Increasing doubts about the future of nuclear energy
Doubts Surface About Nuclear Energy After S.C. Project Is Halted, WFAE 90.7, By DAVID BORAKS • AUG 22, 2017 “…….On July 31, Santee Cooper and South Carolina Electric & Gas announced they were abandoning construction of two new reactors at the V.C. Summer plant north of Columbia. The immediate reasons were simple: The project was four years behind schedule and at least $5 billion over budget.
CEO Kevin Marsh of SCANA, the parent company of South Carolina Electric & Gas, said it no longer made financial sense, especially after Santee Cooper pulled out.
“What really led us to this decision on the abandonment was looking at the costs going forward. And, of course in our case, without a partner, it made that cost just too much for our customers to bear,” Marsh told analysts earlier this month.
But there were other factors. One was this spring’s bankruptcy of the lead contractor and reactor designer, Westinghouse Electric. Fallout from its troubles is now hitting other projects, including one in Georgia.
Also, demand for electricity isn’t growing as fast as it once was – in part, because of energy efficiency. And then there’s the boom in other forms of energy that weren’t in the picture two decades ago when planning for these plants began, according to Kit Konolige, senior utilities industry analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence…..
Nuclear power is on the decline in most places, with the exception of China and India. California’s lone remaining nuclear plant will close in 2025. And Germany is phasing out nuclear by 2022, after shutting nearly half its reactors after Fukushima.
Troubles at projects like those in South Carolina, and a reliance on existing nuclear plants, make nuclear’s future a critical question for Duke Energy. …..
Last year, the company won federal licenses for two new nuclear plants in South Carolina and Florida, using the same Westinghouse reactor designs as the now halted South Carolina project. They could cost more than $11 billion each and take a decade to build. The question is whether it makes business sense, says Duke spokesman Rick Rhodes.
“We have what’s called a combined construction and operating license for those two projects. However, we’ve not made a decision to build either of those plants. As I said, we are watching closely what’s going on in the industry,” Rhodes said.
The decision will depend on what happens to Westinghouse, how much the plants will cost and how fast electricity demand grows, he said.
Bloomberg’s Konolige doesn’t see nuclear power regaining any momentum.
“Personally, I think it will be very difficult to justify building new nuclear plants. From a shareholder’s viewpoint, they just represent a tremendous amount of uncertainty over a long period of time. And obviously a great expenditure of capital,” he said.
Capital that companies like Duke may decide is better spent elsewhere. http://wfae.org/post/doubts-surface-about-nuclear-energy-after-sc-project-halted
It would take a miracle to salvage South Carolina’s abandoned nuclear power projects
Kallanish Energy 24th Aug 2017, When South Carolina senators asked Tuesday what it would take to salvage
the V.C. Summer Nuclear project, utility executives involved replied a new
partner who could put at least $3 billion into the over-budget,
behind-schedule project.
The state’s customer advocate was a bit more cynical – and perhaps more truthful. “You are going to need probably
more than one partner. I don’t know if you can get one partner and I
don’t think one partner can do it,” said Dukes Scott, executive
director of the South Carolina Office of Regulatory Staff, the Charlotte
Business Journal newspaper reported.
“You are going to need a partner for (state-owned) Santee Cooper and you are going to need a partner for (South
Carolina Electric & Gas, SCE&G) … and we need a third and fourth partner
to come in to finish this plant.” Scott reminded the senators of the
decision involving energy giant Duke Energy made in the early 1980s to
abandon plans for the Cherokee Nuclear plant in Gaffney, S.C. He said he
was asked at that time what it would take to save Cherokee. “My answer
was a miracle,” he said, the Business Journal reported. “What I just
described is close to that.” http://www.kallanishenergy.com/2017/08/24/enators-told-saving-nuclear-project-could-take-a-miracle/
Nuclear industry just haemorrhaging money
Nuclear power plants are ‘bleeding cash’ https://thinkprogress.org/u-s-nuclear-plants-bleeding-cash-c794e4142597/, Business columnist: “Let it be written that environmentalists didn’t kill the nuclear power industry, economics did”,
The nuclear industry is so uncompetitive now that over half of all existing U.S. nuclear power plants are “bleeding cash” according to a Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) report released earlier this summer. BNEF found that $2.9 billion is lost every year by just 55 percent of all the nuclear plants in the United States.
