil Helsel

A brush fire that has burned about 90,000 acres in Idaho has curtailed much of the staff at one of the nation’s leading nuclear research facilities, officials said Tuesday.

No injuries have been reported, and there has been no damage or threats to buildings at the Idaho National Laboratory since the fire was sparked in grassland near the center about 6:30 p.m. Monday.

“The public has not been threatened at all,” Juan Alvarez, chief operations officer for the national lab, said at a news conference Tuesday…….. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/idaho-nuclear-research-site-shuts-down-some-operations-because-wildfire-n1033266

July 25, 2019 Posted by | climate change, USA | Leave a comment

Danger in Using Commercial Satellites To Control Nuclear Weapons

Using Commercial Satellites To Control Nuclear Weapons Is A Bad Idea — But
It’s Being Discussed Forbes, Loren Thompson 24 July 19, “……. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the appearance of new
threats, though, the sense of urgency about nuclear security has waned. The
infrastructure supporting nuclear deterrence has decayed to a point where all three
legs of the strategic “triad”—land-based missiles, sea-based missiles and long-range
bombers—need to be replaced. Meanwhile, the architecture used to command and
control nuclear forces has changed little since the Reagan era.
Against this backdrop, the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force said something curious at a meeting of
the Mitchell Institute on June 26. The institute recently produced a report focused on the need to
modernize technology for nuclear command and control. General David Goldfein opined that ongoing
efforts to network the Air Force were as relevant to control of nuclear forces as conventional forces.
In particular, he mentioned the “rapid and exciting expansion of commercial space”
as a trend that might facilitate the creation of resilient links for communicating with
nuclear forces. I was unaware of the chief’s comments until I saw a story by Mandy
Mayfield of National Defense Magazine entitled, “Air Force Wants To Utilize
Commercial Satellites For Nuclear Command, Control.” The Air Force is responsible
for most of the 200 systems comprising the nuclear command and control system, so
General Goldfein’s thoughts have to be taken seriously even if they are just random
musings.
This particular idea is dangerous.
Commercial satellites lack virtually all of the security features that would be
necessary to assure control of the nuclear arsenal in a crisis. First of all, they are not
survivable against a wide array of threats that China and Russia have begun posing
to U.S. orbital assets, ranging from kinetic attacks to electronic jamming to
electromagnetic pulse. Second, they are susceptible to cyber intrusion via their
ground stations that could impede their performance. Third, they frequently contain
foreign components, including in-orbit propulsion technology made in Russia, which
might be manipulated in a crisis or simply become unavailable during wartime.
Air Force planners presumably know all this, so why would General Goldfein suggest
relying on commercial satellites to execute the military’s most fateful decisions?
Perhaps for the same reason that the Army is backing into reliance on commercial
satellites for its next-generation battlefield networks. There are so many commercial
constellations in operation that it seems unlikely America’s enemies could shut them
all down in wartime, and they are a lot cheaper to use than orbiting dedicated military
satcoms with the requisite capacity and redundancy.
“Resilience” has become the watchword for modernizing military space activities, and
one way of creating resilience is to proliferate the pathways available for vital
communications to a point where adversaries can’t keep up with all the possible

options available to U.S. commanders. The same logic is leading technologists to
propose large numbers of cheap satellites in low-earth orbit as an adjunct to existing
military satcoms.
These “cheapsats” wouldn’t be anywhere near as capable as the secure
communications assets that Washington has placed in geostationary orbits, but there
would be so many that links could be sustained even in highly stressed
circumstances, such as the “trans-attack” phase of a nuclear war.
Or at least, so the reasoning goes.
……But the idea of relying on commercial satellites for command and control of
nuclear forces takes this reasoning a step too far, because market forces preclude
any of the hardening and other protective features that might be required in dedicated
military birds
……… think of all the ways an adversary like China might seek to interfere with
commercial satellites through their ground stations and uplinks, such as insertion of
malware via hacking and jamming of signals. ……..