But, as the chart below [on original] shows, even the profitable plants have the narrowest of positive operating margins.
And if existing nukes are so uneconomic, it’s no shock that new nuclear plants are completely unaffordable. The nuclear industry has priced itself out of the market for new power plants, at least in market-based economies.
Even the nuclear-friendly French — who get most of their power from nukes — can’t build an affordable, on-schedule next generation nuclear plant in their own country.
Earlier this month, two South Carolina utilities decided to abandon construction of two nuclear plants after spending some $9 billion. The twin plants, known as the V.C. Summer Nuclear project, are less than 40 percent finished. They were originally expected to cost $11.5 billion and be operational in 2018, but the latest projections gave at least a three-year delay and a total cost of $25 billion. The utilities plan to pass on some of the loss to customers by raising rates.
“The U.S. plants risk becoming an even bigger fiasco than those involving the European Pressurized Reactor at Flamanville in France and Olkiluoto, Finland,” said the Financial Times. Those plants “although years late and billions of euros over budget, at least look likely to be completed in the next couple of years.”
Vogtle in Georgia is “the last nuclear plant under construction in the U.S.” Bloomberg reported two weeks ago. Back in March, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution called the project “a financial quagmire.” The Westinghouse plants, originally priced at $14 billion, are “currently $3.6 billion over budget and almost four years behind the original schedule.” Recently, Southern Company released new estimates that put the total project cost at $25 billion.
Last week, Bloomberg reported that the developers of the Vogtle plant, “are seeking more federal support for the project, potentially increasing a record $8.3 billion loan guarantee it has already been promised.” But it’s not clear how likely that is given Energy Secretary Rick Perry turned down a request from the South Carolina developers for $3 billion in support.
It is hard to justify a taxpayer-backed loan for a nuclear plant that is all but certain to be a money loser from the moment it is turned on, assuming that ever even happens.
“Let it be written that environmentalists didn’t kill the nuclear power industry, economics did,” explains Houston Chronicle business columnist Chris Tomlinson in a piece headlined, “Nuclear power as we know it is finished.”
Since new construction is all but dead in this country for the foreseeable future, the remaining question is whether taxpayers should subsidize existing ones because of their low carbon pollution — as happened in the states of New York and Illinois. I argued in May that existing nuclear plants can make a plausible case for a modest short-term subsidy. But while that may happen in some states, the AP reportedTuesday that Ohio Governor John Kasich “can’t see supporting a proposed bailout of Akron-based FirstEnergy’s two nuclear plants that’s now stalled in the state Legislature.”
Whatever happens in the near term, the future of new power generation belongs to renewables.
“There’s no military solution [to North Korea’s nuclear threats], forget it – Steve Bannon
Contrary to Trump’s threat of fire and fury, Bannon said: [to “There’s no military solution [to North Korea’s nuclear threats], forget it. Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don’t die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don’t know what you’re talking about, there’s no military solution here, they got us.” http://prospect.org/article/steve-bannon-unrepentant
Public review of EDF’s record of nuclear components made in the Le Creusot forge, which is owned by Areva.
Nuclear Street 18th Aug 2017, The national nuclear power regulator in France, Autorite de Surete
Nucleaire (ASN) has opened a public review of an order that would force
utility giant EDF to review records involving any of the components in
active nuclear power plants that were fabricated at the Le Creusot forge,
which is owned by Areva.
The forge is at the center of a controversy that
began in April 2015, when the ASN revealed that metal-weakening anomalies
created by areas of high-carbon concentrations in the steel, had been found
in two of the already installed major structural components of the pressure
vessel head at the Flamanville nuclear power plant expansion project.
https://nuclearstreet.com/nuclear_power_industry_news/b/nuclear_power_news/archive/2017/08/18/asn-initiates-new-review-of-le-creusot-forged-parts-091802
France’s nuclear problem – an industry in disarray
Les Echos 21st Aug 2017, Stephane L’Homme: In his recent column published by the Circle, Mr.
Prudhomme lists various arguments to try to rehabilitate nuclear energy and
challenge the announced closure of many reactors. The problem is that the
author argues as one could still do 15 or 20 years ago, invoking a mythical
atom: “France is a nuclear giant”, “Our considerable nuclear know-how”, and
so on. Mr Prudhomme thus seems to be unaware that the nuclear industry in
France and in the world is in a catastrophic situation, illustrated by the
bankruptcy of the two of its emblematic companies, French Areva and
American Westinghouse, Choke its main shareholder, the Japanese Toshiba.
If it is impossible to know today what other bad surprises – counted in
billions – reserves the Areva case, what about the EDF file? The national
electrician is not only confronted with the advanced disintegration of the
58 current reactors, whose ruinous renovation is certainly impossible to
finance, but also the disaster of his own EPR in Flamanville (Manche).
The situation is so dramatic that the Nuclear Safety Authority is being urged
to validate the reactor vessel despite the serious defects it presents. It
is also an opportunity to remind Mr. Prudhomme that, by way of
“Considerable nuclear know-how”, the French atom is involved in one of the
worst industrial scandals of all time: thousands of nuclear parts –
including the famous tank of the EPR – were poorly manufactured in Areva
forges At Le Creusot, and often covered by falsified security certificates.
https://www.lesechos.fr/idees-debats/cercle/cercle-172945-la-methode-coue-ne-sauvera-pas-lindustrie-nucleaire-2108694.php
Delay in city resolutions on opposition to planned expansion of plutonium pit production at Los Alamos National Laboratory
Resolutions opposing LANL plans postponed until next month, Santa Fe New Mexican, By Tripp Stelnicki | The New Mexican, 22 Aug 17, A pair of proposed city resolutions opposing planned expansion of plutonium pit production at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the nuclear weapons agenda of President Donald Trump’s administration ran into hurdles at Monday’s city Finance Committee.
Both resolutions, sponsored or co-sponsored by Councilor Renee Villarreal, were postponed until a committee meeting next month.
One proposal would ask the New Mexico Environment Department to rescind a revised consent order that in 2016 established new milestones for cleanup of contaminated waste from the Cold War-era nuclear research and development at the lab; asks that planned production of plutonium pits — the triggers for a nuclear reaction in weapons — be halted until cleanup concerns are resolved; and asks that the U.S. Department of Energy improve monitoring of surface and groundwater.
Councilors Mike Harris and Peter Ives were hesitant to act on the resolutions, saying proposals need to be fleshed out…… Villarreal told the councilors she would welcome amendments and said that the city, as a member of the Regional Coalition of LANL Communities, could have an influence on discussions surrounding pit production and cleanup at the lab.
“The intention is to really look at how this is affecting our communities, including the safety of our drinking water.”
2 companies vie for USA’s missile money
Competition to replace US nuclear missiles is down to 2 companies, but uncertainties remain https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/22/competition-to-replace-us-nuclear-missiles-is-down-to-2-companies.html
- The competition for replacing America’s aging nuclear-tipped Minuteman IIIintercontinental ballistic missiles is now down to two large defense companies.
- Yet uncertainties remain about the program with estimates showing it could cost upwards of $140 billion, more than the Air Force’s original estimate of $62 billion.
- Some critics suggest the U.S. could still have a powerful nuclear deterrent capability and save money by delaying the next-generation Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent ICBM weapon system.