https://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenthompson/2019/07/23/using-commercial-satellites-to-control-nuclear-
weapons-is-a-bad-idea-but-its-being-discussed/#2da6f0751dfa

July 25, 2019 Posted by | USA, wastes, weapons and war | Leave a comment

In Texas oil town Andrews , there’s support for hosting nuclear waste dump

July 25, 2019 Posted by | politics, USA, wastes | 2 Comments

USA’s Sensible, Timely Relief for America’s Nuclear Districts Economic Development (STRANDED) Act

Wiscasset could get $8 million for storing nuclear waste  https://www.pressherald.com/2019/07/24/wiscasset-could-get-8-million-for-storing-nuclear-waste/   A bill before Congress would compensate communities who store spent nuclear fuel that the federal government has failed to remove.

BY KATHLEEN O’BRIEN, TIMES RECORD  KOBRIEN@TIMESRECORD.COM 24 July 19, WISCASSET — Wiscasset could collect more than $8 million for the 64 containers of nuclear waste stored at the former Maine Yankee power plant site.

U.S. Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Tammy Duckworth, D-Illinois, introduced the Sensible, Timely Relief for America’s Nuclear Districts Economic Development (STRANDED) Act earlier this month, aimed at providing financial relief to communities like Wiscasset stuck with storing nuclear waste.

Should the Stranded Act pass, Wiscasset, home to decommissioned Maine Yankee, would be eligible to receive $15 per kilogram of nuclear waste currently being housed at the site, which is the rate for impact assistance established under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982.

There are about 542 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel stored at Maine Yankee, meaning Wiscasset would collect over $8 million from the government. According to Maine Yankee, it costs roughly $10 million per year to maintain the 64 canisters of radioactive waste.

“In the absence of a permanent (disposal) site, this will help alleviate the burden communities face and may help encourage Congress to take action on a long-term solution for nuclear waste, which is something Collins supports,” said Christopher Knight, a spokesperson for Collins.

Maine Yankee operated from 1972 to 1996. The company’s board voted to cease operations rather than invest in fixing expensive safety-related problems to keep the plant running.

The spent nuclear fuel is housed in 64 dry storage casks, which stand on 16 3-foot-thick concrete pads. Each concrete cask is comprised of a 2.5-inch thick steel liner surrounded by 28 inches of reinforced concrete.

The federal government was contractually obligated to remove the radioactive waste by 1998, but that commitment was never fulfilled.

Plans to build a permanent disposal site in the Yucca Mountains in Nevada were scrapped in 2009 by the Obama Administration. The Trump Administration has made no plans to revive the Yucca Mountains project.

A federal judge has awarded the owners of three nuclear power plants millions of dollars. This money pays for the operation of the fuel storage site so local taxpayers, including those in Wiscasset, aren’t left to foot the bill.

“The Yankee companies collectively have to date recovered about $575 million on behalf of our ratepayers in the ongoing litigation with the Department of Energy,” said Eric Howes, Maine Yankee director of public and government affairs. “Maine Yankee’s portion of the $575 million total is about $176.5 million.”

This money was amassed as a result of four separate lawsuits against the Department of Energy. When the U.S. government loses a lawsuit, the money lost comes from a Judgment Fund, which is funded by taxpayers.

“The Nuclear Waste Policy Act says those who benefit from nuclear power would be responsible for the removal of the spent nuclear fuel,” Howes said. “The cost of disposing Maine Yankee’s fuel has been fully paid for by the ratepayers. The government, however, has not met its obligation to remove the material from the site, and that’s true at every nuclear waste site in the country.”

Howes said Maine Yankee’s goal is to go out of business.

“It’s our responsibility to store this material in accordance with all the federal regulations,” Howes said. “When the government finally removes the spent nuclear fuel, we’ll go out of business, but I don’t know when that will be.”

There are 24 permanently and announced shutdown nuclear sites across the U.S. Five are in New England.