California power grid survives solar eclipse unscathed
FOLSOM, Sacramento County — Monday’s partial eclipse statewide took a sharp, sudden bite out of solar power production in California. And the electricity grid survived just fine.
Shortly after 9 a.m., the state’s fast-multiplying solar farms were plunged into semi-darkness, just when they would normally be revving up.
At the control center for California’s electricity grid in Folsom, display screens showed solar generation plummeting as the eclipse neared its midmorning peak. Electricity from hydroelectric dams and natural gas power plants surged to pick up the slack.
Then, as the sunlight returned, solar power rebounded even more quickly than it dropped, while hydropower tailed off.
“If there’s any doubt about how planning pays off, we demonstrated it this morning,” said Eric Schmitt, vice president of operations for the California Independent System Operator. “We didn’t have any major challenges on the system, even minor challenges. We’re very pleased with how smoothly it went.”
Ohio Governor Not Backing Bailout for State’s Nuclear Plants
Ohio’s governor says he can’t see supporting a proposed bailout of the state’s two nuclear plants.
Aug. 21, 2017 By JOHN SEEWER, Associated Press, OREGON, Ohio (AP) — Gov. John Kasich said Monday that he can’t see supporting a proposed financial rescue that FirstEnergy Corp. maintains is needed to keep alive the state’s two aging nuclear plants.
Trump preoccupied with the idea of nuclear annihilation, but knows little about nuclear weapons
Trump Thinks About Nuclear Annihilation a Lot, But Doesn’t Know Much About It, New York, By Margaret Hartmann, 20 Aug 17 “…… Trump has been publicly discussing his vivid fears about nuclear weapons for decades, predating any serious talk of him running for president. These comments suggest that Trump thinks about nuclear annihilation far more than the average American – but he simultaneously has a particularly weak understanding of how the strategy surrounding them works. That’s created the frightening mix that was on display last week: it appears that Trump is well aware of the awesome threat posed by nuclear weapons, but he thinks it can be addressed like a problem in the board room (of a reality TV show)……..
A month before Trump was inaugurated, Mother Jones looked at Trump’s many public remarks about nuclear war and noted that he’s often spoken as if he thinks nuclear war is inevitable…….
as the New York Daily News reports, over the years he has actually laid out what he believes is the path to our salvation. Unsurprisingly, it involves Trump singlehandedly saving humanity with his superior negotiation skills……
His greatest dream is to personally do something about the problem and, characteristically, Donald Trump thinks he has an answer to nuclear armament: Let him negotiate arms agreements – he who can talk people into selling $100 million properties to him for $13 million. Negotiations is an art, he says and I have a gift for it.
The idea that he would ever be allowed to got into a room alone and negotiate for the United States, let alone be successful in disarming the world, seems the naive musing of an optimistic, deluded young man who has never lost at anything he has tried. But he believes that through years of making his views known and through supporting candidaes who share his views, it could someday happen.
Later that year a Washington Post piece noted that Trump hoped to “perhaps one day fulfill his fantasy of becoming the U.S. negotiator on nuclear arms limitation talks with the Soviets.”
“It’s something that somebody should do that knows how to negotiate and not the kind of representatives that I have seen in the past.”
He could learn about missiles, quickly, he says.
“It would take an hour-and-a-half to learn everything there is to learn about missiles … I think I know most of it anyway. You’re talking about just getting updated on a situation …
The problem, in addition to Trump’s overestimation of his negotiating skills, is that it doesn’t seem he’s devoted much effort to learning anything about missiles, or nuclear strategy in general. During the campaign he repeatedly demonstrated a lack of familiarity with some very basic concepts surrounding nuclear weapons.
During a Republican primary debate, Trump could not answer a question about his “priority among our nuclear triad” (the nation’s land-, sea-, and air-based systems for delivering nuclear weapons). It was clear from the context of the question that it was about maintaining our aging weapons systems, but Trump answered, “Well, first of all, I think we need somebody absolutely that we can trust, who is totally responsible, who really knows what he or she is doing. That is so powerful and so important.”
…….. Several times during the campaign, Trump suggested that Japan and South Korea should get their own nuclear weapons if they aren’t willing to pay the full cost of having U.S. military personnel stationed in their country. In a May 2016 interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Trump described the situation like a business negotiation.
“They have to pay. And you know what? I’m prepared to walk, and if they have to defend themselves against North Korea – we have a maniac over there,” Trump said. “In my opinion, if they don’t take care of us properly, if they don’t respect us enough to take care of us properly, then you know what’s going to happen Wolf? Very simple: they’re going to have to defend themselves.”
There’s little evidence that being president has expanded Trump’s understanding of nuclear issues. In the midst of last week’s war of words with Kim Jong-un, Trump offered Americans the false assurance that he’s fixed up the U.S. nuclear arsenal in the past six months – though with well over 4,000 nuclear warheads, insufficient fire power against North Korea is certainly not a concern.
And despite access to the world’s top nuclear experts, the New York Timesreported that Trump’s improvised threat to Kim Jong-un last week was the result of his believe that he alone understands how to deal with the dictator…….. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/08/trump-thinks-about-nukes-a-lot-doesnt-know-much-about-them.html
Britain is well able to have low-carbon energy without nuclear power
Tom Burke’s Blog 16th Aug 2017, There is a very broad National consensus about what we want our energy
policy to do, what the goal of British Energy Policy should be. It should
be affordable, it should be secure and it should be low-carbon, in
delivering the service that people want. I don’t know anybody who
doesn’t agree that that trilemma is what we are trying to do.
And there is no doubt at all that it can be delivered in the UK, in a way that does
not involve nuclear power, and if we were to do that it would be cheaper
and more secure than doing it in the way that we are currently trying to do
it.
We don’t have a problem with technology, we actually have more
technology than we can begin to use, and we certainly don’t have a
problem with the economics of using low-carbon technologies, or a variety
of low-carbon technologies.
All the problems we have with getting to the goal, are political problems. They are problems about getting the politics
right, not about getting the technologies or the economics right. As we
look at that project in the context of what’s going on in the world, as
we look around at what is happening in the world, it is very clear that all
over the world we are now engaged in a transition, in the so-called energy
transition, as we move to a low-carbon economy to make sure that climate
change doesn’t destroy civilisation.
And as we make that transition, we must make sure that it is a “just transition”. It’s not just as shift
of technology it is also a shift of people’s livelihoods and communities,
and we must take those communities and those livelihood with us as we make
that transition. http://tomburke.co.uk/2017/08/16/no-need-for-nuclear-the-renewables-are-here-conway-hall-london-17-june-2017/
Waste of money and time with no nuclear reactors happening
Money and time wasted and no new reactor designs to show for it http://www.beyondnuclear.org/home/2017/8/15/money-and-time-wasted-and-no-new-reactor-designs-to-show-for.html
The majority of pro-nuclear boosters appear finally to have swallowed a dose of reality — and have ceased clinging to the idea that “new nuclear power plants” and even “new reactor designs” will be the energy answer of the near future. The error- and omission-filled pro-new-nuclear propaganda piece, Pandora’s Promise, was out of date almost as soon as it was released. Even its producers and stars have jumped ship and instead now clamor to keep old, economically failing and technically deteriorating nuclear plants going, just to justify a continued existence.
In a telling piece of research — A retrospective analysis of funding and focus in US advanced fission innovation — by Abdulla et al, a look was taken at how US spending has affected nuclear power development and new reactor design. Unsurprisingly, the authors noted that:
“despite spending $2 billion since the late 1990s—no advanced design is ready for deployment. Even if the program had been well designed, it still would have been insufficient to demonstrate even one non-light water technology. It has violated much of the wisdom about the effective execution of innovative programs: annual funding varies fourfold, priorities are ephemeral, incumbent technologies and fuels are prized over innovation, and infrastructure spending consumes half the budget. Absent substantial changes, the possibility of US-designed advanced reactors playing a role in decarbonization by mid-century is low.” [emphasis added.]