July 25, 2019 Posted by | politics, USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Push to speed up decommissioning of Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant

TMI nuclear plant can’t go away fast enough, some neighbors and ’79 accident survivors say, Penn Live Jul 23,   By Charles Thompson | cthompson@pennlive.com

As jarring as the closure of the Three Mile Island One nuclear power station is to longtime Harrisburg-area residents, a cadre of them told Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials Tuesday they’d like the plant’s planned decommissioning to take a faster track.

It’s known in NRC lingo as DECON, and it can allow for the deconstruction, clean-up and re-use of closed nuclear plants in less than a decade, as opposed to the six decade-plus track Three Mile Island Unit One’s owners, Exelon Generation, has started planning for.

Several longtime TMI watchdogs, born of the notorious 1979 partial meltdown at the adjacent Three Mile Island Two reactor, said the desire for speed is partly a matter of good riddance, and a world-weary resignation that past promises about the troubled plant have not panned out.

“How many dog and pony shows can you (the NRC) bring to Harrisburg over the last 40 years?” asked longtime TMI activist Gene Stilp, bemoaning the fact that under the current safe storage plan the island would be a nuclear waste dump long past the lifetimes of any current residents.

Stilp called on Exelon, and elected officials who fought for TMI’s economic preservation over the last two years, to put the decommissioning on a faster track to preserve more of the region’s existing nuclear-related jobs in the short term and allow for a faster rehabilitation of the site.

“You could start getting jobs for clean-up right now,” Stilp said. “Get retrained in some fashion and set up things for that. But you could actually have jobs right now and start on that. Not just monitoring the site… Start providing jobs right now, by starting the clean-up right now.

“This bargain with the devil to store it (spent nuclear fuel) on the Susquehanna River is an abomination to the river, an abomination to the citizens who live here…. and it provides more terrorist targets in a big way.”

NRC officials noted Tuesday it is ultimately the licensee’s decision whether to put a plant into safe storage or rapid decontamination.

Exelon’s current timeline calls for the site to spend most of the next 60 years in a “dormancy” stage, in which most activity will center around storage of spent fuel, and a wait for residual contamination levels to naturally break down until major reactor buildings and components can be dismantled.

Exelon, however, has recently changed paths with other retired nuclear plants – including one in New Jersey this year……..

There are other ways to join the TMI decommissioning conversation. Written comments on the report can be submitted through Oct. 9 either:

July 25, 2019 Posted by | decommission reactor, USA | Leave a comment

Vote about to happen on subsidising Ohio nuclear power stations

July 23, 2019 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

NuScale, realising there’s no real market for small nuclear reactors, pins its hopes on mass orders from tax-payer funded military

Advanced US nukes need a boost; is the Pentagon the answer? As proponents for the fuel seek to establish a commercial domestic market, federal PPAs are seen as key to unlocking private investments. Utility Dive By Catherine Morehouse  July 19, 2019 “……  the large-scale reactors that are the norm across the U.S. don’t fit in with the growing trend toward smaller, decentralized power.

Small, advanced nuclear reactors better fit that mold, but have yet to enter the market. So the key question, say stakeholders, is how to spur that initial investment and establish a commercial domestic market, with a loftier goal of establishing the U.S. as a nuclear power export leader.

“……..you really are going to need to have that public involvement to persuade the private sector to roll along,” – Daniel Poneman, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of Energy, and current president and CEO of nuclear developer Centrus

One potential solution floated at the conference was federal power purchase agreements between the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Department of Energy (DOE). 

A public-private partnership

“I think that the Department of Defense is a logical first customer for these reactors, especially micro reactors that are under development that can be deployed in remote regions,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who chairs the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, told the New Nuclear Capital audience on Tuesday……..

DOD’s ability to purchase in bulk and “underwrite an investment that may not have an immediate commercial appeal,” makes it an ideal first customer, said Poneman. And that initial investment is key.

It “really helps to have that, frankly, that initial investment from an investor that is looking at their returns not in quarterly earning statements but in the long-term security payoffs,” said Poneman. “Then when they make that initial major investment, it’s the cost of the very first one that’s always very, very high. And sometimes you find a cost curve that declines really quite steeply as you make more.”

Currently, a lot of capital being invested in the nuclear space comes from “eccentric billionaires who want to save the world,” Managing Director of Private Equity at Growth Capital Services James Magowan said at the conference. This poses a problem when trying to bring in “real venture capitalists,” whose first question is “Who’s your customer? Do you have a customer?” 

To that end, “the suggestion that the DOD could step up and be a customer is a great one, I think that solves an initial customer problem,” he said. But in order to establish a domestic market, more players need to be involved.

The DOD has shown interest in advanced nuclear technology, Murkowski told reporters, making them a “likely candidate” for investment. DOD did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Building a domestic market

Many in the nuclear industry argue that establishing the U.S. as a nuclear export leader is essential to both national security as well as global decarbonization. While the Pentagon can get things rolling for small-scale nuclear, utilities will be essential to building out the market as buyers.

“I think you see utilities, particularly in Canada, stepping up with the Canadian government to take on that market-making role and we look forward to similar discussions here in the U.S.,” Donald Wolf, president and CEO of Advanced Reactor Concepts, a U.S.-based developer, said at the New Nuclear Capital Conference. “Before we, in effect, push these new designs on foreign countries, it really helps to say we built it here first. We’ve improved it at home, and it’s safe for us.”

And some developers are moving to establish those markets for small reactors with municipal power systems, which make for more attractive first customers than IOUs, according to Colbert. Municipal power systems have access to a lower weighted cost of capital, around 3%-4%, compared to IOUs’ approximately 8%-10%. 

NuScale has jointly pursued both DOD and the Utah Associated Municipal Power Association (UAMP) as first customers. ……

“If you look at nuclear, the market for energy … is pretty well known,” said Chris Colbert, Chief Strategy Officer at nuclear developer NuScale  . “What’s not so well known is how do you get through the nuclear regulatory process, the [Nuclear Regulatory Commission] process.”

While safety remains a paramount concern for nuclear power, many in the industry say they no longer view public perception as a major problem.

“How do we tell the masses the progress we’re making? …….https://www.utilitydive.com/news/advanced-us-nukes-need-a-boost-is-the-pentagon-the-answer/559088/

 

July 23, 2019 Posted by | marketing, USA | Leave a comment

Lies and deceptions surrounding the planned costly bailout of Ohio’s nuclear power plants

There’s still time to say no to Ohio’s costly nuclear bailout   https://www.crainscleveland.com/opinion/personal-view-theres-still-time-say-no-ohios-costly-nuclear-bailout  Jeff Barge  21 July 19, There may have been a case once for Ohio to subsidize FirstEnergy Solutions’ two nuclear plants in Ohio. But the company’s deceit and dishonesty in providing false and misleading information to the state legislature and the public now make that virtually impossible. That may be why the bailout failed to pass as scheduled on July 17 by one vote and may not be brought up again until Aug. 1.

FirstEnergy Solutions has been claiming for more than a year that it needs $150 million a year from the state because its Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear power plants, now in federal bankruptcy court in Akron, are running at a loss.

But is this really true?

“It wouldn’t be in bankruptcy court if it wasn’t in the red, correct?” responded Ohio GOP Senate spokesman John Fortney when asked that question.

But that may be the misconception that is keeping the whole boat afloat. That so-called “fact” may not be true after all.

FirstEnergy Solutions actually has five businesses involved in its ongoing bankruptcy case, and the two nuclear subsidiaries, known through the acronyms “FENG” and “FENOC,” are profitable.

That has been firmly established by copies of a monthly operating report filed with the bankruptcy court by FirstEnergy Solutions in May of this year. According to Senate testimony by the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel that presented these documents as evidence, the two nuclear plants have had a profitable operating margin of almost $50 million since the company filed for bankruptcy in May 2018. According to these documents, FENG had an operating profit of $18.4 million in May 2019 alone.