As the authors also explained in their conclusion:
“In this paper, we do not seek to present a comprehensive diagnosis of the problems facing nuclear energy innovation in the US. Rather, we have reconstructed NE’s budget history and evaluated how close the office has come to achieving its advanced reactor mission. Our research shows that, as currently structured, NE has neither the funding levels nor the programmatic focus that it needs to deliver on its mission of developing and demonstrating one or two advanced reactor designs by mid-century. This comes despite multiple strategy roadmaps and billions of dollars of appropriations.”
The only reasonable conclusion to draw is that enough money and time has already been wasted on a failed technology that has zero role to play in our energy present or future.
Former TVA chairman David Freeman calls for solar power
Look to solar energy, Post and Courier, S. David Freeman, Former TVA chairman, 20 Aug 17
Perhaps we should thank the Lord that the nuclear meltdown by Santee Cooper was just financial. Based on their performance in trying to build the two reactors, one must be somewhat concerned whether, if they completed them, they would operate reliably and safely.
There is a lesson to be learned from this experience but surely the first thought should not be to spend good money because a bad judgment was made. The lesson to be learned is that the world of electricity has changed and solar power is cheaper than nuclear power.
Santee Cooper should accept this basic fact and go back to its original mission of low-cost electricity, which today means solar and wind backed by storage and used efficiently.
Selling Santee Cooper to get the money to complete the nukes would be like a gambler who had lost a lot of money and took out a mortgage on his house to “win” back his loses. For the sake of the consumer who will pay — don’t do it.http://www.postandcourier.com/opinion/letters_to_editor/letter-look-to-solar-energy/article_d56e8544-81e6-11e7-9f4f-a7d76bb5420d.html
Nuclear lobby none too happy about Trump’s lack of action to further nuclear power
Trump administration’s nuclear energy plans hanging on by a thread, – The Washington Times August 20, 2017
The next generation of U.S. nuclear power, which the Trump administration views as a key part of the nation’s energy supply, is hanging on by a thread as two key projects have run into serious trouble and are raising doubts about the viability of new nuclear facilities moving forward.
Utilities in South Carolina late last month stopped construction at V.C. Summer, scrapping plans to build two reactors near Columbia and ending a 10-year project that was expected to provide something of a blueprint for future cutting-edge nuclear plants.
At the same time, Georgia’s Vogtle nuclear project also has hit roadblocks, with costs expected to reach at least $25 billion. Original projections were about $14 billion, and the facility already is years behind schedule.
Vogtle supporters reportedly have asked the Trump administration for financial help in finishing the project, and some analysts say federal intervention looks to be the only way new nuclear reactors can be completed in the current economic climate.
No nuclear reactors have been built in the U.S. in more than 30 years, though the fuel source still provides more than 20 percent of the nation’s electricity. Both Summer and Vogtle were envisioned as much more efficient, safer plants than those built decades ago, but specialists say the first-of-their-kind nature of the facilities has led to massive cost overruns and construction delays.
Both Summer and Vogtle were envisioned as much more efficient, safer plants than those built decades ago, but specialists say the first-of-their-kind nature of the facilities has led to massive cost overruns and construction delays.
“What we call the first of a kind is a lot more expensive,” Mr. Schwartz said. “We need to buy down the cost of the first-of-a-kind plants to levels that are commercially viable The only source of that buy-down, really, is the United States government.”
There seems to be some support in Congress for, at the very least, extending existing programs aimed at helping Summer and Vogtle.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, said last week that Congress should extend production tax credits for new nuclear facilities. The House already has passed such legislation, and Mr. Graham said the Senate should do the same to ensure billions of dollars aren’t wasted on nuclear plants that never materialize…….http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/aug/20/trump-administrations-nuclear-energy-plans-hanging/
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