As if it were needed, a second study also proved the two plants are profitable. This one is by Paul Sotkiewicz, former chief economist for PJM Interconnection LLC, the largest U.S. power grid operator in the country. That study, which was commissioned by oil and gas group API-Ohio, said the Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear plants generated annual profits of $28 million and $44 million, respectively, and are “among the most profitable of their kind in the nation.” Arie Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard Law School, said Sotkiewicz is a “credible” expert.

And let’s face it — is it even reasonable anymore to believe that FirstEnergy Solutions is acting in good faith? Not if you look at its most recent history.

In April, for example, federal authorities accusedFirstEnergy Solutions and its former parent company, FirstEnergy, with concocting a “scheme” that was “an abuse of the bankruptcy system,” and filed legal papers in bankruptcy court in Akron to that effect. That’s because FirstEnergy Solutions’ initial bankruptcy filing, which was rejected by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Alan Koschik, sought to absolve FirstEnergy of any future responsibility for costly power plant closings and cleanup estimated in the billions.

The public would have been on the hook for this cleanup. Nice try, FirstEnergy.

On another front, the Ohio Supreme Court in June struck down a sweetheart deal in which the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio had given FirstEnergy $600 million in a “distribution modernization rider” that allowed it to tack a fee on to customers’ bills for modernization of its energy grid. Problem is, FirstEnergy didn’t modernize its energy grid. According to testimony by the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel, the company used the money to increase dividends to its investor/owners from $152 million to $375 million a year. This again shows a lack of good faith. It diverted the fixup funds to Wall Street.

And that’s where the Ohio bailout money would go — straight from Columbus to Wall Street. As a July 8 headline in The Bond Buyer crowed: “FirstEnergy nuclear bailout would be a win for bondholders” — some of whom may have bought the bonds for pennies on the dollar after FirstEnergy’s bankruptcy.

Several state senators who spoke to me before the scheduled vote noted other valid reasons not to give FirstEnergy Solutions a bailout. In an email, state Sen. Andrew Brenner, a Republican member of the Senate energy committee that heard testimony on the bill, said that FirstEnergy Solutions’ controller was evasive on the stand and “avoided answering my questions” in Senate hearings.

Democrat state Sen. Nickie Antonio said her problem was FirstEnergy Solutions refused to provide her with any “math” to show they really needed the subsidy. That is, she said, they wanted the money but refused to prove they needed it.

Tom Becker of FirstEnergy Solutions explained it to the Plain Dealer this way: “The company is operating under several non-disclosure agreements as part of the bankruptcy and is precluded from disclosing non-public information.” But bankruptcy attorneys contacted for this article said that was patently false.

FirstEnergy Solutions even seems to be lying about the cost of its nuclear fuel. It said in June it needed $52 million immediately to order new fuel or it would have to begin the process of shutting down its plants. But the price of uranium has dropped precipitously from $48 a pound to $22 a pound, making that statement, too, dubious. Sotkiewicz, chief economist for PJM Interconnection LLC, calls that deadline phony.

It’s hard to imagine a company making a worse case for a subsidy than FirstEnergy Solutions has. A “dark money” statewide TV ad campaign costing as much as $7 million and paid for by a shadow group called “Generation Now” insults the public further by featuring kids playing T-ball and eating ice cream cones in support of the sought-after $1.5 billion subsidy.

The people who named FirstEnergy “Solutions” when it went into bankruptcy — almost immediately after being spun off from its parent — must have had a good laugh at the time. Spinning off all your debt into another corporation that immediately declares bankruptcy and reneging on your debts and business contracts must have indeed have seemed the ideal “solution.” Nancy Pelosi would have clapped.

But Ohioans have paid $10 billion in subsidies to First Energy in the past, and it’s far past time to pull the plug. The House should vote no on the Ohio nuclear bailout when it reconvenes on Aug. 1.

July 22, 2019 Posted by | business and costs, Legal, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

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